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Mr. Dewar: I say to the hon. Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing) that I have a broad embrace and take in all the parties. I am happy that we have the broad support of the smaller parties on this matter.
Mr. Dewar: I shall give way to the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon). After all, he has returned to the House.
Mr. Fallon: Will the Minister confirm that no more than half of the amendments tabled have been selected?
Is he not now enunciating a rather dangerous doctrine that it is the job of the Leader of the House or himself, rather than that of the Chairman of Ways and Means, to decide which amendments should be accepted and included in debate, or squeezed out by the terms of a timetable motion?
Mr. Dewar: I suppose that that is an argument, but one that I doubt whether the hon. Gentleman would want to endorse, for banning any form of timetable motion. The selection of amendments is not a matter for me and certainly not a matter for me to comment on. I should be in hot water very quickly if I presumed so to comment and I have no intention of running that self-evident risk.
I accept, of course, that a framework restricts. If we want to avoid that, we should avoid the exercise that has clearly been mounted against this small, technical Bill. It is an exercise in obstruction.
Mr. Dewar:
Let me finish, because I promised to be brief. I have argued that there are precedents in plenty. The Bill would not alter the constitution: it is not a constitutional measure, which is how it has been represented. I point to the overwhelming evidence that an organised attempt has, perfectly legitimately, been made--and equally legitimately met--to obstruct the Bill as distinct from properly debating it.
I should remind the House, even if I do not receive a sympathetic hearing, that our manifesto pledge is important to us. When challenged by Michael Forsyth and by opponents of constitutional change in Scotland who said that we should not shelter behind a general election result, given the multiplicity of reasons for the way in which people vote, we said that we would deal with the matter head on and would run the risk of putting it to the people. We are confident of the outcome, but we may be wrong, so let the people decide. We made it clear that that test of opinion would be an advisory note to Parliament when it came to consider the main questions, and we want to hold to that.
Mr. Michael Howard (Folkestone and Hythe):
The first duty of the House is to debate legislation. It is by discharging that duty that we hold Government to account and serve our constituents. A delicate system of checks and balances has grown up in Parliament over centuries. [Interruption.] The need for strong government is balanced against the importance of effective opposition; the right of the majority against that of minorities; the call of party discipline against the conscience of individual Members.
Those arrangements rest, to a large extent, on convention, compromise and fair play. Observers from abroad, where government depends on codified
constitutional arrangements, are often astounded by the spirit of fair-mindedness that permeates our parliamentary procedure. [Interruption.] In stifling discussion on the Bill--
Madam Speaker:
Order. I should be obliged if hon. Members on the Government Bench below the Gangway would pay attention to what is being said.
Mr. Howard:
In stifling discussion on the Bill, the Government display their contempt for decency, for convention and for Parliament itself. The guillotine motion is the most drastic way of silencing debate known to Parliament. On allocation of time orders, "Erskine May" says:
The Bill is of major constitutional significance, and the Committee stage has not even begun. To quote "Erskine May" again:
Mr. Howard:
The hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong. Of course we dealt with Second Reading from the Front Bench. I know of no convention in the House that suggests that those who do not take part in a Second Reading debate are in some way barred from taking part in debates in Committee; that has never been the way in which we have proceeded.
The Government Front Bench and, indeed, the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan), claim that the Bill would be delayed, but there is no evidence whatever of such delay. Indeed, by killing discussion before the Committee stage has even started, the Government have not allowed the question whether there would have been a delay to be tested. The Secretary of State for Scotland pointed out that there was one precedent for constitutional Bills to be subject to allocations of time: the guillotine motions on the Scotland and Wales Bills in 1977. We should remember, however, that when the then Leader of the House, Mr. Michael Foot, proposed the guillotine motion for the Scotland Bill, in a manner that could be
described only as apologetic in the extreme--a far cry from the manner in which the Secretary of State introduced the motion this afternoon--he used the occasion to remind the House that there had already been 30 days of debate on the legislation. The House should compare that with the arrogant and dismissive way in which the Government have tabled this motion.
Mr. Garnier:
In the 1976, 1977 and 1978 Sessions, when the House was dealing with the Wales and Scotland Bills, not only was there plenty of debate beforehand, but the timetable motions allowed for 20, 17 and 11 further days of debate respectively on those Bills.
Mr. Howard:
My hon. and learned Friend is right.
We make such points only because that was the precedent relied on by the Secretary of State. It is no use Labour Members saying that there were differences. That is the precedent on which the right hon. Gentleman relies--the only precedent for the guillotining of a Bill of constitutional significance before the Committee stage.
After just a month in office, the Government have already demonstrated their contempt for Parliament. Disregard for the House runs like a thread through their actions. We have seen the cutting of Prime Minister's questions to one session a week, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer's failure to announce his changes to the Bank of England in the House. As for the Government's legislative programme, the proposals in the Queen's Speech amount to a massive transfer of powers from the House to bankers, judges, devolved assemblies and Brussels bureaucrats. Never has there been such a comprehensive assault on the sovereignty of the House--and, more important, on the sovereignty of those who send us to this place.
Mr. John Home Robertson (East Lothian):
The right hon. and learned Gentleman talks of the concern of those who send us here. Has he received any representations from his constituents in Folkestone and Hythe about the Bill, and has he consulted Conservatives in Scotland and Wales? Of course, he could not do so in the House, but has he done so anywhere else?
Mr. Howard:
Certainly I have consulted Conservatives in both Scotland and Wales about the legislation. As for my constituents in Folkestone and Hythe, they know how much importance I attach to the legislation--as they do--because it featured prominently in my election campaign.
By asking the people of Wales and Scotland to vote before seeing the devolution legislation, the Government are in any case resorting to an anti-parliamentary device. The pre-legislative plebiscite, which is wholly alien to our British traditions, is intended to curtail parliamentary debate and to silence parliamentary criticism. We now learn, however, that we are to be denied a full debate even on the mechanism by which the referendums are to be organised. The Government's distrust of Parliament extends to both the end and the means.
"They may be regarded as the extreme limit to which procedure goes in affirming the rights of the majority at the expense of the minorities of the House, and it cannot be denied that they are capable of being used in such a way as to upset the balance, generally so carefully preserved, between the claims of business and the rights of debate."
There can be few clearer examples of the guillotine being abused than the motion now before the House.
"An allocation of time order is not usually moved . . . until the rate of progress in committee has provided an argument for its necessity."
Mr. Rhodri Morgan (Cardiff, West):
Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that what staggers Labour Members is that hardly any Conservative Front-Bench Members spoke on Second Reading? The Opposition were short of Front-Bench and Back-Bench Members: there was a sea of green on the Conservative Benches. However, when the time came to table amendments, there was an organised filibuster. A vast number of amendments have been tabled, some of which are clearly frivolous. The Conservative party's inability to find Back-Bench Members or Front-Bench spokesmen--I have never experienced a debate on a major Bill for which the Opposition have not put up a Front-Bench spokesman--makes it difficult for us to take the right hon. and learned Gentleman's argument seriously.
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