Speeches by Chamberlain.

“First, I am grateful to the Leader of the House for bringing my previous concerns about the management of visa cases in the Home Office to the Department’s attention. However, at the moment I have a very acute issue with immediate support needs. A constituent of mine is in the USA, where his baby was born through surro…”

“My hon. Friend is illustrating the challenges really well. I look forward to the Minister’s response, because I think, given the nods I have seen, that Government Members agree. I have a constituent—a councillor, in fact—who wants to be a driving instructor, and he has experienced the same delays. Does my hon. Friend a…”

“I do not think that there is anything else. We have covered the main themes. It is very good that the Procedure Committee is also reaching out to Back Benchers to get their input on written parliamentary questions. Alex has just mentioned political games, which may be too strong a term. The Opposition, whether that be …”

“I would say that the Procedure Committee’s inquiry is part of Parliament’s response to the poor value that we are seeing from written parliamentary questions. I think we said last week, and I am sure Alex agreed, that we often found that the answers we were being given were pretty vague. That actually just meant that m…”

“From a personal perspective, no, but people are always looking for qualitative and quantitative data to rank MPs. Our performance as MPs will always be, ultimately, entirely subjective and, rightly, our constituents will decide accordingly. But there is no doubt that some of that more quantitative stuff will have an im…”

“In my response before we suspended, I was talking about the different types of written parliamentary questions and categorising them as Front-Bench, departmentally focused questions and, potentially, Back-Bench, more constituency-focused questions. My view is that a lot of the time we are asking written parliamentary q…”

“When I think about written parliamentary questions, there are two distinct types. There are the questions that Front Benchers—I am sitting here as the Chief Whip for the third party—ask in relation to their portfolio, and there is a political campaigning aspect to that. The other piece is Back Benchers, who might have …”

“I think so, generally. I think that last week I alluded to other concerns that I have about resources in the Table Office, particularly in relation to Opposition days and ensuring that we respond appropriately to amendments. But it is always about making reviews on a regular basis. If we see a huge increase in written …”

“This is where the role of the House in educating the wider public is very important. I found it interesting that in the last Parliament there were a number of newspaper articles that asked, “How hard is your MP working?”, and written parliamentary questions were part of that. Dare I say it, I was very happy to do well …”

“I think we have been quite clear to the Committee already that we are not. We believe that the volume of written parliamentary questions, which is one of the things that this Committee is considering, has been driven by the delays in responses. I think we have all been in the Chamber when points of order have been made…”

“That is true for FOIs as well, isn’t it? You know that a Department holds information, you have an idea of what that information is, and you are trying to frame the FOI or the written parliamentary question to appropriately capture it. I think last week we discussed how written parliamentary questions should be a very …”

“Like other MPs here, I have constituents who have dedicated years to public service. One, a prison officer, was stabbed and assaulted in his work, and then had the privilege of being at Camp Zeist to supervise the imprisonment of the Lockerbie bomber while they were on trial. I have another constituent who is caring fo…”

“To be honest, we probably touched on it in relation to the last question, but I think we are expecting a lot of the Table Office. Alex is right to say that it is always as helpful as it can be and courteous in the way it carries out its work. But there is a resource issue in relation to the Table Office—there is no dou…”

“I start by wishing my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean) all the best for his parental leave. Sadly, and particularly for his wife, I have no news to update the House with, but I hope to be able to do so in due course. I draw the House’s attention to the devastating civil war in Sudan, wh…”

“I rise to speak, on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, both as a member of the Modernisation Committee and, at one point during this inquiry, as a witness. That is also true of the Leader of the House, who gave evidence to the Committee before he became its Chair. The work we do in this place is complicated, but sometime…”

“Yes, would be the short answer from me, if I think about it. It is also important that, within MemberHub, you are ultimately responsible as the Member. There are different levels within MemberHub in terms of staff, who is appropriate and at what appropriate level they input. Talking about myself as an individual MP, my…”

“3. What steps he is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help reduce energy prices for people in Scotland.”

“I welcome what the Minister has said, but the challenge is that the Government have yet to correct the challenges from the ECO4 scheme, which in North East Fife has blighted houses with not only a lack of insulation but poor installation of inappropriate heat pumps and so on. Can the Secretary of State advise me when t…”

“I think exactly the same. Clearly, third sector or other organisations see that opportunity to suggest written parliamentary questions as a key part of the engagement they have with parliamentarians. It is then the responsibility of the parliamentarian to ensure that that is not just submitted without thought or consid…”

“I am probably of a similar view. I accept that the evidence says that the numbers are increasing, but I suppose that what we need to know—we have not touched on this so far—is House resource in terms of responding from the Table Office and so on. Unless the Committee were persuaded that that is an issue from a resourci…”