House of Commons Hansard Debates for 2 Nov 1993

Mrs. Dunwoody : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I detect in the Secretary of State's remarks clear criticism of the Chair's handling of amendments yesterday. I am sure that, had any hon. Member contravened the rules of order, the occupant of the Chair would have called the Member to order. Should it not be made clear to the

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Secretary of State that the constant use of the word "filibuster" is not only inaccurate but unbecoming in a senior Minister?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse) : I did not notice any criticism of the Chair. I am sure that the hon. Lady is right and that the occupant of the Chair would have acted in accordance with the Standing Orders of the House and carried out hisase that the Standing Orders of the House prevent tedious repetition? The Secretary of State has just accused the Opposition of numerous repetitions, but that cannot be true because it would be in breach of the Standing Orders.

Mr. Deputy Speaker : The hon. Gentleman is right, but it is for the Chair to decide what is tedious repetition, and the Chair has not yet so decided.

Mr. MacGregor : We can see how sensitive the Opposition are to the point that I am making. I am not directing any accusations at the Chair ; I am saying that the Opposition spokesman had his team lined up--the tactics were all too obvious--to use every argument they could think of to delay debate on the amendments. That is why so many points made in earlier debates were repeated yesterday.

Let us listen to some of the arguments to which we were treated-- Mr. Matthew Banks (Southport) rose--

Mr. MacGregor : No, I shall not give way ; I must get on. Despite the fact that everyone was anxious to move on to the key debates and that the House of Lords had spent very little time on the two groups of amendments that we debated yesterday, we were treated to speeches about the sale of drinks at Birmingham New Street station, the opening hours of toilets at Birmingham New Street station, and all stations to Dundee, Broughty Ferry, Monifieth, Carnoustie and Arbroath. I am not saying that such issues, as well as the Eastleigh works, are not important, but they were not relevant to the amendments being considered yesterday. We heard about the nicknames of pre-grouping railway counties, the sale of knickers on stations and various other issues which were included to prolong the debate. That was not an orderly way in which to conduct the debate. The game was given away when we completed the vote on the second group of amendments at about 9.30 pm. We were deciding how to handle the obvious filibuster, but the game was given away when the Opposition spent hardly any time on the next group of amendments. We all understood what was happening. The Opposition dug a hole for themselves and they were rumbled. Last night we saw blatantly obvious spoiling tactics.

When he made the business statement, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House pointed out that, at yesterday's rate of progress, we should have needed a further four weeks to complete consideration of the amendments. That is the reason we had to ensure an orderly debate. If we had not, we would have ended up with a further four weeks of debate--or, as the hon. Member for Bolsover rightly said, a debate long enough to ensure that the Bill did not reach the statute book.

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Last night, the Opposition employed deliberate spoiling tactics and displayed spurious, wholly synthetic rage. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made that clear during Prime Minister's Question Time. I watched him doing so on television, and he was absolutely right.

Mr. Peter Snape (West Bromwich, East) : I am a former railwayman ; indeed, I suspect that I am the only hon. Member who hopes to live long enough to draw a railway pension. However, will the Secretary of State accept that many of my colleagues also feel strongly about these matters-- so much so that we were considerably annoyed yesterday by the indifference of Conservative Back Benchers, the vast majority of whom, in spite of their support for the Government today, were not in the Chamber for any part of yesterday's debate? Will he accept that those of us who feel strongly about the future of the railway industry have a right to raise the issues that he mentioned so scornfully and that we shall continue to do so today, as long as the Chair rules that we are in order?

Mr. MacGregor : My hon. Friends believed that the two groups of amendments were right, and they did not want to hold up the discussion. That was a perfectly sensible way to proceed.

Mr. Matthew Banks : Does my right hon. Friend agree that what confirms more than anything else the synthetic nature of the Opposition's outrage is the fact that, with the honourable exception of the hon. Member for Wrexham (Dr. Marek)--I see that he is in his place--none of the Opposition Members who both yesterday and today have expressed mock outrage about the guillotine were present in the Chamber for the debates on any of the amendments?

