Private Members’ Bills (PMBs) are non-governmental bills which are historically difficult to enact. In each parliamentary session, 20 MPs are drawn in a lottery to introduce their own legislation. PMBs must follow the same legislative process as any other bill. In the Commons, only 13 Fridays are allocated to PMBs. Most parliamentary time is dominated by government business, with only 20 days available to the opposition. As MPs try to get constituency work done on these days, the competition to engender cross-party support for a PMB may prove tricky. MPs who introduce a PMB require at least 100 members to vote for the bill’s continuation. This is known as a ‘closure motion’.
PMBs can often be ‘talked out’ or filibustered, especially if they are contentious. Should time run out and the debate be adjourned to a later date, the bill is almost certainly dead, as all the other Fridays allocated for other MPs’ PMBs are likely to be full. Box 1 shows that there are several ways to pass a PMB.
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