Further written evidence to be reported to the House
Political Parties and Elections Bill
1:00 pm
James Duddridge (Whip, Whips; Rochford and Southend East, Conservative)
On a point of order, Sir Nicholas. I wish to remain seated. Notwithstanding what you said, I ask you to look at the matter a second time. The Opposition Front-Bench team found that there were significant new pieces of information this morning—tangible differences—that were not mentioned in the written submissions and of we were not aware before. As the Whip, I shall not go into policy issues, but there are significant changes—that is the Opposition’s position. Furthermore, during the Programming Sub-Committee, if I may refer to that, we were given reassurances. While there was no commitment to take starred amendments, an indication was given that the Committee would be able to review the issue—and on that basis we were happy to proceed. I do not know whether there is another way forward, whereby we could table starred amendments, then circulate them to the various parties on Friday. They would still be starred amendments on a day on which the House is not sitting, but we would be happy to circulate them then.
There are significant amendments that we want to table as a consequence of evidence. This meeting does not break up until 3 o’clock and we do not know when the business of the House will be completed—it could even be completed very shortly after us, so that there would not be time for us, physically, to go and table the amendments.