Mr. George Stevenson (Stoke-on-Trent, South) : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance, because what has just been said is not correct. I was in the Chamber throughout the debates but I did not contribute to them, and that is what is misleading the House. [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. I am sure that, if the hon. Member for Southport (Mr. Banks) is wrong, he will want to withdraw what he has said. [ Hon. Members :-- "Withdraw."] Order. It is time that the House settled down to a serious debate.

Mr. MacGregor : I hope that I have made the case. Indeed, the case for ensuring that there is an orderly debate on the issues of most concern to people outside the House is being made for me by the minute.

As a result of all that I have explained, and especially as a result of what we observed yesterday, the Government believe that a timetable motion is necessary to ensure orderly debate for the remainder of our time on the Bill. I am sure that we can achieve that.

I shall now deal with the two key issues. The first is the question of British Rail bidding for the franchises, and the hon. Member for Wrexham told us last night--his words are recorded at column 123 of the Official Report --that the Opposition were prepared to accept formally the amendments that we were debating at 10 o'clock. That means that we can go straight into the debate on the group including amendment No. 31, which is about British Rail bidding.

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I can therefore give my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) the assurance that he sought last night, that there will be ample time to debate that issue. Indeed, there will be more than ample time. On Report on 25 May, a two-and-a-half hour debate on that issue, when the Opposition amendment was defeated, was considered long enough. The House of Lords, too, took two and a half hours on the issue. So we have plenty of time today.

I know that Opposition Members and some of my hon. Friends wish to discuss pensions--briefly, in the case of my hon. Friends, because more than 30 hours have already been devoted to the subject, and we have now come down to a fairly narrow issue. The background to the debate is the fact that we have always made clear our belief that it is important that the position of existing pensioners--that is what we are to discuss today--should be fully taken into account and dealt with satisfactorily.

I have said that throughout our proceedings. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State and I have engaged in lengthy discussions with pensioners and pension fund trustees, because I fully understand, accept and sympathise with the pensioners' views, and I was determined to ensure that they had a good deal. They can now be assured that they have a very good deal indeed.

It is outrageous that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) has misrepresented the position of pensioners and of the pension fund so outrageously. He knows that there is no ground whatever for saying that the Treasury is out to purloin the existing pension funds. For him to suggest that is not only outrageous but frightening an awful lot of pensioners unnecessarily. Let me spell the position out.

Ms Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Highgate) : Will the Secretary of State give way?

Mr. MacGregor : No, I want to spell the position out.

For existing and deferred pensioners, we are setting up a closed scheme with its own fund within the joint industry scheme. The assets going from the existing British Rail scheme to that fund will be actuarially determined. The fund will, as now, be under the control of the trustees, who will have the same fiduciary duties to members as they have now.

We have added the protection of a guarantee, fully underwritten by the Government, that the fund will remain solvent. That means that pensions paid are certain to keep pace with inflation. That is an absolute guarantee, which pensioners do not at present enjoy. In addition, the trustees will be able to use up to 40 per cent. of any surplus in the fund- -the likelihood of such surpluses occurring is real rather than theoretical --to enhance benefits above the level of inflation. Incidentally, 40 per cent. is broadly the figure that pensioners have been getting on actuarial surpluses up until now. Three things have been guaranteed to the pensioners --the solvency of the fund, the index-linking of pensions, and 40 per cent. of any surpluses--which they will be able to have for as long as they have pensions. That is an extremely favourable deal. It is a fairly good deal by the standards of any pension scheme. It is a copper-bottomed guarantee of inflation-proofing, plus the ability to share in the surpluses. It is a more certain deal than pensioners have now.

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That is the context in which the House should address the question of Government payments to the scheme under the Transport Act 1980.

