Backbench Business Committee

John Redwood Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

The Back-Bench committee does not yet exist, and the recommendation of the Wright Committee was that the House should have an early opportunity to decide on it. The House can only do that if we give it the opportunity today. So we are implementing the Wright Committee recommendations in full by giving the House the opportunity to decide whether it wants to sit in September.

The House already sits for longer than almost any other comparative legislature in the democratic world, but it is obvious that the public do not easily understand why MPs are effectively unable to scrutinise the Government over the lengthy summer recesses, some of which have stretched out over a fairly long period of 82 days. I have already announced that, subject to the will of the House tonight, the House will sit for two weeks from 6 September. Unlike in previous September sittings that the House has experimented with, I fully expect there to be substantive business for the House to consider during that period. This is not a cosmetic change, but a declaration of intent.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I just want my right hon. Friend to know that some of us think that this is a huge advance. We want a Parliament that is serious, and able to dictate more of its own agenda and to hold the Government to account. It is remarkable that a Government are keeping their word and offering just that.

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his robust support for the propositions before the House.

The Government have set out the dates of the 13 Fridays provided for in Standing Orders to allow consideration of private Members’ Bills. Amendment (a) to motion 11 would provide extra days for the consideration of such Bills in this Session. Private Members who have been successful in this year’s ballot will be advantaged by the fact that the longer Session allows for more time between the Fridays provided for consideration of their Bills on the Floor of the House. That will allow more time for Members to progress their Bills outside the Chamber, in Committee or the other place. I told my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), when we debated this matter in the last Session, that I would not

“commit any future Administration to an increase in the pro rata number”—[Official Report, 6 January 2010; Vol. 503, c. 228.]

of private Members’ Fridays in the first Session of this Parliament, and that, I am afraid, is what I will do.