Business of the House (13 May)

Philip Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I will follow on from my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), who I thought made some fantastic points. However, I want to start by commending the Leader of the House for listening to the previous concerns and coming back with a revised motion. We are particularly grateful that she has been, as my hon. Friend said, a representative of the House. She has listened and come back, and I commend her for it.

None the less, I think my hon. Friend is absolutely right when he says that two hours is insufficient for this subject. This is not about the rights of Members of Parliament alone, although obviously it is to some extent. It is mainly about the rights of their constituents, who have a right to be represented in Parliament by the person they elected. The motion—I broadly support what is in it—is designed, in effect, to deliberately restrict the rights of those constituents to have their voice heard in Parliament. That is something that we in this House should interfere with only with great care, and certainly not on the back of a two-hour debate.

With a two-hour debate, by the time the Front Benchers have had a go, set out their stall and all of the rest of it, the time left for Back Benchers is limited. As anyone can see, the motion that has been tabled is quite extensive, with a number of different paragraphs, and eight amendments have been tabled, as my hon. Friend has said. If Front Benchers want to set out their views on the motion and address the amendments, how much time will Back Benchers get to speak? I suspect it will not be very long at all.

We are not really going to have time for a debate, but I think we saw earlier—through the exchanges of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch with my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips)—that there is quite a significant debate to be had, and people will have strong opinions on different sides of the argument. The whole point of being here is that we have a debate, and surely we can all see from this timetable that we are not going to have time for a proper debate. That cannot be right.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch made this point about the business on Monday. I have no idea how long debate will last on the various regulations down for debate on Monday, on public procurement and agriculture, or how many urgent questions and statements there might be and all the rest of it, but it is not impossible to envisage that those debates will not last very long. We could be in the absurd situation where we have business on a Monday that is supposed to run until 10 o’clock but we rise early because the two-hour limit for this debate has been reached, with hours still to spare. Why on earth would we unnecessarily restrict the debate before the normal end of the sitting day? We should at least make it clear that we can go on until the normal end of the sitting day, if that comes later. Why can the motion not at least make clear that we could carry on until 10 o’clock?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Will my hon. Friend emphasise that the debate scheduled for Monday is not any ordinary debate? It is a debate to change the Standing Orders of the House. As was pointed out to me by Enoch Powell when I was first on the Procedure Committee in 1984, in the absence of a written constitution, the Standing Orders of this House are our constitution. Are we really saying that we should change our constitution in a time-limited debate this coming Monday?

[Sir Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. In some respects, I am perhaps arguing against my own self-interests here, because the changes that the Leader of the House has made to the motion mean that I am broadly content with it. I would prefer to see certain minor changes that we could perhaps tweak out, but there are probably other Members who do not like the changes that have been instituted since the measure last appeared before the House. Their opportunity to speak against those changes will now be severely curtailed, and that is unfortunate to say the least.

I simply ask that the Leader of the House think again about this measure. We can all see that two hours is not an adequate amount of time. There is scope to have more time for this debate on something that is of great importance to the rights of Members of Parliament, but mainly to their constituents, who want to be represented in this House by the people they have elected and for that to be curtailed only where necessary. I hope that the Leader of the House will indicate that she will not move this motion today, withdraw it and think again.