Business of the House

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work that he and his colleagues on the Backbench Business Committee are doing, and I echo his call to Members. We are making a lot of time available to that Committee; there are sections of time during the parliamentary week, and over the next couple of weeks a day and a half or even two days are available for debates such as that on the rail sector which has just been raised. I hope that Members who are raising issues to be debated, as my hon. Friend has just done, will look on the Backbench Business Committee as a vehicle to bring those matters to the attention of Ministers and before the House in order to address them.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

In my written question No. 20725 I asked the Chancellor

“what discussions his Department had with financial institutions prior to the introduction of new rules for Tier 1 Entrepreneur visas in January 2013.”

The subsequent response said simply that the Government have met financial institutions many times since 2013, which is completely inadequate. Can the Leader of the House assist me in getting a more substantial written response?

[Chris Grayling]

If that had been raised as a point of order, you would offer advice to be persistent, Mr Speaker, and to keep asking questions that are more specifically targeted on individual groups, people, institutions or meetings. The City Minister, or those Ministers involved in migration matters, have regular meetings with representative groups and will discuss such issues on a regular basis. The hon. Lady should not think that such matters are not discussed, because they are.