Mr. Heppell : The Secretary of State says that there will be a guarantee of about 40 per cent. of the surpluses in my pension scheme. Can he tell us what will happen to the other 60 per cent. of the surpluses in my pension scheme?

Mr. MacGregor : Those surpluses will stay in the fund, because there will be a continuing commitment to inflation-proofing and the payment of surpluses in the future. If the surpluses are insufficient, and if the fund is unable to make the payments, clearly the Government's commitment comes in and the taxpayer assists.

Mr. Heppell : To clear up that point, the Secretary of State says that 60 per cent. will stay in the fund. I understand that it will stay with the Government and they will give it to the fund when necessary. Can the Secretary of State give a commitment now that the payments that will be made to pensioners--the Government's contributions--will continue without any conditions?

Mr. MacGregor : I repeat what I said : the 60 per cent. stays in the fund, without any conditions. The issue is when the extra funding from the taxpayer comes in. That is the issue which I want to spell out now. [Interruption.] The answer is yes : the 60 per cent. stays in the fund.

Mr. Prescott : The Secretary of State admitted that 60 per cent. will be kept in a reserve fund and 40 per cent. will be distributed to pensioners in the normal manner. I understand that 60 per cent. will remain in the fund but not for distribution, as it is now. At present, any surpluses made from the investments are distributed on the decision of the trustees. The Secretary of State is now saying that that will apply to only 40 per cent. of the surpluses, and 60 per cent. will be put into a reserve fund. Perhaps he could tell us why he is appointing a special Government trustee who will have some special responsibilities to the fund.

Mr. MacGregor : Let me deal with the two points. What I said is absolutely clear and in accordance with what has been happening up until now in the British Rail fund and, indeed, any other funds. There is a clear reason why the surpluses stay in the fund. [Interruption.] Putting the surpluses into reserve for the fund is the same thing as the surpluses staying in the fund. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman misunderstood that. I have made it clear that the surpluses stay in the fund.

Until now, about 40 per cent. has been paid out in most cases in the British Rail fund. Clearly, when the trustees face their future commitments, and when they know that there are liabilities for the employer, the 60 per cent. is dealt with in that way. What we will have is a closed fund. Therefore, we have said that 40 per cent. can be distributed in the way that the trustees see fit. That is a very good deal, because it is in accordance with the way in which pension funds operate.

The taxpayer, rather than future employees or employers, is underwriting the fund, because we want to give the pensioners a fair deal. If we suppose that the fund does not perform very well at some stage in the future, if the 60 per cent. is absorbed in paying out index-linked pensions and the 40 per cent. commitment, and if the fund

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runs into deficit, the taxpayer will step in and meet its commitment at that point. It must be clear to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East now.

There is no question whatever of the Treasury or the Government purloining pensioners' funds, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will stop saying that.

Mr. Andrew Smith (Oxford, East) : The Secretary of State says that the 60 per cent. will remain in the fund. In the memorandum that his Minister signed, it says that the Government director will decide on the investment of the special reserve. If the 60 per cent. stays in the fund in the normal way, as it has in the past, surely the fund trustees will decide on the investments of the fund. Will the Minister guarantee that it will be the pension fund trustees and not the Government commissar who will control the 60 per cent. special reserve ?

Mr. MacGregor : Will the hon. Gentleman put himself in the place of the taxpayer ? We have a commitment to the taxpayer, and if the taxpayer is underwriting the solvency of the fund and, effectively, the index-linking, there must be some assurance that it is the 40 per cent. and not the 60 per cent. that is distributed in pension benefits of one form or another. That is why there must be some special reserve power to protect the taxpayer, who will be putting in further funding. There is no queston of siphoning off those funds for the other purposes that the hon. Gentleman keeps talking about. The issue before the House today is the context in which it should address the question of Government payments to the scheme under the Transport Act 1980. At present, such payments are made each year to fund liabilities which would otherwise be unfunded. In a closed fund, with an absolute solvency guarantee from the Government, the situation is different. The trustees acknowledged this when their chairman signed the memorandum of understanding in the summer, which explicitly recognised the need to look again at the timing of those payments and to

"take account on the absolute guarantee now being provided". The absolute guarantee is a very significant change. The Government's proposal will ensure that the full value of the payments and the interest on them become assets of the pensioners' closed fund and will be counted in the overall calculation of the balance in the fund.

