HC Deb 17 December 1979 vol 976 cc241-2

Queen's Recommendation having been signified—

That, with effect from 1st January 1980, Standing Order No. 5 (Friday sittings) be amended, as follows:
Line 2, leave out 'eleven o'clock' and insert 'half past nine o'clock'.
Line 10, leave out 'four o'clock, a quarter to five o'clock and half past five o'clock' and insert 'half past two o'clock, a quarter past three o'clock and four o'clock'.
Line 18, leave out 'half past five o'clock' and insert 'four o'clock'.
Line 24, at end add—
'(3A) At eleven o'clock Mr Speaker may interrupt the proceedings in order to permit questions to be asked which are in his opinion of an urgent character and relate either to matters of public importance or to the arrangement of business, statements to be made by Ministers, or personal explanations to be made by Members.
(3B) If the House is in Committee at eleven o'clock, on an occasion when Mr. Speaker's intention to permit such questions, statements or explanations has been made known, the Chairman shall leave the Chair without putting any question, and report that the Committee have made progress and ask leave to sit again'.—[Mr. Le Marchant.]
1.25 am
Mr. Michael English (Nottingham, West)

It is very laudable and proper that a motion should be on the Order Paper to approve what the House decided on 31 October—so laudable and proper that one wonders why the Leader of the

Resolved, That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to enable local authorities in Scotland to provide concessionary travel schemes for handicapped persons, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the provisions of the said Act of the present Session in the sums payable out of moneys so provided under any other enactment.—[Mr. Fairgrieve.]