§ Mr. MolloyI beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that, in my opinion, should have urgent consideration, namely,
the possible abuse by hon. Members in making applications to Mr. Speaker under Standing Order No. 9 which brings this House into disrepute, detracts from the genuine objective of Standing Order No. 9 and therefore fails to serve this House and the people of this nation.As Back Benchers, we have certain facilities of which we are very jealous—for example, parliamentary questions, private notice questions and Adjournment debates. We can question Ministers, as we have done over the recent industrial troubles. Ministers come to the House to make statements and we can subject them to our questions on those statements. Then, of course, we have the procedure under Standing Order No. 9.The gravamen of my case is that in the past few weeks there have been no fewer than 37 applications under Standing Order No. 9–32 by Conservative Members. Yet there appears to be no instance of any hon. Members who have so applied later having sought to get an Adjournment debate. They might have been unlucky, but it might also have been that they were running a political charade.
It is important that we maintain our Standing Order No. 9 procedure for genuine emergency debates. The status of Standing Order No. 9 must not be devalued by the Tory Party, particularly when it is used in an attempt to obtain party political advantage.
This is a serious and important issue. I believe that it is in the interests of all Members of the House and of the nation that we should attempt to examine what has been going on and be able to debate the issue.
§ Mr. SpeakerThe hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) gave me notice before 12 o'clock this morning that he would seek leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a specific and important 971 matter that he believes should have urgent consideration, namely,
the possible abuse by hon. Members in making applications to Mr. Speaker under Standing Order No. 9 which brings this House into disrepute, detracts from the objective of Standing Order No. 9 and therefore fails to serve this House and the people of this nation.I listened with care to what the hon. Gentleman said and I have given careful consideration to his observations, but I fear that I have to rule that his submission does not fall within the provisions of the Standing Order. Therefore, I cannot submit his application to the House.