Can filibustering be filleted out of Private Members’ Bills?

‘The Commons at its best’ is a bit of a pompous phrase that people apply to all sorts of sessions in Parliament that aren’t really the Commons at its best at all. But the Commons at its worst is surely easy to find: it’s when MPs meet on a Friday to discuss Private Members’ Bills.

These sessions have turned into a circus of MPs proposing slightly rubbish legislation, and Philip Davies or one of his colleagues talking that legislation out so that there cannot be a vote on its second reading, thereby killing it. This then leads to fury from the backbencher who proposed the Free Unicorns Bill and any supportive branches of the press, and accusations that the evil Tories do not care about the important and compassionate cause of Free Unicorns (the same accusations fly about when Labour is in government and it is left-wing MPs who do the job of filibustering, rather than Davies and co).