Member News
Backbench MPs will learn the results of the private members ballot tomorrow morning. This will decide which 20 backbenchers will receive precedence when introducing private members’ bills.
While winning the private members’ ballot does not guarantee a bill will become law it does give it a significant advantage.
The procedure
MPs interested in introducing a private member’s bill put their names forward for the ballot. The first 20 names drawn out are given priority when private members’ bills are debated.
Second reading, report and third reading debates can only take place on Fridays and only 13 are set aside for this purpose each session. The MPs who win the private members ballot get first choice as to which of these Fridays their Bill will be considered on and thus can ensure it has as much time as possible.
The provisional dates for sitting Fridays are 22 October, 12 and 19 November and 3 December 2010 and 21 January, 4 and 11 February, 4 and 18 March, 1 April, 13 May and 10 and 17 June 2011. However, these have yet to be agreed upon by MPs.
Why is this important?
Due to the fact that private members’ bills represent the concerns of a single backbencher rather than the government, a bill needs to enjoy a degree of cross-party support – or at least tacit acceptance – in order to make progress through the Commons.
The time available to private members’ bills is very limited given the numbers involved and only those bills which are first or second on the order paper on a given Friday are likely to be debated at all. A bill that does not complete its debate is adjourned and must wait for the next available slot to receive its second reading and make progress.
Bills can be approved without debate at the end of a sitting Friday if there has not been enough time to consider them. However, it only requires that one MP object in order to send that bill to the back of the queue.
On the eighth and subsequent sitting Fridays, precedence will be given to private members’ bills that are awaiting report or third reading, further cutting down on the time available for second readings.
Like government bills, private members’ bills also have to pass through the Lords before they can receive Royal Assent. Generally, if a bill has the support to pass through the Commons it will make it through the upper house too.
All bills that have not completed their passage by the end of the session – in this case November/December 2011 – will fall and must start again from scratch in the new session.
Bill topics
Although the ballot selects the MPs who will be give precedence on private members’ bill Fridays, the subject of the bills they will introduce does not have to be announced until 30 June and the a full version of the bill does not have to be presented until just before the second reading debate.
Therefore MPs have 13 days to decide upon the topic of their bill before officially announcing it. MPs who win the ballot are, in the words of a Commons research paper ‘besieged by pressure groups, other organisations and their own colleagues’ all offering suggestions for legislation. Additionally, the government sometimes asks backbenchers to introduce bills on minor matters that would not justify the use of regular parliamentary time.
Some MPs consistently introduce private members’ bills over a number of years and can be counted upon to put forward similar proposals in the current session.
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