Facilities of the House

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:09 pm on 18 December 2001.

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Photo of Quentin Davies Quentin Davies Shadow Secretary of State, Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland 4:09, 18 December 2001

The hon. Lady invites me to give her a preview of my speech. I should be happy to summarise it in one minute so that she can leave the Chamber if she wants to do so. Although I shall demonstrate—I hope, persuasively—the validity of two points, the focus of my remarks will be limited to those points.

The first point is that the Conservatives object very much to the whole concept of the creation of two-tier membership of the House, with the distortions that would flow from that. The second point is that we object fundamentally to the idea of making more unreciprocated concessions to Sinn Fein-IRA—especially treating the rules of the House of Commons as the currency for such concessions.