Transpeople (Prisons) Debate

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Department: Ministry of Justice
Friday 20th November 2015

(9 years, 1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.

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Heidi Alexander Portrait Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
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On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Today you allowed me to put an urgent question to the Secretary of State for Health for the second time in two months, and for the second time in two months he did not bother to turn up. Can you advise me whether a Secretary of State is normally expected to attend the Chamber when an urgent question is put by his or her counterpart? Can you also advise me on how we can get the Secretary of State out of his bunker in Richmond House so that he can answer legitimate questions put by Members?

Peter Bottomley Portrait Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
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Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker.

John Bercow Portrait Mr Speaker
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Very well. I will take the hon. Gentleman’s point of order now, and then respond to both points of order.

Peter Bottomley Portrait Sir Peter Bottomley
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In my extensive experience here, Mr Speaker, I do not think there has ever been a convention that only the Secretary of State can speak for his or her Department, or for the Government. I think that some of the words used in that point of order were pejorative, given that part of the criticism we heard earlier was based on the fact that the Secretary of State had been speaking about the issue.

John Bercow Portrait Mr Speaker
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There are a couple of points to be made in response to what the hon. Gentleman has just said. First, the use of pejorative comments is not a novel phenomenon in the House of Commons. The hon. Gentleman need not sound quite so shocked, or display his offended sensibilities, at the notion that a right hon. or hon. Member has indulged in that practice.

The hon. Gentleman’s second point may well be helpful to the House as a whole, but I hope he will not take it amiss if I say that it had already penetrated the recesses of what passes for my brain. [Laughter.] In short, I was myself aware of that fact, simply because I have had the rather fortunate vantage point of the Speaker’s Chair since June 2009.

I do not have the statistical analysis in front of me, but I can confirm that, first, it is commonplace for a shadow Secretary of State’s opposite number to come along, and secondly, it is also commonplace for another Minister to do so. Quite what the stats show I do not know, but if the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) is interested in the analysis, I dare say that—no state secret is involved—it could be supplied to her or to any other Member when it has been completed.

Finally, let me say that a certain amount of speculation is taking place in the Chamber on the precise whereabouts of the Secretary of State. I do not know, I have not inquired, it does not greatly concern me, and it is not a matter for the Chair; but I hope that, whatever he is doing, he is enjoying himself.