Business of the House

John Bercow Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend tempts me. [Interruption.] Yes—a little bit. However, I will resist that temptation because we are a Government who believe in ensuring accountability and scrutiny in the Chamber. We have deliberately in this Parliament seen through reforms to the Backbench Business Committee, which has afforded time, and from now on in this Session time in this Chamber for that Committee will be in excess of its 27 allotted days. As I said earlier, the same is also true for the Opposition, which is fine and as it should be. We cannot have a sort of closed period for scrutiny and opportunities for debates generated other than from within the Government. Finally, I will take issue again with my hon. Friend. We have just seen the introduction of the 20th Government programme Bill in this Session, which, for a Session of this normal annual length, is broadly speaking what one would expect and what we have seen in previous Sessions. There is no merit in having a large number of Bills as such—perhaps the contrary—but the idea that there is a light legislative programme when we have introduced 20 programme Bills is, I am afraid, simply not true.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We now come to the Back-Bench debate on the Normington report on reform of the Police Federation. Before I ask the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) to open the debate, I will mention that four hon. Members who have applied to speak are not currently present in the Chamber. Further and better particulars of those hon. Members can be provided to the Whips. It is incumbent on Members who apply to speak in a debate to be present at its start, both because it is a courtesy, and in this case because I feel sure that they would want to benefit from the wisdom of the right hon. Gentleman, from which the House is about to benefit.