Let me make it clear beyond doubt that they will count as assets, and the fund will get the full value of the contributions. If there is a surplus to be distributed, counting in those assets, pensioners get that value in real money.

Mr. Andrew Smith : How can you invest in an IOU ?

Mr. MacGregor : I have already said that there will be rolled-up interest on the payments which will be included in the value. Under the changed arrangements and the Government guarantee, the point at which a cash injection of Government money into the fund is needed will not necessarily be every year, as it is now. That is why we want to discuss the timing of payments with the trustees. They implicitly recognised the reasonableness of that proposal when they signed the memorandum.

It remains the Government's firm intention to honour the memorandum of understanding and to reach an agreement with the trustees, as I am confident we can. We are in detailed discussions with them, but these are very technical matters and will take some time to resolve. We

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have made it clear that eventually an order will come before both Houses and be subjected to full consideration. Ministers will be answerable to Parliament for the way in which they exercise and use that order-making power.

The amendment passed in the other place requires the trustees' agreement on the face of the Bill. That is quite unacceptable. It would give the trustees--a third party that is not answerable to either House--an effective veto over public spending and subordinate legislation, areas that are clear provinces of Parliament. If a future board of trustees withheld their agreement, however vexatiously, payments of money under the 1980 Act, scoring fully against public expenditure, would have to continue as now, regardless of the need for them. The trustees would be able to prevent the Government from bringing forward secondary legislation for consideration by both Houses.

That would mean that an outside body would have a veto over what comes before the House and the timings of payments of public expenditure. That is unacceptable, and that is why we have tabled the amendment.

Mr. Skinner : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We have had many guillotine motions over the past 14 years, and it has always been the job of the Chair to draw to the attention of speakers the fact that it is a narrow motion, and that they should refer only to the reasons for the guillotine. My hon. Friends want to debate pensions--that is why we did not want the guillotine motion in the first place--but the Secretary of State is proving the very point that was made last night. He himself is using a guillotine motion to talk about the pension scheme. That is exactly what we were protesting about in the first place. I do not want to stop the right hon. Gentleman, but he is out of order.

Mr. Deputy Speaker : The Secretary of State was going rather wide of the motion, but I considered it in the interests of the debate that he be allowed to do so.

Mr. MacGregor : I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I should have liked to discuss the issues without a guillotine ; indeed, I should have been able to do so had we not encountered yesterday's problems, which I have already described in detail.

I hope that what I have said has given my hon. Friends the reassurance that I know they were seeking. We shall shortly be able to turn to the other main issue that is before us as a result of the Lords amendments. For all the reasons that I have given, I believe that the attack on our guillotine motion is spurious, and not prompted by a real rage. The Opposition knew exactly what they were up to : they were out to destroy any opportunity of completing the full discussion within the two days so generously allowed by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. I commend the motion to the House.

4.20 pm

Mr. John Prescott (Kingston upon Hull, East) : The Secretary of State has taken 35 minutes to introduce a guillotine motion. That is twice as long as any speech made during the debate in which the right hon. Gentleman has accused us of filibustering. I do not deny that what he has said is important ; indeed, this is the first occasion on which such a statement about pensions has been made to the House. That, however, is what half our grievance is about.

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The Secretary of State appears to doubt that, but he knows that the amendments were tabled in the other place, not here. The pensions provisions were changed two or three times in Committee, quite apart from the substantial changes imposed in the House of Lords. Issues of real substance are involved here, rather than merely technical matters.

The case presented by the Secretary of State and the manner of its presentation remind me of the quotation that we heard yesterday from my hon. Friend the Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson)--Mrs. Thatcher's observation about the right hon. Gentleman.

