John Bercow has pledged to keep a "beady eye" on the length of speeches in the House of Commons after the Government was attacked for scuppering a Bill by filibustering last week.

Health Minister Alistair Burt talked out the Off-Patent Drugs Bill on Friday, a Bill which would have allowed for the signing-off of drugs that are out of patent and therefore no longer profitable, despite cross-party support.

Paul Flynn, Labour MP for Newport West, attacked the move and raised a point of order in the Commons on the subject.

"On Friday there were two debates on two Bills," he said.

"The first one occupied three-and-a-half hours and, of course, while every syllable in those speeches was in order - otherwise it would not have been allowed - some of the comments were peripheral to the subject involved and all the speeches would have been improved by abbreviation.

"But this was an entirely non-controversial, unopposed Bill.

"But sadly the second Bill had allocated only just over an hour to it and this was a Bill... which offered advantages to patients and the health service.

"This was approved by members of the house... the only objection came from the Government benches who spoke on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry.

"Sadly three attempts to have a division on the Bill, have a closure motion, were turned down and one observer has suggested... this was turned down possibly because of time.

"What we have here is the power of backbenchers against the fact that big pharma and big sugar have a throathold on this Government."

To which the Speaker, Mr Bercow, replied that "nobody has a throathold on the Chair".

"I would never be remotely apprehensive about a big pharmaceutical company or other big institutions or big people or people who think they are big," he said.

"They are not bigger than the authority that resides in the Chair."

Mr Bercow said the Chair will "keep a beady eye on the length and relevance of speeches on these occasions".

The Government's decision to talk out the Off-Patent Drugs Bill came one week after Tory MPs successfully filibustered against a Bill which proposed making carers exempt from having to pay for hospital car parking.

Conservative MP Philip Davies (Shipley) spoke during the hospital parking debate for 90 minutes, prompting a fierce backlash.

An online petition calling for the rules on filibustering to be reformed has now been started on Parliament's website and it currently has just shy of 7,000 signatures.

The petition says filibustering is "archaic, repugnant and has no place in a modern parliament".