Speeches by Blackman.

“It is a way for the Petitions Committee to get a debate in the Chamber. Personally, I have no objection to the Petitions Committee getting time in the Chamber, as long as it does not come off our allocation. These big petitions with large numbers of MPs who wish to debate them should get time in the Chamber; obviously,…”

“The drawback would be that fewer people get to speak or people make shorter speeches. You would have to weigh the options. On Thursdays, almost inevitably, we already have a time limit on speeches. Nominally, the debates are supposed to be three hours, but in my experience we have never, ever had three-hour debates; th…”

“The problem is that we get five applications a week on average, which then build up over periods of time. When the Backbench Business Committee began, colleagues went in front of the Committee to make their application, and they were either granted the debate or they had to reapply—that was it. The drawback of that was…”

“Yes. We would like to be able to grant topical debates. One reason why I say that we could potentially have three debates on a Thursday is that two of them could be scheduled in advance and then in our meeting on a Tuesday we would then consider topical debates which could be granted for the Thursday, or alternatively …”

“As you will probably know, the hon. Member for Strangford is a season ticket holder—rarely does a meeting of the Backbench Business Committee go by when he is not in front of us with an application. In his defence, his applications are interesting and it is really quite important that they are debated. We have a tenden…”

“Yes. Generally speaking, historically there have been fewer requests towards the end of a Parliament, as Members want to be in their constituencies, but at the beginning of a Parliament, there has more interest from new colleagues who want to get debates on subjects that they want to talk about rather than the ones tha…”

“I would like to see it formalised, obviously. The last Session, for example, went on for nearly two years, and therefore we would be looking for almost double the number of days. With a new Government being elected with a wide-ranging legislative programme, some Thursdays were taken, which I understand completely, but …”

“Thank you for that introduction, Chair. Thursday is not necessarily a backwater, in my view. The reality is that, certainly over the last Session, Backbench Business debates have gone right up to the moment of interruption almost inevitably, and often time limits have had to be introduced for speakers. To be fair, one …”

“Well, yes, but in practical terms not really. It would be end-of-day business more than anything else.”

“We should remember that the Petitions Committee stemmed from the Backbench Business Committee. Originally, petitions came to the Backbench Business Committee, and we had to find time to have debates. We said, “No; there should be a separate Committee to do it,” which is how this arose in the first place.”

“No, it could not come out of that. To be straightforward, the problem with the current position is that we would have to make the judgment of Solomon: does the Petitions Committee get time in the Chamber or does another colleague who has a valid request for a debate get time in the Chamber? The time is precious, so we …”

“Yes.”

“To trigger a debate in Westminster Hall, you have to get 100,000 signatures. That is 100,000 people—constituents of all of us—saying, “We want this issue debated; we think this is really important.” One of the problems is what happens to that petition and that subject after the debate has happened in Westminster Hall, …”

“Our process is that when an applicant comes before us for a Chamber debate, we expect 15 colleagues, evenly split between Government and Opposition parties, to have signed that application and to participate. We monitor those who sign applications and then turn up and actually speak. Funnily enough, the number of speak…”

“Sure.”

“Technically, at the end of a Session the queue goes into abeyance and we start from scratch. In practice, obviously at the end of a Session we write to the new Committee saying, “There are all these debates in the queue; what do you want to do about them?” We would obviously write to the Leader of the House if general …”

“That is because we are dependent on someone submitting an application. If colleagues do not submit an application, I suppose we can generate an application from within the Committee for particular national days when we may want particular debates. Obviously, the Government quite rightly often decide to have a debate on…”

“Colleagues, when they are presenting, often say they want a debate in the Chamber because it has greater focus, greater attention and more popularity, and of course it is screened out to the waiting world. Westminster Hall tends to be a second choice for colleagues. We promote it, both because of the timing and because…”

“The key point was that when the Committee was set up, all of those various days were put into that allocation. But, as I say, we are dependent on applications.”

“If people do not submit applications, we have to conjure them up. We maintain a calendar of the days that we are likely to get applications for, and we encourage colleagues to submit for those particular days. In terms of the Defence days, you are absolutely right. We have had relatively few Defence applications but, f…”