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Mr. Robathan: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, with whom I agree on this subject, as on many, although on some we fundamentally disagree. Does he agree that there is plenty of time in a parliamentary Session to discuss those matters fully and put new measures that are needed--be they about bull bars or whatever--on the statute book? We have plenty of time, but we keep going off on enormously long recesses.

Mr. Flynn: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He seemed to think that I was giving way, but I had in fact finished my speech. We are two years into this Parliament. The Government came in as modernising new Labour, but the modernisation--

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman has indeed finished his speech, because he has not said much about the new clause. Perhaps someone could speak on the new clause.

Mr. Dismore: I congratulate the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) on the Bill's having reached this stage. As he knows from what I said on Second Reading, I have many reservations about it, but I agree with much of what he has said about the new clause.

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I am only sorry that the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) is not here today--he is another member of the usual Friday crew--because we could have had an interesting trip down memory lane.

When I intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr. Miller), I mentioned the case of the Crown v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex parte Fire Brigades Union and others. It was the leading case that interpreted, in a particular context, wording similar to that of my hon. Friend's new clause. That represents a trip down memory lane for the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border and myself because I was the solicitor who handled the case, and he was the Home Office Minister whom, I am pleased to say, I defeated in the House of Lords.

The case concerned the then criminal injuries compensation scheme under the Criminal Justice Act 1988, which contained in its implementation provisions wording almost identical to that of the new clause. The House of Lords construed what the meaning of the word "may" was in that context. The case turned on whether "may" means "shall", or "shall" means "may", or neither, in any particular case. Bearing in mind what was said when we discussed the Road Traffic (Vehicle Testing) Bill just now, it is somewhat peculiar that, for the second time today, I am having to criticise the wording of an amendment devised by my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston.

I may be able to answer the question asked by the hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) when he intervened to challenge my hon. Friend about what he intended to achieve, by telling hon. Members that the enacting provisions in the 1988 Act, on which the House of Lords had to adjudicate, were expressed as coming into force

"on such day as the Secretary of State may . . . appoint".

That is almost identical to the wording in the new clause.

In fact, the Secretary of State did not appoint a day, so the then non-statutory criminal injuries compensation scheme remained in operation. In 1993, the Home Secretary said that those provisions of the 1988 Act would not be brought into force, but the existing non-statutory scheme would be replaced, simply through the diktat of the Home Secretary.

The case was brought by the Fire Brigades Union and a consortium of other trade unions, the TUC and many others to challenge the decision in the courts. Unfortunately, although we were on a winning streak, it went all the way to the House of Lords.

Mr. Letwin: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because now he is explaining what he is talking about--a five-year delay during which the Government went unchallenged in not implementing legislation. That would be just long enough to hold the referendums on the euro, on proportional representation and so on, while the so-called insurance policy was left in abeyance.

Mr. Dismore: If the hon. Gentleman had listened to what I said earlier--clearly he is already bored by our proceedings, although we have not been going long--he would know that, for that very reason, I have much sympathy with what the hon. Member for Blaby said, and am not happy with my hon. Friend's new clause.

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If I may finish the ratio of the case, I shall be able to develop my argument more fully. I regret to say that the House of Lords decision was split--there seem to be lot of split decisions recently--but it found that the wording in the 1988 Act, which is almost identical to that in the new clause,

"imposed a continuing obligation on the Secretary of State to consider whether to bring the statutory scheme . . . into force; that he could not lawfully bind himself not to exercise the discretion conferred on him; that the . . . scheme was inconsistent . . . and that, accordingly, the Secretary of State's decision not to bring"

the provisions

"into force . . . had been unlawful".

However, the legislation

"did not impose a . . . duty on the Secretary of State to bring"

the scheme

"into force at any particular time".

The wording of my hon. Friend's new clause would, therefore, mean that the Home Secretary would have an obligation to keep the implementation of the legislation under review, but would not actually have to bring it into force.

Such wording frequently appears in legislation, and because of my experience of that legal case, I always have great difficulty with it; the formulation is so vague. I think that Bills should either be drafted in the same way as the Bill before us, so that they come into force on the date of Royal Assent, or contain a clause similar to the new clause, but using the word "shall" instead of the word "may". That would impose an obligation on the Secretary of State to bring the legislation into force at some stage.

I am concerned about such general discretion provisions, because the net impact of the 1995 case that I mentioned--if the then Home Secretary had got his way--would have been to introduce dramatic cuts in the compensation available to victims of crime. It was thanks only to the consortium of trade unions being prepared to put its money where its mouth was and take on the Home Secretary and the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border that we were able to stop the process. That led to much better provision for victims of crime in the legislation that the Conservative Government were forced to introduce.

For those reasons, I am very concerned by the wording of new clause 3. It is not wise to allow such wide discretion because it should be for Parliament to decide when primary legislation should come into force. I accept the need for some time to be specified in secondary legislation for orders to be drafted and approved by Parliament, and the Bill contains many opportunities for that process. I would prefer the Bill to read as suggested by the hon. Member for Blaby or for new clause 3 to contain the word "shall" instead of "may".

Mr. Tony McNulty (Harrow, East): My hon. Friend has set out two positions, but would he agree that a third position--putting a date of commencement into the Bill, such as 1 January 2001--would be preferable? That was proposed in Committee and, had the promoter not been as petulantly churlish then as he has been today and accepted it, we might not have needed new clause 3 at all.

Mr. Dismore: I have not had the opportunity to read the report of that part of the proceedings in Committee,

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but my hon. Friend makes a valid point. Many possible dates suggest themselves and, if the hon. Member for Blaby thought that there would be a referendum on Europe or electoral reform, he could have accepted the date proposed in Committee or tabled an amendment with a different date. That would have avoided the problem.

Mr. Robathan: The Government, whom the hon. Gentleman has been urging us all to trust, have told us that we will have a referendum on European integration and on proportional representation. For once, I have trust in the Government and he does not. What is going on?

Mr. Dismore: It is not a question of trust from my perspective. I trust the Government, just as my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston trusts the Government. My concern is one of statutory construction. The incorporation of words such as those proposed by my hon. Friend would be a bad addition to the Bill and that is why I do not support new clause 3. Much as I appreciate what my hon. Friend is trying to do, I cannot support him in this case.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. George Howarth): I welcome new clause 3 on commencement. The hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) has said on several occasions that he sees his Bill as an insurance policy. What he is apparently seeking to insure against is the Government not introducing their own legislation on the conduct of referendums before a referendum is held on the single currency, proportional representation or any other matter. The hon. Gentleman knows the answer to that and I shall not repeat it because he heard it ad nauseam on Second Reading, in Committee and on other occasions. He should know by now that the risk of that happening is such that there is simply no need for such an insurance policy.

Both I and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary have made it clear on several occasions that the Government are committed to early legislation on the main findings of the Neill report, which include specific proposals about referendums.

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