[Interruption.] The quotation reflects the view of the Secretary of State that was taken by the Prime Minister of the day.

In the section of her book entitled "Men in Lifeboats", Lady Thatcher wrote :

"But I still wanted a new face at Education where John MacGregor's limitations as a public spokesman were costing us dear in an area of great importance."-- [Official Report, 1 November 1993 ; Vol. 231, c. 46.]

I consider that a very apt comment on what the right hon. Gentleman has said today, especially what he has said about the important issue of pensions.

The Opposition have been accused of wasting time. I deny that, and I resented the charge when it was made by the Leader of the House. To be fair, he said that long debates took place on only two amendments ; the Secretary of State has now changed that to two groups of amendments, comprising about 100. I believe that he was wrongly advised while I was shouting at him in the heat of the moment. Now we have witnessed the unusual procedure of a Secretary of State, rather than the Leader of the House, moving a guillotine motion--perhaps because, like us, the Leader of the House is not convinced by the Secretary of State's arguments.

Let me deal with the central charge, that we have been wasting time. Of course, that is in the nature of guillotine motions. I am not arguing against the guillotine ; all Governments have used guillotine motions, and we all know the reasons why. I do not wish to enter into such an argument, or even to exchange facts and statistics about which party has introduced more guillotine motions. Such arguments often characterise debates of this kind, but I do not want to engage in one today ; I want to refute the charge that the Opposition were wasting time, and to put the facts on the record. It was said on television that we spent four hours on two amendments. It was suggested that they were technical amendments which did not deal with matters of substance. That is not so. The Bill with which we dealt in Committee was a Bill of considerable proportions. It had 158 pages, 132 clauses and 11 schedules. That is large by any measure. During the debates in Committee it increased by 28 pages, eight clauses and two schedules. In the House of Lords major changes were made, increasing the Bill by 50 pages, 14 clauses and a further schedule. We have before us 470 amendments that came from the House of Lords, a greater proportion of which were Government amendments.

No one approached Opposition Members to discuss any type of guillotine discussion about timetables. The Bill has gone through the process in the House of Commons Committee, where there was agreement. There was not even one all-night sitting. There was an agreement with the Government about the process of debate. The Government

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allowed us to choose the debate period of time and also the matters that we wished to debate and we worked on that through the normal channels and accepted that.

There has been much argument about how many hours of discussion took place in Committee and in the House--109 hours, 20 days, 35 sittings, although some sittings were not completed. The Minister of State will agree that we suspended some of the sittings because the amendments that the Government wished to make to their Bill were not ready. They asked that the House or the Committee finish early because they were discussing pensions with the unions and the trustee boards. I know that the Minister of State does not deny that, because one can read what happened from the record.

Whole schedules about pensions were taken out because discussions had to take place and we had to agree to suspend some of the sittings. Major amendments were made and we co-operated. Indeed, everyone knows that if one does not co-operate the Government immediately go for a guillotine. There is much evidence of that. We know now that, after a certain number of sittings, the Government automatically move to the guillotine. They never had to do that as a result of that delay.

We never had a guillotine then, or on the two days on Report, when we went through the whole Bill in two days with agreements about debate times, and no guillotine. There is no evidence, therefore, of our filibustering. One can consider the records and the comments that were made by Ministers at that time.

We had no desire to filibuster. There were many substantial issues in the Bill that we wanted to debate. We did not go through however many hours on sittings motions ; we agreed quickly and got into the debate. There is no evidence that the members of the Committee wished to delay it. They wanted to debate the arguments substantially, for a good reason.

The only reason that we wanted to debate the Bill through was that pensions was a highly controversial issue and pensions are at the very end of the Bill. That is the problem with the timetable that now confronts us.

