Points of Order

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am saving up the hon. Gentleman.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your advice on correcting the record. I gave a speech in the Budget debate on Thursday in which I stated that the Foxhill housing development in my constituency delivers no change in the number of homes for social rent. However, I misspoke; the fact is there will be a loss of 99 homes for social rent. I also seek your advice on how to receive confirmation from the Government that reducing the number of homes for social rent in Bath, or in any city, is in line with Government policy, as it appears in a letter I received from the Minister for Housing and Planning on 2 November 2017?

[Mr Speaker]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving me notice that she planned to raise this matter. As she concluded her effort to do so, there was, if I may say so, a puckish grin on her face, as I think her attempts on this occasion have been mildly cheeky—I put it no more strongly than that.

The hon. Lady said that she wanted to put the record straight. In so far as she was seeking to do so, she has now done so, and it is there for the people of Bath and the organs of popular dissemination in Bath, namely the media, to see that she has done so. Colleagues will have noticed her prodigious efforts to do so.

On the matter of seeking either my advice or a ministerial confirmation, I have to say that this seems to me to be more a point of argument than a point of order for the Chair. However, I can advise her that a number of avenues are open to her if she wishes to press the Government on this matter. My particular advice to the hon. Lady, who is a new Member and an exceptionally assiduous one, is that she should toddle the very short distance from the Chamber to the Table Office, where she can seek the advice of the officials therein on which of those possible avenues might be thought to be the most profitable.