Previous Section Home Page

Sir Russell Johnston (Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber) : I shall begin with five short general observations which will enable my subsequent specific comments to be even briefer. The way in which the House deals with treaties may certainly be defective. The right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) often draws attention to that in his not infrequent comments and criticisms of the Crown prerogative. However, that is not one of the responsibilities of the Chairman of Ways and Means, who must handle debates according to the rules as they are. Neither do I understand it to be an objective of the Labour party to change those rules, although since that party is in an evolutionary phase my information on that may be dated.

Yesterday and today the right hon. Member for Chesterfield compared his motion with that moved by the late Sir Elwyn Jones in 1972 and said that it was,

"supported by all Opposition Members."--[ Official Report, 20 April 1993 ; Vol. 223, c. 184.]


Column 341

The right hon. Gentleman's memory is faulty. If he consults the Division lists for 1 and 6 March 1972 he will find my name and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Liberal party. We voted against such motions and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Sir D. Steel), who was then the Whip of the Liberal party, spoke against it at that time. At that time his constituency was Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles.

Thirdly, the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) said that the Chairman of Ways and Means gave an interview on 18 April on the "Scottish Lobby" programme. However, I think that the interview was on 3 April. I have a transcript, which seems bland and inoffensive. He gave that interview with the best of intentions. However, I think that, while it is accepted on all sides that a Chairman or, indeed, you, Madam Speaker, should not have to give reasons for decisions because of the inevitable disputation that will follow, television, radio and press in-depth probing interviews should not be taken up but left to other hon. Members who are not subject to such inhibitions.

A long time ago the late Horace King "ignited" the Blackpool illuminations. I did not greatly approve of that and interviews have potentially a much greater detonatory effect. Fourthly, the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Knapman) gave an interview this morning. It is difficult for me to comment on it because I was in the land of nod when the interview took place and have had to depend on my more wide-awake colleagues to tell me about it. [Interruption.] Perhaps we could ignore the rumbustiousness of some Opposition Front-Bench Members. I am told that the hon. Gentleman said that the Chairman of Ways and Means was in cahoots with the Government on closure motions and that, in the tailoring phrase of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), the whole thing was stitched up. My version of the interview may be slightly wrong and if so I will gladly withdraw. One could say that I am in a uniquely appropriate position to comment since I have been in cahoots with the Government throughout debate on the Bill on timing and procedure and I know what it is all about. It is not true that the Chairman of Ways and Means is in cahoots with the Government. Throughout the progress of the Bill the timing of closures has been decided solely by the Chairman of Ways and Means according to his judgment of an appropriate time for debate. The Government have known no more about it than anyone else in the House. It is quite wrong for an hon. Member to make such allegations.

To my sure and certain knowledge, throughout our proceedings in Committee the Chairman has behaved with impeccable impartiality and has given no advance indication of his intentions to any Member that he was unwilling to give to another. I shall give that point the added stress that membership of a minority party allows me to give. We are extremely sensitive to any possibility of collusion between the Chairman and the Government and to the possibility of the Chairman being cavalier in the treatment of minority opinion. The Plant committee, which was established by the Labour party, has again drawn attention to the fact that if our support in the country was reflected in the House we would have more


Column 342

than 100 Members. In the light of that, I repeat that the Chairman of Ways and Means has behaved with impeccable impartiality.

Mr. Knapman : I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to the comments by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) which are contained in Monday's record of our proceedings. I can confirm those, as can my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley (Mr. Cran).

Sir Russell Johnston : That is a somewhat opaque comment. I regret that at my age instant recall is now denied to me.-- [Laughter.]

Sir Nicholas Fairbairn (Perth and Kinross) : As one who suffers from a similar difficulty, may I tell the hon. Gentleman that all the allegations, which he has correctly denied, are entirely hearsay, would not be allowed in the High Court or the lower courts of Scotland, and should not be allowed in the High Court of Parliament. They are a great slight on the Chair.

Sir Russell Johnston : I note the hon. and learned Gentleman's remarks. I do not think that he and I have similar problems ; we may have parallel problems.

It is certainly true that the whole Committee could have been handled in a different way. That would have made not only the job of the Chairman less stressful but would have enabled the Committee to have a more engaged, more real, debate.

I have been taking part in debates on the European Community for two decades. They have reached the stage of a sort of religious disputation in which nobody ever wins. Nevertheless, I have come to respect the consistent opposition of people such as the hon. Member for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor) and the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore). His constituency is no longer called Stepney and Poplar. They are minorities, like me. They deserve to be heard and their arguments must be addressed.

