UK Parliament / Open data

Business of the House

Business question from Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat) in the House of Commons on Thursday, 5 June 2008. It occurred during Business statement on Business of the House.
Following the exciting success of Barack Obama in winning the Democratic nomination and the strong showing by Hillary Clinton, and given that the Government are due to announce the publication of a White Paper on House of Lords reform—we have been given a date for that—may we have a full day's debate in the House so that, recognising the progress made by the Labour party in particular, we can discuss how we in Britain can modernise our political system to make it truly representative of both women and men, and of all our communities throughout the United Kingdom? Will the Leader of the House also provide time for a debate on the 10th report of the Public Administration Committee, on the Government's draft Constitutional Renewal Bill, which was produced two weeks ago today? In particular, will she allow the House to put pressure on the Government so that we can get real opportunities to transfer power from the Executive to Parliament? The report says that there is only one proposal in the Bill to give more powers to the citizen. That cannot be what the public want, so may we have an opportunity to put pressure on the Government to change that? This Friday, the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan)—she was in the Chamber a moment ago—presents her Bill to give votes to people from the age of 16. Will the Government now come off the fence, and will the Leader of the House tell us today whether it is now Government policy that older teenagers should be able to take part in the democratic process, because they are subject to our laws and many of them would feel absolutely willing and able to participate in formulating those laws through the electoral system? Lastly, we are about to have a very important debate on knife crime. Following on from that, will the Leader of the House consider having an online consultation on behalf of the House of Commons, between now and the end of next month, with the young people of Britain on how they might suggest that we make our homes, schools, colleges and streets safer, particularly from the threats of knife crime and gun crime? Like me, the right hon. and learned Lady is well aware that this is a very big issue in the homes of many of our constituents.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

476 c925-6 

Session

2007-08

Chamber / Committee

House of Commons chamber
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