Business of the House

Peter Bone Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I cannot give the right hon. Gentleman an undertaking on that last point, because I do not know when the tribunal will deliver its ruling. The Bill is scheduled to have its Third Reading in another place on, I think, 19 March, and we would then hope to deal with it here, so I cannot give him that particular undertaking. I hope that he will understand, however, that it is important for Ministers to be able to consider policy options, and to get frank advice from civil servants on their impact, without those options going into the public domain. We need sufficient space to develop our thinking and our policy options, which is why the Government opposed the right hon. Gentleman’s application. We will have to wait and see what the tribunal ruling comes up with.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Further to what the excellent Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) said earlier, all Members of the House have received an e-mail from the Procedure Committee asking them to submit their comments on the reform of the Backbench Business Committee by today. However, the very issues that we have been asked to comment on are those in the motion that the Government have tabled for debate on Monday. This is going back to the bad old days of the Executive overruling Select Committees. Whatever wishy-washy answer I get, this is not acceptable. Will the Leader of the House agree not to bring forward that motion on Monday?

[Sir George Young]

I am not sure that there is any point in my rising and coming to the Dispatch Box, as my hon. Friend has already discounted my reply. I must point out to him that, on 8 February, I made it absolutely clear that

“the Government believe that it would be appropriate for the House to address the anomaly whereby members of the Backbench Business Committee other than the Chair…are elected by the House as a whole rather than by Members of the political party to which they belong before the next elections of members. The Government propose to allow time for consideration of proposals to this effect towards the end of the current Session.”

That is exactly what we are doing. It will then be a matter for the House to decide, in the light of the debate on Monday, whether it wishes to adopt the proposal on the Order Paper. I note that my hon. Friend has tabled an amendment to the motion indicating a contrary view.