Mr. Michael Lord (Suffolk, Central) : Although his memory may not be what it was, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is a fair man. Amendment No. 27 has been the most talked about amendment in the debate, and the amendment most discussed in the press and on television. It has been the amendment that Ministers have talked about, and debated on television. Being a fair man, does he not think that it is unreasonable that the House of Commons will not be allowed to vote on an amendment of such importance?

Sir Russell Johnston : I shall come to that point shortly. I was talking about the handling of the Committee. Given its official support for Maastricht, the Labour party should have sat down with the Government and the minority parties and agreed a sensible timetable, and a limitation on speech length. I know that, in Committee, speech length is not normally limited, but it makes no sense for the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) to speak for hours. Apart from anything else, it does not progress the debate in any rational fashion. It was wrong that the Labour party felt unable to do so, mainly because of its Euro-sceptics. While both major parties frequently extol the virtues of the House as a unique example of democracy, they have been guilty of being unwilling to


Column 343

reform its procedures to make debate more of a meaningful discussion and less of a pyrotechnic confrontation.

Mr. George Robertson (Hamilton) : This is not perhaps a terribly substantial point, but the hon. Gentleman spoke about the conduct of the Committee, through which I, like him, have sat virtually in its entirety. He made one of the first speeches, on one of the first amendments, and took an hour to do so. Is that the sort of limitation on speech length that he wants?

Sir Russell Johnston : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his not terribly substantial intervention on my not terribly substantial point. I remind him that on that occasion I gave way to 24 interventions--no wonder the speech took so long.

The motion is about the refusal of the Chairman of Ways and Means to allow a vote on amendment No. 27. My party argued for a vote on amendment No. 27 because we want the House to vote on whether the United Kingdom should accede to the social chapter of Maastricht. In practice, it has turned out to be difficult to find an appropriate form of words to ensure that. The Attorney-General told us that amendment No. 27 would not have such an effect. Indeed, he said that it would have no effect at all. Presumably, unless we have a vote of no confidence in the Attorney-General--as far as I know no one has suggested that--his decision has to be accepted.

Mr. Cash : Does the hon. Gentleman accept that those constitutional experts who are well acquainted with the constitutional usage and practice of the Law Officers of the Crown are deeply disturbed at the way in which the Attorney-General was brought into the argument? If anybody wishes to follow that up, he will find that there are substantial criticisms of the manner in which the Attorney-General was involved. No doubt, in due course, those will emerge.

Madam Speaker : Order. I remind the House that this is a limited motion. It deals only with the exercise of the Chair's discretion on amendment No. 27. I hope that the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston), who has the Floor of the House, and any others who are called to speak in the debate will limit their comments to the expressions in the motion before us.

Sir Russell Johnston : I am grateful for your guidance, Madam Speaker. I will leave what the hon. Member for Stafford has said, apart from saying that I have met few constitutional experts who do not spend most of the time being disturbed.

We are left with the judgment of the Attorney-General, so what does the Chairman of Ways and Means do then, poor thing? He is faced with that as a fact that he has to take into account. He knows that the House wants a vote on the social chapter, but his job is not to arrange that but to examine the amendments that are put before the Committee with that intention. What does he do when faced with an amendment that, according to the highest legal authority in the land, has no effect? His job is not to judge whether amendments will be carried but whether, if they are carried, they produce a clear result that can be implemented in law.

The right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) proclaimed at length the undesirability of being confined to what is workable and understandable. That is not an


Column 344

unreasonable confination, if there is such a word, and it would have been a happy thing if it had been applied to him over many years.

Mr. Benn : Without implying partiality by the Chairman--a point that neither the hon. Gentleman nor I have put forward--the hon. Gentleman said that the Chairman was guided by the law in deciding whether to allow a vote on amendment No. 27 because of the question of workability. Is that the road along which the House wishes to go, with the Chairman depending on the Law Officers--I made that point in my speech--to know whether he should call an amendment? That would be a dangerous course to follow.

Sir Russell Johnston : The right hon. Gentleman knows, probably better than me, that the Attorney-General is supposed to advise the House, not the Government. He is supposed to tell the House what, in his judgment, the law means. Therefore, I suppose that I would have to answer yes to the right hon. Gentleman.

