There has been a huge in increase in the constituency workload over the past few years adding to the pressure on Members of Parliament. Each Member has a different way of working which means in considering sitting hours there are no mainstream options which are necessarily right or wrong. The evidence suggests that the current balance of about 150 days over 34 weeks per year is broadly correct and should remain approximately as is. The Committee recommends that the House should be given the opportunity to vote on whether the House should continue to sit in September from 2013 onwards. There is widespread recognition that there is no scope for any diminution in the time available to the House for debate and scrutiny of legislation. The current pattern of 8 sitting hours on each sitting day between Monday and Thursday should therefore also continue, subject to future decisions concerning Friday sittings. Suggestions were heard that the House should sit normal working hours but that could be ill-suited to the transaction of other important Parliamentary business and needs of Members whose constituencies are some distance from Westminster. The House should be enabled to come to a decision in respect of each different day. The Committee is also currently considering whether consideration of private Members' bills should be moved from Fridays; and programming of legislation. The proposal of 'injury time' to compensate for time spent on oral statements was deemed undesirable but the Committee suggests that there should be a mechanism for backbenchers to question a Minister between 11.00 and 11.30 on Wednesdays

This reference book is primarily a procedural work which examines the many forms, customs, and practices which have been developed and established for the House of Commons since Confederation in 1867. It provides a distinctive Canadian perspective in describing procedure in the House up to the end of the first session of the 36th Parliament in Sept. 1999. The material is presented with full commentary on the historical circumstances which have shaped the current approach to parliamentary business. Key Speaker's rulings and statements are also documented and the considerable body of practice, interpretation, and precedents unique to the Canadian House of Commons is amply illustrated. Chapters of the book cover the following: parliamentary institutions; parliaments and ministries; privileges and immunities; the House and its Members; parliamentary procedure; the physical & administrative setting; the Speaker & other presiding officers; the parliamentary cycle; sittings of the House; the daily program; oral & written questions; the process of debate; rules of order & decorum; the curtailment of debate; special debates; the legislative process; delegated legislation; financial procedures; committees of the whole House; committees; private Members' business; public petitions; private bills practice; and the parliamentary record. Includes index.

Programme motions are used in the House of Commons to determine the amount of time spent considering legislation. The effective use of programming meets the Government's need to manage the legislative timetable whilst ensuring sufficient opportunity is available for Parliament to scrutinise legislation. However, the inquiry found that the way programming is currently managed means that there is often insufficient time to consider all of the amendments tabled at Report stage. Consequently many measures pass into law without any scrutiny at all. The Report makes a series of recommendations: Government should make greater use of "recommittal" procedures-sending all or part of a bill back to Committee- when large numbers of Government amendments have been tabled, to ensure they receive sufficient scrutiny; a revised procedure for the tabling of supplementary programme motions which would adjust the way scheduling of debate is carried out in advance; ensure that the House has the opportunity, where appropriate, to vote on alternative, non-Government, propositions for the timetabling of legislation and on consideration of Lords Amendments

In October 2010 the Committee in response to a report by its predecessor committee began a trial exercise in monitoring unsatisfactory and late answers to written Parliamentary questions. With just over 50 complaints from Members in response to the exercise of which half were followed up. This resulted in answers for Members on a number of occasions in circumstances where they would otherwise have found difficult or impossible to follow up on an inadequate response. The exercise will now come to an end and be put on a more permanent footing.In consideration of a memorandum from the Leader of the House providing statistics on the time taken to respond to WPQs in 2010-12, the committee has sought explanations from Ministers in charge of poorly performing departments for the level of performance in the memorandum and what steps are being taken to improve these levels. The Department for Education had a particularly poor performance and evidence was taken from the Parliamentary Under Secretary and a senior official in the Department which the Committee found unsatisfactory with and so a follow up session with the Permanent Secretary and Secretary of State was undertaken. The Committee will continue its interest in the answering performance of this Department and hold it to further account should its performance not improve markedly.

The Palgrave Review of British Politics 2005 provides up-to-date coverage of developments in British government and politics written by a team of leading experts. This is an indispensable reference book covering the entire political year focussing on the key topics. It also includes a statistical appendix.

This book provides comparative data and policy benchmarks on women's access to public leadership and inclusive gender-responsive policy-making across OECD countries.

The Labour government elected in 1997 pledged to reform the Westminster parliament by modernising the House of Commons and removing the hereditary peers from the House of Lords. Events have consequently demonstrated the deep controversy that accompanies such attempts at institutional reconfiguration, and have highlighted the shifting fault lines in executive-legislative relations in the UK, as well as the deep complexities surrounding British constitutional politics. The story of parliamentary reform is about the nature of the British political system, about how the government seeks to expand its control over parliament, and about how parliament discharges its duty to scrutinise the executive and hold it to account. This book, available in paperback for the first time, charts the course of Westminster reform since 1997, but does so by placing it in the context of parliamentary reform pursued in the past, and thus adopts a historical perspective which lends it considerable analytical value. Significantly, the book examines parliamentary reform through the lens of institutional theory, in order not only to describe reform but also to interpret and explain it. It also draws on extensive interviews conducted with MPs and peers involved in the reform of parliament since 1997, thus offering a unique insight into how these political actors perceived the reform process in which they played a part. Parliamentary reform at Westminster, now available in paperback, provides a comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the trajectory and outcome of the reform of parliament, along with an incisive interpretation of the implications for our understanding of British politics.

In July 2012, the House agreed to allow debates on Government e-petitions to take place on Mondays in Westminster Hall, on a trial basis during the current session. Three debates have taken place during the session, with a fourth scheduled on the day of publication of this report (22 April 2013). The Government's e-petitions website continues to be popular, and a dedicated slot in Westminster Hall on Monday afternoon provides a clear end-point for the process. The Procedure Committee agrees with the Backbench Business Committee that the trial has been successful and recommends that the temporary changes to the Standing Orders be made permanent.

The Standing Orders and the practice of the House enable Ministers to make written and oral statements to the House on matters of public importance. That facility is not available to Members who answer in the House on behalf of statutory bodies which are not subject to direct Ministerial accountability such as the House of Commons Commission and the Church Commissioners. Consequently contrivances such as a "planted" written question or an agreed urgent question are necessary in circumstances where an announcement is to be made to the House. The Committee considered whether arrangements might be put in place to enable, in appropriate circumstances, Members answering in the House on behalf of statutory bodies to make written and oral statements. They recommend that the necessary amendments be made to Standing Order No. 22A to enable those Members to make written statements and that those Members who are for the time being on the rota for oral questions should be enabled, on being granted permission in advance by the Speaker, to make an oral statement to the House