Only the First Bill Gets a Debate

The House of Commons sits at 9.30am on Friday 16 October to consider private members’ bills, and the order paper is long. According to the Hansard Society’s weekly bulletin, three ballot bills are listed for second reading and thirteen more are listed behind them. The bulletin’s own assessment is that the length of the list is misleading: “Only the first Bill is guaranteed a realistic opportunity for a full debate.”

This account rests on that bulletin and, for the first bill, on its sponsor’s own website. The parliamentary order paper itself could not be opened for this piece.

The three bills in line

First is the Heritage Public Houses Bill, from the Conservative MP Mike Wood, who was third in this session’s ballot. It would, the bulletin says, “require councils to maintain registers of heritage pubs and provide additional protections against their sale or redevelopment.” Second is Neil Shastri-Hurst’s Emergency and Life-saving Skills (Schools) Bill, eighth in the ballot, which would require schools to teach emergency and life-saving skills. Third is Damian Hinds’s Automated Online Software (Access and Transparency) Bill, thirteenth, which addresses the operation of automated tools that access material published online.

The order matters more than the subject. In the bulletin’s words, the second bill “may be reached if proceedings on the pubs Bill conclude in time; the third is less certain.” Of the thirteen behind them, it says, “none of them are likely to be debated before the House adjourns.” A Friday sitting has a fixed end, and whatever time the first bill uses is time the others do not get.

How a bill moves without a debate

There is a second route, and it runs through a single objection. A bill can receive its second reading without debate and go to committee “if no MP objects when it is called by the Speaker,” the bulletin says. “In practice, this usually happens only when the Government supports the Bill and is content for it to progress, although occasionally one slips through because the Whips fail to object.”

A bill that is neither debated nor given a second reading can be rescheduled, the bulletin adds, “but it moves into an increasingly crowded queue.” Its conclusion is that the House “may debate only one or two Bills, although others could progress without debate.” A long list of bills, in other words, is not a list of bills that will be argued. Most of what happens on Friday will depend on whether anyone objects when a bill’s title is called.

A second attempt

Wood’s bill was prompted by the destruction of the Crooked House in Himley in 2023, according to his own website, which says he presented an earlier version in the last session and that it “ran out of time and was therefore not made law.” The page, dated 17 June 2026, says the new bill would impose a duty on local authorities to protect heritage pubs, and quotes him calling the loss “a deeply regrettable act that erased an important piece of our local heritage overnight.” It also gives the second reading date as 16 October.

That is the sponsor’s account of his own bill. This publication has not read the bill’s text, and neither source says whether the Government supports it.

What to watch

The Lords is not sitting on Friday, and both Houses return at 2.30pm on Monday 19 October, the bulletin says. On Friday the things that will decide the outcome are procedural: whether the debate on the pubs bill ends in time for the second bill to be reached, and whether anyone objects when the remaining titles are read.

On the Hansard Society’s reading, one bill will be argued, a second may be, and the rest will wait on whether anyone objects.