---

Business of the House

I, too, add my tributes to Ashok Kumar, who will indeed be missed by the House. I am not sure that the Leader of the House can quite so easily shrug aside the accusation from the NAO that £780 million has been wasted—not invested, but wasted—on fiddling around with Departments and public bodies, mainly through what amounts to a refined form of vanity publishing, so I hope that we will return to that issue. Let me ask the Leader of the House about the Standing Order changes. She has complained several times over recent weeks that a cloud of suspicion hangs over her whenever she talks about the issue, but she has not allayed that suspicion by providing us with the text of the Standing Order changes. She has not put her name to the suggestions of the Wright Committee, and no time has been set aside to debate the motion. She may assume that it will go through on the nod, but I think that some anonymous Member will say "Object". The House rose early last Thursday, on Monday and on Wednesday, and I suspect that it will do so again today. It is not difficult to find an hour and a half. Why are we waiting? May I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to Friday 26 March? Some excellent private Members' Bills have been tabled for that day: the Water Tariffs Bill, the School Admissions Bill, the Live Music Bill [Lords], the Contaminated Blood (Support for Infected and Bereaved Persons) Bill [Lords], and the Council Tax Benefit (Change of Name) Bill. Not one of those excellent measures will be debated, however, because the House will not be sitting on Friday 26 March. Does the Leader of the House now regret that she did not provide more time for private Members' Bills? I consider two private Members' Bills to be particularly important. One is the Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill, tabled by the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), which deals with "vulture funds". Surely, given that the House is almost united in its support for that Bill, the Government have a duty to find time for it to be debated, and not to allow it to be derailed by the anonymous hon. Member for Christchurch. The other Bill is the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 (Amendment) Bill, tabled by the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt). That too is an excellent Bill, and the House wants it to be passed. Will the Leader of the House find time for that to happen? Will she also tell us when the Digital Economy Bill will finally be given a Second Reading? Finally, may I return to the subject of the Prime Minister's "almost apology" yesterday? He admitted that he was wrong, but he could not quite bring himself to apologise to the House for having been wrong. Perhaps an innovation could be introduced in the new Parliament: perhaps, as well as Prime Minister's questions, we could have "Prime Minister's errors and omissions". It would be quite a long session, but it would enable the Prime Minister to apologise for those errors and omissions. In a spirit of equity—to make it absolutely fair—an equal amount of time could perhaps be allotted to the Leader of the Opposition, so that he can apologise for his errors and omissions as well.