None of us comes out of this covered with glory. Those of us who wanted a clear vote on the social chapter have failed to find a form of words to achieve that. The Liberal Democrats are also culpable in that, but the Labour party has far greater resources than we have, although both of us have equal access to the Clerks. Perhaps on Report we shall be successful. I hope so because I want such a vote. We also have to recognise that, even if we achieve that elusive form of words on Report, such a vote would be carried only with the support of two groups. The first consists of Conservatives who are against Maastricht and the social chapter but who would vote against their views on the social chapter to achieve their objective of defeating Maastricht. The second consists of Labour Members who do not want Maastricht at all, even with the social chapter, and who will vote on the social chapter with the aim of defeating the whole book.

The justification for continuing through these byzantine tunnels and accepting some strange allies is the attempt to find some way to make the Government choose between having Maastricht with the social chapter or no Maastricht. I accept that that has been the object of my party and those on the Opposition Front Bench. None of that is either the fault or the responsibility of the Chair.

The right hon. Member for Chesterfield said that the House had been-- "cheated" was the word that he used.

Mr. Benn : No. I was quoting my right hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham).

Sir Russell Johnston : Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman quoted with approbation. I do not see how he or anyone can say that and simultaneously claim that what he proposes casts no doubt on the Chairman's judgment.

Mr. Benn : I must correct the hon. Gentleman, because he misheard. I quoted my right hon. Friend the Member for Copeland but I said that that was stronger language than I would have used. I would not have used the word "cheat" in respect of a decision by the Chair. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw that allegation because it would be unfair to give a false impression.

Sir Russell Johnston : I am not going to argue that something is when it was not. However--

Mr. Dalyell : My right hon. Friend was very careful.


Column 345

Sir Russell Johnston : It does not matter. At the end of the day, whatever the right hon. Member for Chesterfield says, the essence of the debate comes down to this : do we trust the judgment of the Chairman of Ways and Means or not? I trust it, and, if necessary, I shall vote that way in the Lobby tonight.

4.58 pm

Sir Peter Emery (Honiton) : The debate is obviously not about Europe or about amendment No. 27, which is otiose because there is no way that it can be included in the Bill as it stands. Rather surprisingly, the debate is, in itself, one of the more important debates that have been held this Session, and the reason should be clear. We have no written constitution. The method and operation of Parliament are not because of a written constitution ; in the place of a written constitution, we have precedents and procedure. It is the procedure of the House that governs the working of this place and ultimately safeguards the liberties of us all, both within the House and outside. That is why our procedures must be followed and must, in my judgment, be supported on all occasions.

I wish to make it absolutely clear that, in my view, the debate must end with an overwhelming vote of confidence in the Chairman of Ways and Means. There must be no escape, such as the withdrawal of the motion or a failure to appoint Tellers, which would prevent a vote taking place. We must not allow the matter to be left hanging around, suggesting an entirely unsatisfactory outcome to the debate. The reason for that is absolute. Indeed, it goes to the heart of our parliamentary system.

Parliament works not because it exists but because it is allowed to operate by the mutual consent of its Members, who over many years have established a procedure that allows individual Members, often of highly conflicting views, to be able to conduct debates and consider legislation in a way that enables Governments to govern and Opposition Members to debate fairly in expressing their points of view.

To that end, Madam Speaker, we elect you and senior Chairmen--they are similarly elected by the House--to rule over us and to ensure that debates and the general proceedings of the House are conducted in a proper and orderly manner, as established by the procedure that has been put in place.

Mr. Spearing : I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who is the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, for allowing me to intervene. Will he concede, particularly as the motion before us is a rarity--I think that the previous debate on such a motion took place about 20 years ago--that the procedure of the House allows for the safety valve of a debate of this sort? Such debates provide guidance for Chairmen in future and are integral to the practice of the House. They are therefore permissible, whatever the merits or demerits of any such motion.

Sir Peter Emery : The hon. Gentleman is correct. The motion is in order. Indeed, we would not be debating it if it were not. However, when the authority of the Chair is questioned, as it is in the motion, we undermine the structure that I am determined to defend. Those who claim that the motion is no criticism of my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Morris), the Chairman of Ways and Means, do not live in


Column 346

the real world. It must be seen as an attack on the Chairman's impartiality and the integrity of the Chair. It is-- [Interruption.] Those who say no should listen for a moment. If the motion were passed, the Chairman, being a man of honour, would have no alternative but to resign. That needs to be clearly understood.

