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Sittings of the House

I beg to move amendment (a), line 1, leave out from 'That' to end and add—"'Private Members' Bills shall have precedence over Government business on 8, 15, 22 and 29 January; 5 and 26 February; 5, 12, 19 and 26 March; 23 and 30 April; and 7 May.'." It is a great pleasure, at long last, to get to this debate. I was rather surprised by the abrupt manner in which the Government moved their motion, which it has been clear for a considerable length of time that they do not want to discuss. Now that they have eventually been forced to discuss the matter, it has been moved formally. That is an extraordinary abrogation of their responsibility. Getting this motion to the Floor of the House has taken an enormous amount of time and effort. It was originally listed on the Order Paper on 23 November 2009. On 30 November 2009, my amendment was on the Order Paper, and since that day the motion has been listed at the end of business every day with no chance of debate; it has been objected to by Members across the House each and every day. Why on earth have Members had to object every evening to force this lame-duck Government to debate something so important to Parliament? What we have on the Order Paper today is an alteration to Standing Orders, particularly to Standing Order No. 14. I shall briefly remind the House what that Standing Order is about—the allocation of time in the House. Principally, it refers to the time that the Government have to organise business. Paragraph (1) says:""Save as provided in this order, government business shall have precedence at every sitting."" So except in relation to the other business referred to by two parts of Standing Order No. 14, the Government always control business in the House. That is why we have not been able to debate this motion before. Standing Order No. 14(2) relates to Opposition days. That has no particular bearing on private Members' business except in one respect. It says:""two Friday sittings shall be deemed equivalent to a single sitting"." In other words, a Friday is looked on as a half day. In theory, business on Fridays starts at 9.30 am. However, in effect, right at the beginning of the day there is always a motion that the House should sit in private; on occasion I have been responsible for that myself. That involves a Division, which takes up 20 minutes, so we are probably talking about only four and a half hours of business on a Friday. It is that four and a half hours, mentioned in the Government's motion and in my amendment, that I want to discuss today. The Standing Order protects Parliament and Members of the House by giving 13 Fridays for private Members' business. There is no dispute about that; Standing Order No. 14(4) states:""Private Members' bills shall have precedence over government business on thirteen Fridays in each session to be appointed by the House."" There are no ifs, buts or ands: 13 Fridays in each Session are to be appointed for that purpose by the House. The problem is that at the moment the House does not have the power to do that; only the Government can bring those 13 days to this House. There is no mention of applying a pro rata principle to those 13 days because there may be a general election in a particular Session.