Mr. Stephen Milligan (Eastleigh) rose--

Mr. Prescott : I shall give way soon to the hon. Member, who has shown more than a passing interest in the pensions issue. We wanted to allow sufficient time to discuss pensions. When we considered the motion before us for this sitting we assumed that the Government, in putting down the 10 o'clock motion, were prepared to go through the night and not cut off at 10 o'clock. Otherwise, why put it down? Therefore we could reasonably assume that it would go into the early hours of the morning. We can have debates among ourselves about how long, but it certainly suggested that the Government did not want to put it down by 10 o'clock.

We also thought that, if there were not an agreement and they went for a guillotine, we would be denied the opportunity--there are 28 debates--to get to the end of the Bill, which was where pensions were.

The Minister for Public Transport was good enough to send me a copy of the amendments and their order, and we did not protest. We took the debates as they were in subject form and said that, if they were making the case to the Table Office, we had no argument with it. When the 10 o'clock motion went down we assumed that we had some

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considerable time--20 hours if we wished--to go through the process. We could have sat through the night, although we did not much want to. We have gone through the period when we went through the night simply to make ourselves look good. I do not think that it is good for the House or the Members discussing legislation.

The argument was not that there should be only two days for discussion. It was not the Opposition who decided that the House should be prorogued on Friday--it was the Government. Never has there been such a long period as 14 days between prorogation and the Queen's Speech. There was ample time, if the Government wanted it because they had got into difficulties with their legislation, to go into next week. Why not? No argument has been made as to why we should not have another week.

We have just come back from 10 or 11 weeks when Parliament has been closed. Why did the Government not find time? We assumed that they wanted to go through the two days for the amendments to go to the Lords and then, by going to the Lords, they would allow us at least to go through the night and debate the issues. The argument is whether those amendments

Mr. Milligan : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He is accurate about the Committee stage, where the discussion was fair and balanced. Does he agree, however, that, in the debate last night, the speech made by his hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) was entirely devoted to events in my constituency, and to an issue that was not being debated? Does he not agree that that was a clear example of time wasting?

Mr. Prescott : The hon. Gentleman was not here during the debate, although I appreciate that we all have different reasons for not being in the Chamber. The Chair ruled that the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) was in order, so let there be no mistake about that. If it is in order, it is right and proper for any Opposition Member to raise anything to do with the Bill. My hon. Friend's speech was about the important maintenance work that takes place in the hon. Gentleman's constituency. There is nothing to prevent any hon. Member from mentioning any issue affected by the Bill.

Mr. Milligan rose --

Mr. Prescott : I shall not give way again. If the hon. Gentleman had been here for the debate he would have understood, but he was not. The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mr. Milligan) did, however, make an important point at the beginning of his intervention, when he asked why we wasted time last night.

Let us look at the timetable. The Prime Minister's statement took an hour, which was very proper and we do not dispute that, although it took some of the time that we could have devoted to the Bill. Hon. Members have conceded that we managed to discuss not merely two amendments but two groups containing about 100 amendments--we could have voted on every one of them, had we wanted to filibuster or delay, because there was no guillotine : that would have taken weeks of parliamentary time. If we had wanted to filibuster, we could have done so from the beginning, but we chose not to.

The first debate yesterday concerned management buy-outs. One cannot possibly say that that was a simple, technical amendment--it was an important change in the

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Government's position. [Interruption.] If the Secretary of State listens, he will understand the matter a little better. Why was it important? Because the House of Lords had passed an amendment to say that British Rail should have the right to bid for a franchise. The Government dispute that, and they intended to take it out of the Bill. No doubt we shall come to the right to be able to bid for a franchise in the debate after the guillotine.

The amendment concerned the Government's alternatives, and the right of management to bid is involved. The Lords amendment imposed on the franchise director a new duty, under which he must give preference to management buy- outs. That is not technical : it is a substantial amendment, which was not tabled in Committee. It was a change introduced in another place and a matter for substantial debate.

The fact that we spent two hours discussing the amendment cannot be described as wasting time, because spokesmen from both sides of the House took exactly the same amount of time.

