Ten Minute Rule
Encyclopedia
The Ten Minute Rule, also known as Standing Order No. 23, is a procedure in the British Parliament for the introduction of Private Member's Bill
Private Member's Bill
A member of parliament’s legislative motion, called a private member's bill or a member's bill in some parliaments, is a proposed law introduced by a member of a legislature. In most countries with a parliamentary system, most bills are proposed by the government, not by individual members of the...

s in addition to the 20 per session
Parliamentary session
A legislative session is the period of time in which a legislature, in both parliamentary and presidential systems, is convened for purpose of lawmaking, usually being one of two or more smaller divisions of the entire time between two elections...

 normally permissible. It is one of the ways in which a bill may receive its first reading.

Any MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 may introduce a bill
Bill (proposed law)
A bill is a proposed law under consideration by a legislature. A bill does not become law until it is passed by the legislature and, in most cases, approved by the executive. Once a bill has been enacted into law, it is called an act or a statute....

 under the Ten Minute Rule, although in practice it is only used by backbenchers. To qualify to introduce a bill under the Rule, the MP in question must be the first through the door to the Public Bill Office on the Tuesday or Wednesday morning fifteen working days (three weeks) prior to the date they wish to introduce their bill. Due to the popularity of the Rule and the difficulty in launching a Private Member's Bill by other means, MPs have been known to sleep outside the Public Bill Office in order to guarantee a slot.

Ten Minute Rule motions are held in the main Commons Chamber after question time
Question Time
Question time in a parliament occurs when members of the parliament ask questions of government ministers , which they are obliged to answer. It usually occurs daily while parliament is sitting, though it can be cancelled in exceptional circumstances...

, at around 12:30pm on most Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Whichever MP has reserved the slot presents their bill and is entitled to speak for 10 minutes to convince the house of its merit. After the 10 minutes have passed, another MP may speak for a further 10 minutes to oppose the bill. The Speaker
Speaker of the British House of Commons
The Speaker of the House of Commons is the presiding officer of the House of Commons, the United Kingdom's lower chamber of Parliament. The current Speaker is John Bercow, who was elected on 22 June 2009, following the resignation of Michael Martin...

 then calls a voice vote
Voice vote
A voice vote is a voting method used by deliberative assemblies in which a vote is taken on a topic or motion by responding verbally....

 to decide whether the bill should be allowed a second reading, which is when the bill is debated at a later date. The Speaker will divide
Division (vote)
In parliamentary procedure, a division of the assembly is a voting method in which the members of the assembly take a rising vote or go to different parts of the chamber, literally dividing into groups indicating a vote in favour of or in opposition to a motion on the floor...

 the house for a recorded count of votes if there is some opposition. However, the majority of Ten Minute Rule motions are not objected to, and are allowed to proceed without any debate at this stage. This is because MPs have not yet had time to review the bill's content.

When a Ten Minute Rule motion passes, the bill is added to the register of parliamentary business. It is scheduled for debate along with the other Private Member's Bills, but at a lower priority. The MP presenting the bill must tell the Speaker the date for this second reading debate. The bill is generally printed and published shortly before the second reading.

Bills introduced under the Ten Minute Rule rarely progress much further, since the Government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

 usually opposes Private Member's Bills in the later stages and, given their low priority in the schedule, there is often insufficient time for the debate to be completed. Most Ten Minute Rule introductions are instead used to stimulate publicity for a cause, especially as the debate follows the media-popular question time and is usually broadcast live on BBC Parliament
BBC Parliament
BBC Parliament is a British television channel from the BBC. Its remit is to make accessible to all the work of the parliamentary and legislative bodies of the United Kingdom and the European Parliament...

, or to gauge the opinion of the house on an issue which may later be introduced in another bill.

However, bills introduced under the Ten Minute Rule do sometimes become law, passing through every stage of Parliament right through to Royal Assent
Royal Assent
The granting of royal assent refers to the method by which any constitutional monarch formally approves and promulgates an act of his or her nation's parliament, thus making it a law...

. Since 1945, there have been over sixty Acts of Parliament which were initially introduced under the Ten Minute Rule. A recent example was the Divorce (Religious Marriages) Act 2002.

A famous bill introduced under the Ten Minute Rule was the Military Action Against Iraq (Parliamentary Approval) Bill
Military Action Against Iraq (Parliamentary Approval) Bill
The Military Action Against Iraq Bill was a private member's bill introduced into the United Kingdom House of Commons by Tam Dalyell MP under the Ten Minute Rule. It received its formal first reading on 26 January 1999. The bill sought to transfer the power to authorise military strikes against...

 in 1999, which provoked a denial of royal approval
Royal Assent
The granting of royal assent refers to the method by which any constitutional monarch formally approves and promulgates an act of his or her nation's parliament, thus making it a law...

for its progression to a second reading.
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