Business of the House

Priti Patel Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful for what the hon. Lady said at the beginning about e-petitions, and for making it clear that she wants the new e-petitions website to be a successful way for people to trigger debates in Parliament. We were in fact delivering a coalition agreement in going ahead with the website, which is an improvement on the No. 10 website, in that it links into the democratic process instead of ending simply at No. 10.

I am conscious that over recent weeks and months we have not been able to allocate to the Backbench Business Committee as much time as the hon. Lady would like, but that is due in part to the way in which the legislative programme impacts on the parliamentary Session. I very much hope that in the weeks and months ahead it will be possible to allocate more time to the Backbench Business Committee, and to give it the headroom that it needs to accommodate debates about e-petitions.

Two e-petitions have so far gone through the threshold, and in one case, as my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House said in response to an oral question, the Government have responded. On Hillsborough, we have made all the papers available from the Cabinet Office to the independent panel, and we have made it clear that we have no objection to them going into the public domain, so it may be that on Hillsborough the petitioners have achieved what they wanted.

On the e-petition concerning riots, somebody may present themselves on Tuesday to the hon. Lady’s salon, and I hope that in due course it might then be possible to debate the other one that has gone through the threshold.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

In light of the strong interest in Parliament and from the public about all matters European, will my right hon. Friend consider making Government time available for a full debate about Europe and about the repatriation of powers to Britain?

[Sir George Young]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the debate, which I think she had yesterday in Westminster Hall, on precisely that subject. We did discuss at some length the European Union Bill, when there was extensive debate about the repatriation of powers, and there are fairly regular debates, thanks to the European Scrutiny Committee, on European-related issues. I cannot at this stage promise a full debate about the matters that she has raised, but I hope that the House will have an opportunity from time to time to listen to her views on Europe.