Leader of the House – in the House of Commons at 10:30 am on 7 February 2008.
David Heathcoat-Amory
Conservative, Wells
10:30,
7 February 2008
Whether she plans to bring forward proposals for changes to the Standing Orders governing the ability of Select Committees to meet in public.
Helen Goodman
Deputy Leader of the House of Commons
The Government have no plans to change the Standing Orders for Select Committees generally. With respect to the European Scrutiny Committee, the matter is on the Order Paper for discussion this afternoon. I look forward to hearing the right hon. Gentleman's views then.
David Heathcoat-Amory
Conservative, Wells
And I am sure that she will, but the issues of openness and the public's right to know are not on the Order Paper. Is the hon. Lady aware that in the Committee's routine weekly meetings, it has to meet in private? It scrutinises more than 1,000 draft regulations, directives and Laws from the European Union every year, but the public and the press are not admitted. Will she alter that in line with the Government's pretended belief in openness and the public's right to know?
Helen Goodman
Deputy Leader of the House of Commons
As the right hon. Gentleman knows, I have twice attended the European Scrutiny Committee recently and I am perfectly well aware of the situation. Everybody in the House believes that we should conduct proceedings transparently whenever possible, but that is not the same as holding every single meeting under the glare of publicity. The right hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that his Committee has taken contradictory positions when it has looked at the matter.
The order paper is issued daily and lists the business which will be dealt with during that day's sitting of the House of Commons.
It provides MPs with details of what will be happening in the House throughout the day.
It also gives details of when and where the standing committees and select committees of the Commons will be meeting.
Written questions tabled to ministers by MPs on the previous day are listed at the back of the order paper.
The order paper forms one section of the daily vote bundle and is issued by the Vote Office
Laws are the rules by which a country is governed. Britain has a long history of law making and the laws of this country can be divided into three types:- 1) Statute Laws are the laws that have been made by Parliament. 2) Case Law is law that has been established from cases tried in the courts - the laws arise from test cases. The result of the test case creates a precedent on which future cases are judged. 3) Common Law is a part of English Law, which has not come from Parliament. It consists of rules of law which have developed from customs or judgements made in courts over hundreds of years. For example until 1861 Parliament had never passed a law saying that murder was an offence. From the earliest times courts had judged that murder was a crime so there was no need to make a law.
