Points of Order

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You are the foremost guardian of the convention that the House of Commons must come first. My hon. Friend the Minister is a most charming and able Minister, but I have asked him why the Foreign Secretary is not here. I quite understand—he is a very busy man—if he is abroad or ill, but surely we must establish the convention that when there is an urgent question or a statement, unless it deals with a particular, small part of a Department, the Secretary of State should be here. I would hope that you make that clear to Departments.

[Mr Speaker]

I must say to the hon. Gentleman that the position is that it is for the Government to decide whom to field. My responsibility is to adjudicate upon applications for permission to put urgent questions. I do that every week, and sometimes several times a week. I cannot require any particular Minister to attend, and it must remain for the Government to make the judgment.

That said, the hon. Gentleman is a very senior and respected figure in this House, and he has just made a point that increasingly I have heard made recently by others. I have not made a statistical study, but there are suggestions that the frequency with which senior Ministers appear to answer urgent questions is declining. It is in no sense to cast an aspersion on the Minister, who knows his brief and has assiduously attended to the matters raised today, simply to note that point in passing. I would hope that senior Ministers wanted, and felt a duty, to answer questions from Members of Parliament. We do not have a separation of powers, as in the United States; Ministers sit in, and are answerable to, this House. None, frankly, should ever forget it.