Points of Order

Philip Davies Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Charles Walker]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Can you advise me how best I can bring my concerns to the attention of the House in relation to the boundary review and Lords reform? It seems perverse to reduce the number of elected representatives in this place while the Lords continues to gorge itself on new arrivals. I believe in an appointed upper House, but not at the current price and not at the expense of this elected, and therefore accountable, Chamber. We in this place must guard against bringing this country’s democratic settlement into disrepute.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Is it further to that? Is it on that very theme?

[Philip Davies]

It is further to that point of order.

[Mr Speaker]

In that case, let us hear from the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), and then I will respond to both.

[Philip Davies]

I absolutely endorse everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) has just said. In addition to that, we also have the situation whereby the Government propose to reduce the number of MPs by 50 but not to reduce the number of Ministers by an equal proportion, thereby giving the Government more control over the House of Commons. That is clearly an outrage, and surely it is something that needs to be considered in conjunction with the points raised by my hon. Friend.

[Mr Speaker]

I am very grateful to both hon. Members for raising their points of order. Let me seek to deal, in so far as they require to be dealt with, with each in turn. First, in relation to the point of order from the hon. Member for Broxbourne, who is, as we all know, the illustrious Chair of the Procedure Committee of the House, I remind colleagues that the hon. Gentleman asked the Chair by what means he could register his concern. As the hon. Gentleman knows, because he is a perceptive and sagacious fellow, he has found his own salvation. He has made his own point with his own inimitable eloquence, and it is on the record. I know how strongly he feels about it, and I know there are many Members across the House who feel very strongly about it, and these matters will doubtless be further debated.

Secondly, in relation to the hon. Member for Shipley, I note the force of his point about reductions in the number of MPs needing, as he sees it, to be accompanied by reductions in the number of Ministers. The hon. Gentleman has got such a long-established good memory for what people have said in the past that I feel sure that, although he did not say it today, he will be well aware that I myself expatiated on this matter on 19 January 2011 in a lecture to the Institute for Government. On that occasion, I made the point that it would be a rum business to reduce the number of MPs but not to cut the number of Ministers. I said it then and was right then, and therefore I am very happy to say it again, five and a half years later, and to be right a second time.

We had better leave it there. I am not sure that either of them was a point of order, but they were jolly good fun.