Business of the House

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for his commitment to looking after the interests of his constituent. He will appreciate that we are now hopeful that, for the first time since the start of the conflict, there might be a window in which both sides can be encouraged to stop the killing and start negotiating, which is absolutely vital. He will also appreciate that the Foreign Secretary has shown a huge amount of personal commitment to this issue. If he wants to write to me following business questions, I will be happy to pass his message on.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

Happy Christmas to you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

May we have a debate on the timeliness of business in this House? My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey) has already raised the issue of the proliferation of SO24 debates and urgent questions, but there is a big problem about question times not starting and ending when they are supposed to. Questions to the Prime Minister now lasts between 45 minutes and an hour. As a new Member of this House, I find it very strange that the timetabling in this House is so very, very fluid, that meetings are disrupted and that constituents are put out by the fact that things do not happen when they should. May we have a debate on putting down clear times for things to start and stop?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this matter. It is something that has been raised with me a number of times by various Members across the Chamber. Keeping to times is important. There is flexibility with some questions sessions and so on. They tend to be a matter for the Chair in each session, but if my hon. Friend wants to raise this issue again with the Chair of the Procedure Committee, it might be appropriate that the Committee looks at it further to see whether there is anything more that we need to do.