Business of the House

Peter Bone Excerpts

Thursday 4th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Mr Speaker, I hope you will accept that I am willing to call out the Government on occasion when they abuse Parliament—I voted for the contempt motion—but I thought there was a conspiracy to defraud Parliament itself yesterday. On a huge constitutional issue, we rushed the Bill through in a day. There was no time for proper debate. There was not even a Third Reading debate. Amendments were not down. It was a total farce and it was an abuse of Parliament. It seems to me that the solution to this—it was something that both the main political parties agreed to—is a business of the House Committee that is responsible for the timing of debates. The Backbench Business Committee has shown that it works really well. Seriously, will the Government now consider a business of the House Committee? Please, Leader of the House, do not blow this off again.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I entirely endorse the first part of my hon. Friend’s question. I draw the House’s attention to the fact that the article 50 Bill contained 58 words and it went through the entire parliamentary business and legislation Committee process. It was consulted on widely and it had five days of debate in this Chamber, compared with the under one hour on Second Reading for yesterday’s Bill. I therefore agree with him that it was extremely damaging to the way in which we carry out business in this place.

On the second part of my hon. Friend’s question, as I have said to him on a number of occasions, I do not believe that a business of the House Committee for determining business would have the necessary flexibility to be able to ensure that, as we are seeing at the moment, swift changes to business can be properly and reliably agreed. From time to time, the House needs to go through the usual channels with a very quick decision when emergency changes are necessary.