Christopher Chope

Christopher Chope: My fetish for Parliamentary procedure

All hell broke loose after I prevented several Private Members’ Bills receiving approval at Second Reading ‘on the nod’.  Despite the campaigner behind one of those Bills, Gina Martin, accepting the principled reasons for my objections, many on social media chose to believe otherwise.  Fortunately by Monday the Government had agreed that there should be a Government Bill in Government time to consider the legislation to ban the offensive and unacceptable practice of ‘upskirting’ which has been banned in Scotland since 2009.  My intervention has ensured that the legislation will have proper scrutiny and a much speedier passage to enactment.  This is because unless the Government was intent on breaking the first come, first served convention, the Voyeurism Bill would have been in a queue behind many other balloted Private Members’ Bills already debated and approved at Second Reading.

It is well known that a lie can circle the world before truth can put its boots on. 

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