1 Introduction
1. On 29 October 2002, the House considered a series
of motions for procedural reforms, mainly arising out of a Report
by the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons,
Modernisation of the House of Commons: A Reform Programme.[1]
Among these were temporary standing orders relating to the sittings
of the House, which came into effect at the beginning of 2003
and are expressed as lasting until the end of the current Parliament.
The changes are that, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the House sits
at 11.30 am instead of 2.30 pm, and the "moment of interruption",
when the main business often ends, is 7 pm instead of 10 pm. Monday
sittings remain at the previous times, as do sittings on the day
of the State Opening and on the first day back after a recess.
The new times had already been in force for Thursdays experimentally
since January 1999, and these were made permanent, but with temporary
provision (again, until the end of the Parliament) for the moment
of interruption to be brought forward an hour from 7 pm to 6 pm.
Friday times (9.30 am start with the moment of interruption at
2.30 pm) are unaffected, except that Friday sittings are now restricted
to Private Members' Bill days.[2]
2. It was already known, and became obvious from
the voting figures, that the desire for the change of times on
Tuesdays and Wednesdays was far from unanimous: the order relating
to Tuesdays was passed by 274 votes to 267, and an amendment to
leave the provisions for Wednesdays out of the composite motion
relating to Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays was defeated by
288 votes to 265 before the motion itself was passed by 311 to
234.
3. Since the beginning of 2003 the calls for some
kind of reconsideration of the hours have been almost continuous,
fuelled in part by a dissatisfaction with the consequential decisions
by standing and select committees about their sitting hours, some
beginning as early as 8.55 am (in order to be able to meet for
2½ hours before the House sits), or a perception that there
were more clashes of meetings than before. Set against this was
the argument that, as the House had made a decision which was
intended to last until the end of the Parliament, it should not
reconsider it before then.
4. In order to quantify accurately the current state
of opinion and the reasons for it, we decided to circulate a questionnaire.
It was clear that views differed between Tuesdays and Wednesdays,
and also that there were more options than the two obvious ones,
"new hours" versus "old hours". We therefore
asked for views about Tuesdays and Wednesdays separately, and
for each day gave a third option: for the House to meet, and for
business to be interrupted, at the new hours, but for business
to be taken after 7 pm, perhaps adjournment debates or private
Members' business. We also asked about committee hours and for
suggestions as to how they could be improved. Our questionnaire
is reproduced at Appendix 1 (p 9).
1 Second Report, HC 1168-I (2001-02). Our report on
Parliamentary Questions (Third Report, HC 604 (2001-02)) was considered
during the same debate. Back
2
An exception was made on 11 April 2003, when the Easter recess
was shortened to accommodate the Budget debate. Back
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