Mr. Benn : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Sir Peter Emery : No. Let the right hon. Gentleman sit for a moment.

As I have said, it must be clearly understood that the Chairman would have to resign. Whether the right hon. Gentleman likes it or not, that is the action that an honourable man would take.

Mr. Benn : The right hon. Gentleman is hyping up the issue beyond reason, and I shall tell the House why. There are many occasions when the House varies an earlier decision. That happens quite often. We are the High Court of Parliament, and in this instance we are reviewing the judgment of one of the Officers of the House. No judge resigns when his decision is overturned on appeal.

The right hon. Gentleman is trying to make it personal, which is the great corruption of modern politics. It seems that we cannot discuss principle without the discussion being turned into a punch-up with someone. That is something that will destroy democracy perhaps more readily than anything else.

Sir Peter Emery: The right hon. Gentleman may not understand what honour is all about. I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that, if the motion were passed, we would put the Chairman in an untenable position. We have seen it happen once before, and that will be in the memory of some right hon. and hon. Members. The issue did not result in a motion, but the then Chairman of Ways and Means decided that he must resign.

Has the Chairman of Ways and Means erred? I suggest that his only error, being the extremely nice man he is, has been to try to explain things to his critics and to set out the reasons for his decisions to show his impartiality. Indeed, some of his decisions have certainly not pleased Her Majesty's Government.

Had the Chairman not been so reasonable--had he not tried to make others understand the reasons for his decisions--today's problems would probably not have arisen. The Chairman could have held to the time-honoured procedure that has been established over the years, which is that the Chair does not give reasons for the selection of amendments for debate or for Divisions. If anyone is in doubt about that, let him remember that reference has already been made to page 405 of "Erskine May".

Mr. Dalyell : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Sir Peter Emery : I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman when I have referred the House to an exactly similar matter that arose when Sir Charles MacAndrew was Chairman of Ways and Means. Mr. Eric Fletcher said that, if the then Chairman ruled that certain amendments could be discussed together, that could only be on the "assumption that they have all been selected for discussion." He added :

"If you rule that certain Amendments can be discussed together surely it follows that, if any Member wishes to vote on any Amendment that has been discussed, he is entitled to ask that there should be a Division."


Column 347

The then Chairman replied :

"Certainly not. That has never been the rule. I have been doing this work for many years and this has always been the rule that I am now applying. It is often indicated, as the hon. and learned Gentleman has just done, that a Division is desired, and I am allowing a Division on two Amendments. Otherwise, all that would happen would be that my selection would be very much narrower." Mr. Fletcher asked :

"The Chair has power of selection?",

and the then Chairman replied yes. Later, Mr. Fletcher said : "I suggest, in all seriousness, that once the Chair has ruled that certain Amendments have been selected for discussion, and might all be discussed together, the Chair has no authority to decide that there shall not be a Division on any of the selected Amendments." The then Chairman replied :

"The Chair has every power to do so. Up to that point, there has only been one Amendment called. If the Chair does not call any of the others there can be no Divisions. It is very simple. Now we had better get on with the business."

Mr. Tom Proctor, whom some of us will remember, intervened as follows :

"Is it now contended that the Chair has two selections, selection for discussion and selection for voting? I have never heard of two before."

The then Chairman said :

"Well, the hon. Member has heard of them today."--[ Official Report, 14 February 1957 ; Vol. 564, c. 1459-61.]

The same issue arises this afternoon.

Mr. Dalyell : I want to be clear on who the Chairman of the Procedure Committee was referring to in relation to the censure of a Chairman of Ways and Means. Was he referring to the MacAndrew incident or something else?

Sir Peter Emery : I said that there was not a censure motion. There was a debate concerning Sir Gordon Touche, who resigned.

Mr. Cash : Will my right hon. Friend give way on that point? Was there an amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition? It might be helpful to know that.

Sir Peter Emery : I do not think that that matters.

Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South) : Is the answer to the question no?

Sir Peter Emery : I shall answer the question in my own way, if the hon. Gentleman will allow me to do so. He has enough to say in the House without making my speeches for me.

I say in response to my hon. Friend that selection rests entirely with the Chair. If that werne May" states :

"The Chairman may at his discretion allow separate divisions on one or more of the subsequent amendments."

It seems to me that those who speak in favour of the motion are directly challenging the discretion and impartiality of the Chair. By questioning the discretion they are undermining that authority. The motion must be rejected. I again stress that the motion must be defeated by a massive vote so that it is clear beyond peradventure that we have absolute confidence in the Chairman of Ways and Means.


