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Sittings of the House

I am certainly not going to go over what I have said, because that would be to unfair on other hon. Members who want to speak. However, the issue is very simple: my amendment would restore the 13 Fridays. The trouble is that Standing Orders provide us with a problem, because they say that the House must bring forward 13 days. However, one cannot bring anything forward in this House; the Executive do so. It may be that in future the reforms proposed in "Rebuilding the House" bring about a House business committee, and I sincerely hope that there will be such a committee and that this problem will never happen again. We have had to wait until today, however, and I think it was only the fact that the Government eventually realised that somebody would turn up at the end of every day's business to object that forced them to have a debate. If Standing Orders are to be changed or suspended on a matter so important as restricting the amount of time for private Members' Bills, we must have a little debate on it. We cannot just allow that to get through on the nod. Here lies the failure of this Executive. This would never have happened under a different Executive. It would probably not have happened even with a different Prime Minister of the same party. It seems to me that we are making a grave mistake if we allow this motion to go through today. In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope), I do seek to put my amendment to the vote. Before closing, I just want to make it clear again to all hon. Members that supporting my amendment will comply with the Standing Orders and restore 13 Fridays for private Members' Bills, while in no way affecting Members who have already selected the days for their Second Reading, as all the days that they have selected are covered by my amendment. The amendment would add and free up five more days for ordinary Members to have a chance to instigate legislation and either hear the arguments debated or get the matter raised and eventually introduced into law.