I'm not sure the rules are the real issue. There might be occasions—I'm sure there have been historically or why would this rule be there at all?—when a way of blocking new legislation from being passed on a Friday is actually useful.
Baggs, I fear the reason he's using a parliamentary device is simply because he can
Yep. That sounds likely but that's still not what I care about, which is why I didn't mention it. So long as the stuff about FGM still can be added to the Children Act, which I think it can, I don't feel the need to analyse some awkward blighter's motives. And I don't feel the need to ratchet up a Twitter-style mob to have him hung, drawn and quartered (yes, that's an exaggeration, obviously) but many of the commenters on this thread do seem to be more interested in tearing the man apart than with accepting, with some degree of irritation, that a removable blockage has been put in the road of the proposed legislation.