Column 348

5.10 pm

Mr. Denzil Davies (Llanelli) : As we have been reminded, the motion is about the decision of the Chairman of Ways and Means not to allow a vote on amendment No. 27. To some extent, the motion is a product of the difficulties that the Committee and the Chairman have faced, and the frustration that the Committee has felt because we are trying to debate a Bill which incorporates a treaty that will have an effect on much, if not most, of the commercial, financial and economic life of the nation.

The real legislation that we are debating is not the European Communities (Amendment) Bill, but the treaty of European union. We cannot amend it. We can exclude, but we cannot amend. The last time something similar happened was 21 years ago, and it happened then for the same reason. Sir Elwyn Jones moved a motion--I forget the words--regretting the lack of selection of amendments because we were in precisely the same situation then as now : the Bill that we were debating was not the real Bill. We were debating the treaty of Rome--that was the real Bill--and we could not amend it then. I am not sure that then we could even exclude parts of it. That Bill was slightly different from this one, but we were experiencing the same frustrations and problems.

Sir Elwyn's motion was not a personal criticism of the then Chairman of Ways and Means, just as the present motion is not a personal criticism of our Chairman.

The Standing Committees of the House are there to debate Bills. Bills are presented after they have been given a Second Reading, and Second Reading Bills are draft Bills. They are completed after consultation with Ministers --sometimes after White or Green Papers--but they are draft Bills. They then go before a Committee. The function of the House is to debate them, to try to change them and to make representations to Ministers. It is the opportunity that hon. Members have to change legislation.

Again, we cannot do that here. We are not debating a "Second Reading" Bill ; we are debating, in effect, a "Third Reading" Bill. The treaty of European union is a Third Reading Bill which cannot be changed. That is one reason for the frustration, and one reason why we are here today in the same circumstances as 21 years ago. The problem has been compounded--I make no criticism, although I will criticise on another occasion--by the fact that the official Opposition--except in regard to the social chapter--is in general agreement with Her Majesty's Government. The House works best when the official Opposition are opposing.

The Executive in Britain sits in the legislature, and I think that it is a good system. I do not go along with the trendy views of The Independent and The Guardian and the chattering classes that it is a terrible system. Because the Executive sits in the legislature, the Executive in the main has control over the legislature. It has enormous power, but that power is limited, checked and balanced by the fact that Her Majesty's loyal Opposition, in general, oppose. In this case, they do not, apart from on the social chapter, thus increasing the problem that the power of the Executive over this legislation is even greater than it normally is within our legislative and constitutional system. That also has contributed to our frustrations and, in the end, to this motion.

In addition to those difficulties, we have also had problems with the debates. The Chairman of Ways and


Column 349

Means had no alternative but to make groupings of amendments. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) said, the Chairman of Ways and Means saw us in his room and we discussed these matters. Because we could only exclude chunks of the Bill, he had no option but to group a large number of amendments together. I think that Ministers treated those debates as if they were Second Reading debates ; certainly the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the right hon. Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones), has done so. I will exonerate the Foreign Secretary and partly exonerate the Financial Secretary to the Treasury from this criticism, but in general Ministers have treated them as Second Reading debates. They have intervened early, not replied to the debates and often replied to only a few of the points raised. The cue was taken by my hon. Friends, quite naturally, because that is the way the system works.

As to the question of closures, many of us were cut off in full flight. My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith) was actually writing his speech on the Front Bench, but he did not have a chance to speak. I have spoken to people outside the House who watch our proceedings on satellite and cable television on something called the parliamentary channel. They have expressed amusement, and asked "Who is that gentleman who so often jumps up? He sits not far from where the Chairman of Ways and Means sits. Sometimes he is a little gentleman, sometimes a large gentleman, but when hon. Members speak he suddenly jumps up and that is the end of the debate." I have to try to explain that the gentleman is not a lord high executioner. I think the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Patnick) has done the same thing on one or two occasions.

Madam Speaker : May I jump up and intervene? I am being very tolerant, but the right hon. Gentleman has had a long introduction to what he is really seeking to say. He will understand that I have many hon. Members to call. I hope he will now speak more directly to the motion.

Mr. Davies : The way in which the closure was operated added to our frustration.

