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Home Affairs

Forgive me, but I think that a perusal of Hansard tomorrow will show that the Leader of the House referred not only to the issue of the chairmanship, but to the fact that a Select Committee needed the correct number of members if it was to do its work. In any case, her argument that it mattered that the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) was the Chairman of the Committee does not hold water either, because as I was explaining before I was intervened on by my hon. Friends, the Select Committee has met and appointed an acting Chairman. It has shown itself entirely capable of conducting its business without the intervention of a motion adding a person to the Select Committee. None of us disputes that it is right that the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen should come off the Select Committee now that he is a member of the Government, or that a name will be put forward to replace him. What we object to is the fact that the Government have chosen to do that in rather a backhanded way. They are trying to force the measure through. They could properly have put a motion before the House, having gone through the Committee of Selection, or they could have come before the House and said, ““Given the time scale, the Select Committee will run with an acting Chairman, the hon. Member for Walsall, North, as it has agreed; come the autumn, a motion will be put forward in the normal way.”” If the Leader of the House really understands her responsibilities to the House and if she genuinely respects the House, she will withdraw the motion immediately.