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Mr. Garnier: It does indeed, and it is worth repeating. I know that the right hon. Gentleman does not like it, but I intend to say it several times so that people outside know what sort of Government we have to cope with.
The then Opposition Chief Whip said that we would have "adequate scrutiny and debate". If he thinks that this timetable motion leads to adequate scrutiny and debate, when in fact it denies the opportunity to debate a series of most important issues, he has a most interesting idea about the English language. He went on:
When pressed on the point, the right hon. Gentleman continued:
The Secretary of State said:
Mr. Maclennan:
Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Mr. Garnier:
I shall finish this quotation and then I shall certainly give way. The Secretary of State said:
Mr. Maclennan:
The moment has almost passed, but I wanted to ask the hon. and learned Gentleman whether he really thought that an advisory referendum such as we are considering in this debate has any resemblance whatever to the transfer of powers under the Single European Act which the Conservative Government countenanced and indeed forced through with a rather tight guillotine.
Mr. Garnier:
The hon. Gentleman sadly misses my point, which is that the way in which the then Opposition Chief Whip and the then shadow Secretary of State for Wales were speaking informed the way in which they have approached this timetable motion. They do not seem to care about what Opposition parties have to say. They do not want a debate; they find it inconvenient. They have 200 Back Benchers who are getting fidgety, and whose time they would prefer to be spent elsewhere, rather than getting cross with their Whips.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) made a powerful speech and spoke most kindly about his predecessor, who served the House extremely well for many years. During that speech, he quoted my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) and the Prime Minister's reply. The second part of that reply is yet further evidence that the Government have no idea about the rights of Parliament and the need to debate fully. They sit there smirking and turning round to their hon. Friends, nudging and winking and saying, "We are the servants--which really means the masters--now."
The Prime Minister said:
Mr. Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green):
I listened with great care and interest to the Secretary of State for Scotland. Before any comments are made, a la Leader of the House last night, let me say that I sat through one and a half days trying and failing to get into the debate on Second Reading, so I feel it fully legitimate that I should speak on the motion.
Normally, one enjoys crossing swords with the Secretary of State for Scotland, as Conservative Members in particular have great respect for his skills and intellect and, not least, for his sincerity. Knowing that he was previously Opposition Chief Whip, I do not want to ruin any prospects of promotion, so I shall say that his sincerity is a deep-rooted veneer. I suspect that that will help him more than anything else.
Last week, the Secretary of State said that the measure was "of great importance". The fact that it is being debated on the Floor of the House shows that it is a constitutional measure. We can debate all day about whether it is a constitutional measure of the first importance; but the fact remains that it is a constitutional measure.
I urge the Government to think carefully about that, because the reason for so many amendments being tabled is the obscurity of what will follow. What follows is an open book: we have no idea what the detail of the devolution legislation will entail.
What we are being asked to enact is not a simple advisory measure, as we are told. The Secretary of State for Scotland made great play of the advisory point, saying that we would merely be asking the people for their opinion. What we are in fact asking the people in Scotland and Wales for is a blank cheque; we are asking them to say that the Government may do anything that they wish and that they have their approval.
Such a device has been used many times. It is alien to this country, but in other places, where people want absolute authority, it is used as a rubber stamp for what they may do subsequently. It is alien to the House and the country simply because we have always relied on the scrutiny of Parliament to get into the details.
I make no bones about this, because, although I have heard many comments from my hon. Friends about what should or should not happen on guillotines, I sat on the Government Benches throughout the Maastricht debates, believing quite legitimately that that legislation was wrong, and went through the line-by-line detail many times; I attended all the debates, which is something that many Labour Members did not do.
One or two of the minority parties may recall that, when we got into the detail of the Maastricht treaty, we found how deeply flawed the legislation before us was. Had we guillotined that legislation--as, sadly, I accept was done with the Single European Act--and forced it through the House, many of the things that we warned about would not have been spotted and could not have been rectified. Indeed, many cannot be rectified. None the less, they were spotted. I warned about the social chapter opt-out and was told, "You don't know what you are talking about. We will deal with it. It works." It did not work. The 48-hour working week was brought straight in.
I said all that at the time--but as a new Back Bencher, I would never have managed to speak if there had been a guillotine. I sat for hours waiting to contribute to many of those debates, and on clause after clause I failed to do so. Had there been a guillotine, I would never have made it.
The House is about the awkward squad, because it is the awkward squad that goes into the detail of legislation. I have heard Members from the minority parties talk about how good it is to timetable legislation. I am amazed and horrified by the idea that they, of all people, think that we should let any Government--it does not matter of which
party; I opposed my own Government on detailed constitutional legislation--have their way on such a matter without debate.
The reason why so many amendments were tabled to the Bill is that we know not what will follow. The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) has made that point many times. For example, among the amendments that I have tabled is No. 142, which would add to the back of the Bill a little device allowing the Scottish and Welsh people to say whether they thought that there should be a second referendum after the detailed devolution legislation had been enacted.
My amendment has not even been selected, so it will not be debated, and such a device is unlikely to be used. Yet surely only when the detailed legislation has been passed by the House can we go to the people and say to them, "Is this what you said you wanted? Because it does not work--or at least, some of us think that it does not--and here are the reasons why." That must be the right device. The reason why there was so much outrage--it was not synthetic outrage--about what happened last night was because, behind closed doors there was a debate in Cabinet. [Interruption.] Oh yes, we know that there was a debate, and we probably know that the Leader of the House said, "This is not the way to go."
"We want to talk with other parties about the best way of achieving this".
Did Ministers talk through the usual channels to the Opposition? I do not know about the other parties, but I doubt whether they bothered to listen to the official Opposition.
"if you look at, for example, enormously important constitutional bills recently, the biggest single transfer of sovereignty to the European Union was the Single European Act. That was put through by this Conservative government, and they did it with a timetable motion in double quick time."
Let us examine the facts. There had been three days' debate on one clause of the Single European Act in a Committee of the whole House before the guillotine was introduced. That guillotine debate was not confined to the usual three hours but was given additional time. A good deal more time was allowed following the guillotine motion for debate on that issue.
"I don't want to abuse the House. I certainly don't want to abuse people's right to scrutiny and debate and we will make very sure that this is done adequately and this is done properly."
Is that what he has done on this occasion? Is that what this timetable motion allows for? I do not think so.
"If we have a bill that has been endorsed at a General Election and in this case, the double lock of being very very specifically endorsed in a referendum in both Scotland and Wales, then clearly
3 Jun 1997 : Column 217it would be very silly for a government to say that a minority which is honourably but in our view mistakenly opposed to it, should be allowed to hold it up interminably."
Nobody is suggesting that the Opposition intend to hold up the Bill interminably, but there are some important issues that are being denied debate and a vote. That is why it is not far-fetched to suggest that the language used by the then Opposition, the new Government, is the language of Orwell and the Star Chamber.
"There will be ample time for debate, but I have to say to the hon. Gentleman and other Opposition Members that if the firmly established will of the Scottish and Welsh people is demonstrated in referendums, the people will not expect us to be game-playing here--they will expect us to legislate."--[Official Report, 14 May 1997; Vol. 294, c. 67.]
Quite frankly, he is saying, "Stuff Parliament; what we say goes, and we will ram it home." It is a case not only of game-playing but of the Prime Minister and the Government taking the whole deck of cards off the table and sweeping the stake money away with it.
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