Procedure and Privileges: Fourth Report

Of the 21 Members currently on leave of absence, 15 have been on leave for more than two consecutive Sessions. If the House agrees, the sub-committee will meet to consider whether to grant leave of absence to those Members should they reapply at the start of the next Session. We anticipate that most Members will be pre-cleared at this meeting. In a small number of cases where we consider that further extension of a Member’s leave of absence may be contrary to the spirit of the scheme, we will engage further with the Member concerned. Any formal decision to withdraw leave of absence would be taken only at the start of the next Session, once the Member had reapplied, and only with the unanimous agreement of the sub-committee.

The second proposal in the report is a technical amendment to the private business Standing Orders to disapply the date requirements to hybrid Bills. As hybrid Bills are introduced as public Bills, until they have been declared hybrid by the examiners, promoters are highly unlikely to be able to comply with the specific dates set out in certain private business Standing Orders. The proposed change to the private business Standing Orders will disapply these specific dates in relation to hybrid Bills, thereby removing the need for a purely formal meeting of the Standing Orders committee in effect to disapply them on each occasion. The House of Commons will be invited to make the same change in the near future so that the Houses are aligned.

As with all these changes, the Committee will keep the operation of these latest proposals under review. I commend the report to your Lordships. I beg to move.