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Business of the House

Today is the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. A Bill is about to be presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) calling for an inquiry into what happened in Iraq, and next week a debate using Opposition time will raise the need for such an inquiry. Will the Leader of the House talk to the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Defence to ensure that after next Tuesday's debate it will be announced, in the light of the views expressed by Parliament, that we can have—in a way that will meet the wishes of Parliament—the sort of inquiry into the events of five years ago and since that I think the country deserves and needs? May we also have a debate on a separate but linked issue, that of coroners' inquests generally and inquests into the deaths of service personnel in particular—not least in order to ensure, on behalf of the families of people like the late Private Jason Smith, that the Government do not seek to intervene to prevent coroners from speaking as they find, and that the relatives of the victims of events such as the 7 July bombings do not discover that the inquests into their loved ones took place behind closed doors without the possibility of public and general knowledge of how their relatives died? Yesterday we had what I thought was an excellent debate on post offices to which 83 Members contributed, and since the Queen's speech there have been six Adjournment debates, more than 70 oral parliamentary questions and nearly 250 written questions on the subject. As Members are still hugely concerned about the failure of their local consultation processes to deliver the right results, will the Leader of the House establish whether the topical debate the week after next could deal with post office closures? The time allowed for yesterday's debate was clearly not sufficient. Given that the Government lost 19 of their supporters, who voted with the Opposition, and that the majority is now down to 20, will she also establish whether they can come up with a more satisfactory response to the widespread concern that exists through the House? I support the request from the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) for next week's topical debate to deal with Tibet, but may we have a debate on China generally before long? In this of all years there is a huge interest in relations between the United Kingdom and China, which really ought to be aired on the Floor of the House. The hon. Member for Gosport (Peter Viggers) confirmed earlier that according to the best available figures, one elector in 10 in England and up to one in five in London may not be registered. Six weeks before the elections in England and Wales, we also know from the judge who disqualified a Conservative councillor in Slough on Tuesday that the postal vote system is"““lethal to the democratic process””." May we please have an urgent debate in the next couple of weeks so that, once and for all, we can not only encourage people who should be on the electoral register to put their names on it, but change a system that allows widespread abuse because we do not have individual voter registration in this country?