CONSERVATIVE
New Forest East

POINTS OF ORDER – CLERK CONTROVERSY & PAUL GOGGINS MEMORIAL PRIZE - 04 September 2014

POINTS OF ORDER – CLERK CONTROVERSY & PAUL GOGGINS MEMORIAL PRIZE - 04 September 2014

Dr Julian Lewis: On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Given that modest pauses seem to be the order of the day, can we have a modest pause in bogus points of order made not, as is usually the case – [Interruption.] I did not heckle my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), and I will thank him not to heckle me – [Interruption.]

Mr Speaker: Order. I simply say to the hon. Member for Lichfield: try showing some basic courtesy and manners of a kind that people who attend to our proceedings would wish to hear. He made his point, and it was decisively dealt with by the Chair. I hope he will afford the courtesy to the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) to raise his point of order without interruption.

Dr Lewis: Inasmuch as people who raise bogus points of order seek to shout me down, I shall just continue to make my points that much more clearly.

A modest pause in bogus points of order would be appreciated, given that they are emanating not from people who seem concerned about the wider issue but from people who are rather more concerned to damage the particular occupant of the Chair on any issue that takes their fancy.

May I instead, within the rules of order, ask whether it is possible to set on the record my pleasure, and I hope that of the whole House, at the announcement on the parliamentary website that our late and much missed friend Paul Goggins is to have a memorial prize instituted in his name by the all-party group on poverty and the Webb Memorial Trust? I hope that hon. Members will alert their constituents to this fine memorial to a very fine individual, who is much missed by all of us.

Mr Speaker: I thank the hon. Gentleman in particular for what he has just said about the late Paul Goggins, which I think will command universal assent in the House. He was a remarkable man who pursued his politics on the basis of the issues, not on the basis of personalities.

[For the context of the first part of these exchanges, click here.]