§ 5.3 pm
§ Mr. Douglas Hogg (Sleaford and North Hykeham)On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I think you know that I tabled an application under Standing Order No. 24 to adjourn the House so as to enable it to debate the fact that the Government are gagging Euro Members on matters of major constitutional importance. Your Secretary informed me that you had decided not to allow me to move that application. I told your Secretary that that power was not obvious in the text of the Standing Order. Indeed, the Standing Orders were redrafted in March of this year.
Your Secretary, Madam Speaker, was good enough to refer me to the statement that your predecessor made in 1991, when he held that the Speaker had a power not to allow such applications even though that was not apparent in the text of the Standing Order.
You will appreciate, Madam Speaker, that there have been many occasions when the Government have made announcements outside the House; and I am sure that you would not wish to prevent Back Benchers from raising issues of constitutional importance. You will also be aware that the Procedure Committee, at the end of the 1980s, did not wish to give the Speaker the power that your predecessor asserted existed.
In these circumstances, will you look again, Madam Speaker, at your predecessor's ruling, to determine whether it is still appropriate? If you decide that it still is, can you suggest to those who draft the Standing Orders that the fact that you have such a power should be apparent in the Standing Orders themselves?
§ Madam SpeakerIn the first place, it is not the procedure of this House that any hon. Member who has made an application to me under Standing Order No. 24 608 should raise it on the Floor of the House. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is an experienced Member and former Minister, and I would have expected him to understand the procedures of the House.
Secondly, it is not incumbent upon the right hon. and learned Gentleman to repeat a conversation that took place between my office and him. My office tries to assist hon. Members, and I deprecate the repetition of such conversations on the Floor of the House.
I have no wish to embarrass the right hon. and learned Gentleman, but I have to tell him that his Standing Order No. 24 application did not even reach first base. If he considers that an issue of parliamentary privilege or contempt has arisen, he should write to me, and I will then consider the matter. Apart from that, I see nothing in what he is saying that should properly engage the Speaker of this House.
§ Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby)On a point of order, Madam Speaker. It relates to the freedom of Members of this House, and I should be grateful for your ruling.
When my party was in government, I noted that hon. Members from both sides of the House went around planting oral questions—a practice you and I both deprecate. You can therefore imagine my surprise when, this afternoon in the Table Office, I was given a question by the Member who I believe to be the parliamentary private secretary to the Minister without Portfolio, who asked me to raise this planted question with that very Minister. Will you rule that asking Opposition or Government Members to raise planted questions is quite improper?
§ Madam SpeakerI would have looked forward enormously not just to the question but to the hon. Gentleman's supplementary, because that is when the knife goes in. I am sure that Ministers will have learnt their lesson.