Amendment No. 27 is not only about the operation of the social chapter, but about money, because it deals with the part of the treaty relating to payments to be made by Her Majesty's Government towards the administration of the social chapter by the other 11 member states. So there are two factors involved which unite the different groups in the House who are against the Maastricht treaty. The problem started, I am sorry to say, when the Chairman of Ways and Means appeared to most of us to have agreed that there would be a vote on amendment No. 27. It would be unfair to subject the Chairman's statement to a kind of Byzantine textual criticism, because, by definition, the Chairman's job is to react to certain situations and circumstances.

The Chairman of Ways and Means said :

"We are some way off a vote."

Later, he said :

"I am minded to take seriously the need for a further debate". To the Chairman's credit, he accepted that further debate, and the Attorney- General had to come and speak to the Committee. Then he went on to say :


Column 350

"before the Committee votes on that amendment."--[ Official Report, 22 February 1993 ; Vol. 219, c. 685.]

In my opinion, that was a clear statement that there would be a vote on the amendment. It was not a decision ; it was a statement at the time. The Chairman then changed his mind. He was entitled to change his mind and decide in the way that he did, but to give a strong indication to the Committee that he was prepared to call a vote and then to change his mind means that we are entitled to scrutinise and consider carefully whether there were any reasons for that change of mind, bearing in mind, as has been said, that the amendment had been selected for debate, was in order and was not a wrecking amendment. The Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Watford, thought that it was, but he was wrong. The Attorney- General made it clear that it was not a wrecking amendment. It was tabled not by the cavaliers on the Back Benches but by the roundheads on the Opposition Front Bench. It is a sensible and respectable amendment. When it appeared to us, therefore, that the Chairman of Ways and Means had changed his mind, we were, and are, entitled to scrutinise why he did so. The Chairman of Ways and Means, being a very brave, nice and, perhaps, foolish man, did not give reasons, but he came close to giving reasons. No doubt that was a dangerous thing to do, because barrack-room lawyers on the Back Benches could then pore over the reasons, or non-reasons, that had been given.

Then the Chairman quite properly indicated--I applaud him for it, because he had changed his mind--at column 39 on 19 April that he had to consider, in allowing a vote, the clarity of the amendment, its impact on the Bill and the fact that, if brought into effect, it had to be workable and understandable. Without having subjected the amendment to that amount of textual criticism, I had always thought that amendment No. 27 was pretty clear. The Minister of State got it all wrong, but if he was wrong he was clearly wrong, as was said of a judge in the Court of Appeal some time ago.

The Attorney-General did not think much of amendment No. 27, for it did not make any difference to anybody, but it was perfectly clear to him. I have read again the Attorney-General's speech. Nowhere did he say that amendment No. 27 was not clear. The Foreign Secretary made a statement before the Attorney-General spoke. He did not say, either, that amendment No. 27 was not clear. With the greatest respect, therefore, there is nothing wrong, so far as I can see, with the clarity of amendment No. 27.

Is amendment No. 27 workable and understandable? The Government seemed to think that it was workable and understandable. Many of us have been Ministers and have latched on to little nods from parliamentary draftsmen and civil servants, indicating that we should resist certain amendments because they are badly drafted, unclear and unworkable. There was no such indication from the Government about amendment No. 27. The promoters of the Bill, the Foreign Secretary and the Attorney-General, never told us, as far as I can tell--I leave aside the Minister of State who says lots of things- -that amendment No. 27 is unworkable, cannot be understood and will do something terrible to the Bill.

I cannot understand the reasons or the indications given by the Chairman of Ways and Means. They do not convince me. They may convince others. I make no


Column 351

criticism of the honesty or integrity of the Chairman of Ways and Means, but looking at it as a statement, that is my feeling about it.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield said, or implied, if every future vote has to be taken on an amendment that is workable and clear, there will be far fewer votes in Committees. There will also be far fewer votes on Government amendments. I remember Government amendments, inserted in Committee into groups of amendments and voted upon, that were not particularly clear or workable or understandable. There lies the rub. It is a very brave Chairman of any Committee who, on a Bill promoted by the Government, who have a panoply of assistance from parliamentary draftsmen and civil servants, says, "This amendment is not clear and is not workable ; therefore I will not call it." That is why I am not convinced by the reasons or indications that have been given to us. I hope, Madam Speaker, that it may be possible, somehow, to have a vote on amendment No. 27, or on one similar to it. Many people outside the House will find it strange if we are unable to do so. Therefore, I hope that a way of doing so can be found. After all, a vote takes only 15 minutes.

5.24 pm


Next Section

  Home Page