Mr. Matthew Banks : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Prescott : No. I wish to continue, as I am conscious of the time.

Mr. Banks : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Prescott : Let us see how clever the intervention is, then.

Mr. Banks : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. If Opposition Members were not wasting time last night and if those matters were so important, why did they not address their remarks more succinctly to the matter and to the amendments in hand?

Mr. Prescott : I shall come to that. I am trying to establish that we were discussing matters of substance. There may be some debate about how qualified hon. Members are to contribute to such debates, but I shall leave that subject aside. I am bound to say, however, that a matter of some substance was involved, which was relevant to a later amendment and to the Government's intention to take away what are known as the Peyton amendments, so we certainly were not wasting time.

The Minister of State, replying to the debate, said :

"I will seek to answer as concisely as I can some of the points that have been raised in this important debate. It has taken two hours, but it has covered very important issues, and they need to be addressed".--[ Official Report, 1 November 1993 ; Vol. 231, c. 72.] The Minister of State's assessment was fair and is not evidence that anyone was filibustering or taking time. If the Opposition are filibustering, the Government are the first to point it out. There can be no doubt about that. We do not doubt the integrity of the Minister of State when he made those remarks, so it is fair to say that we were not wasting time.

On the second group of amendments, the Opposition Front Bench did not speak during the third debate and did not seek to divide the House after the third or fourth debates, although those debates concerned issues of some substance. We did not do so, because we wanted to move on to the debate on Lords amendment No. 31, about the right to be able to bid, which we knew to be important. It

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was then after 9.30 pm--approaching 10 pm. I had already told the Minister of State that we would not press the matter to a Division. When the Minister was winding up the previous debate on the closure motion, I turned to the Whip and said that we would not be voting on it, so he should tell the Minister to shut up. The Whip sent the Minister a letter--I do not know whether it said "Shut up"

The Minister for Transport in London (Mr. Steve Norris) indicated assent.

Mr. Prescott : The Minister is readily agreeing that he shut up. The Opposition spokesman told the Minister to sit down because the Opposition were not going to press for a Division : they wanted to get on with the business. That is hardly an example of the Opposition wasting time--the Minister was speaking and wasting time, and the Opposition told him that he should sit down so that we could discuss the amendment.

I disagree with the comments by the Leader of the House on the subject. We are not trying to waste time. We were clearly trying to have a debate in proper order on the mistaken assumption that the debate was to continue after 10 pm--I agree that we made a mistake there. The Government did not try to have discussions about a timetable ; they simply tabled the 10 o'clock motion. I assumed that we would have discussions through the usual channels about what time we might pull up stumps, but that did not happen.

Therefore, I believe that the Government's strategy was clearly to try to guillotine proceedings as quickly as possible, and to try to argue that the Opposition had wasted time. We had agreed that we could have taken weeks simply voting on the hundreds of amendments. It had dawned on the Opposition that, if we wanted to waste time, we could do that. We did not do so, because we wanted to proceed from debate to debate, and it can be shown that we have done that. The time allowed for the debates--two parliamentary days--was not enough. I argued that there would be sufficient time for the debates if the prorogation of Parliament was delayed. The Government could have done that. I do not know whether the Secretary of State even argued for that--I suspect that he did not. Perhaps he will tell us whether he said that he thought that the House should discuss those important matters and should have more than two days in which to do so.

He must have assumed that there would not be sufficient time to debate the issues properly before 10 pm--otherwise, the Government would not have tabled the 10 o'clock motion. The Government tabled that motion because they believed that the two days that they were offering were probably insufficient, so they wanted to introduce a timetable.

Mr. David Nicholson : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Prescott : No.

We must assume that the Government wanted to guillotine debate. They wanted to avoid debate on essential matters. The guillotine has many disadvantages, but one advantage of yesterday's guillotine was that the Secretary of State gave us his view on the pension funds--a matter for debate on which discussion has already started.

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