Points of Order

Tom Brake Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

A veritable feast of points of order.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am starting to panic. You will recall that on 2 December the Prime Minister, in response to a question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said:

“I am very happy to look at that issue again”—

the issue being the 3,000 unaccompanied children—

“to see whether Britain can do more to fulfil our moral responsibilities.”—[Official Report, 2 December 2015; Vol. 603, c. 339.]

The Prime Minister has been silent on the matter ever since. Can you, Mr Speaker, clarify whether the rules of the House require, when matters of moral responsibility are in play, the Prime Minister to return to this Chamber urgently to set out how he intends to fulfil those moral responsibilities?

[Mr Speaker]

The matter that the right hon. Gentleman raises is certainly important, but I am bound to tell him that it is treated of neither in “Erskine May”, which, of course, is the bible of parliamentary precedent and procedure, nor in Standing Orders. Therefore, although it may seem imperative in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman and, indeed, in that of his leader that the Prime Minister should return to the House to satisfy them on this matter before the Christmas recess, there is no procedural imperative to that effect.

[Tom Brake]

Shame.

[Mr Speaker]

The right hon. Gentleman mutters “Shame” from a sedentary position, and I feel sure that it is a matter to which he will return, quite possibly before the Christmas recess. We shall wait to see.