5 Proposals for consideration
55. This Report has set out our
experience over the Session and has described the main challenges
we have encountered. The key difficulties have been in the availability
and predictability of time for backbench business. The review
of the Backbench Business Committee's operation may therefore
wish to consider:
- how the Committee could work
more effectively with the Government to plan ahead for backbench
days and to fit them into the parliamentary calendar in advance;
or whether a fixed day of the week should be set aside for backbench
business to provide predictable allocations of days;
- whether more flexible use could be made of time
on the floor of the House by sometimes scheduling backbench business
on days when government business may not take up the whole day;
- whether the Backbench Business Committee should
be given some limited power to propose motions regulating the
timing of debates at the sittings it controls;
- how the House deals with e-petitions;
- whether the definition of what is backbench business
and what is government business requires any further clarification;
- the future of the traditional set-piece debates;
in whose time they should take place; and whether they should
compete for time with other requests for debates or be allocated
automatically; and
- whether more imaginative use could be made of
sittings in Westminster Hall, and what efforts could be made to
reinforce its status as an equal debating Chamber.
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