Business of the House

Richard Burden Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Regulations to allow the clinical use of those techniques for the first time were laid in Parliament on 17 December, as my hon. Friend knows. The regulations are affirmative and therefore subject to a debate in both Houses of Parliament. We are working on how to schedule that debate and where it will take place, and I hope to update the House soon.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

May I support what the shadow Leader of the House said about having two days on Report for the Infrastructure Bill? When it came before the House on Second Reading, the Bill already covered areas that required great scrutiny such as shale gas, Highways Agency reform and zero-carbon homes. Since it has been in Committee, new amendments have been tabled on mayoral powers, reforms to the Electricity Act 1989, and a range of other areas, including the electronic communications code that my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) mentioned. Some of those issues were not covered by the long title, or by debate in the House of Lords or on Second Reading. Is it too much to say that if those measures are to get the scrutiny they need, we should have two days on Report?

[Mr Hague]

I always take seriously requests for further time on important Bills, but as I stressed to the shadow Leader of the House, my experience in my short time as Leader of the House—six months so far—is that when additional time has been asked for on Report, the days have not been fully used, and that affects how we regard further requests for time on other Bills.