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3.28 pm
Mr. David Maclean (Penrith and The Border): The motion before the House is intolerant and it has been tabled by a Government who are becoming increasingly intolerant. I exempt from that accusation the Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Minister for Public Health because of their behaviour and demeanour in Committee when we were discussing the Food Standards Bill. They behaved with exemplary courtesy and were grateful for some of the contributions from the Opposition; I think they said that some of those contributions helped. I feel that I know the Minister of State slightly better than I know the Minister for Public Health, and I cannot imagine that he is behind the tabling of the motion.
The Minister of State was probably as appalled as the rest of us last night when he discovered what was going to happen today. The motion is certainly not his style, considering the way in which he handled proceedings in Committee. I would be the first to acknowledge that his patience would soon run out if there was one second of time-wasting today and we did not make proper progress on the Bill. He would be calling on the business managers to use a guillotine motion to get the Bill through the House.
However, that is not the scenario. The Employment Relations Bill and the Food Standards Bill are being guillotined not because there was one second's time wasting by the official Opposition, the Liberal Democrats or anyone else, but because the Leader of the House, the Chief Whip and the business managers concluded that the
climate during the conduct of other business in the week indicated--as my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) said, the Leader of the House concluded through divination--that the Food Standards Bill might be delayed, or filibustered. That is an extraordinary way in which to run business in the House.
Mr. Drew:
Is the right hon. Gentleman seriously asking Labour Members to accept that he would not have been filibustering last night in advance of his filibuster on Friday on the Fur Farming (Prohibition) Bill?
Mr. Maclean:
I can give an absolute assurance that I would not have spoken at all last night. I did not have a particular interest in the Bill. One cannot be a specialist--one cannot be an amateur--on every Bill before the House, so I had no intention of speaking last night.
I had intended to speak on the Food Standards Bill today. I assumed that it would kick off at about 2.30 and finish about 7, 7.30 or 8; that would be the normal amount of time. I also assumed that, if we finished at 8 o'clock on Thursday night, that was not too late for the precious luvvies and darlings on the Labour Benches, who seem to wilt and to turn into pumpkins if we go beyond 10 o'clock.
I do not intend to do any filibustering on Friday. In fact, if I did filibuster, Mr. Deputy Speaker would be ruthless in pulling me up. I may have one or two points to make on other Bills, but that is an entirely different matter.
I get back to the point of the guillotine. It has been introduced because, on Monday night, some Divisions were called by some Opposition Back Benchers. Because of those Divisions, proper sensible debate on the Employment Relations Bill and on the Foods Standards Bill will be ruthlessly curtailed.
What happened on Monday night? I agreed with much of the speech of the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler), but take issue with two little points. On Monday night, the Minister for Transport failed to respond to the points in the debate and then, all of a sudden, decided to move the closure. One of my hon. Friends had given way to the Minister or a Government Whip, and suddenly the Minister or the Whip moved that the question be now put, without us hearing a cheep from the Minister in response to any of the crucial questions that had been asked. Those questions were crucial because, in opening the debate, the Minister for Transport had not a clue what would happen.
I assume that the reason was not the briefing because the civil service cannot have gone downhill that much in two years; I assume that the Minister had been given, as usual, excellent briefing. Why she decided not to use it, or not to call for answers from the Box, is beyond me. Because there was no response and because the closure had been moved, I, with other Opposition Back Benchers who were annoyed at the lack of a proper response, forced a Division.
What else can an Opposition do? What else can individual Members do when we make serious points in a debate and then find that there is no response? Of course Divisions were called. If the Government wanted to avoid--
Fiona Mactaggart:
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Maclean:
In a moment. I shall comment on the hon. Lady's speech soon.
If the Government want to avoid what they consider to be unnecessary Divisions, they should have the courtesy to answer questions that are asked of Ministers. The Government can control all the motions and all the business before the House. Ministers' refusal on Monday night to answer some simple questions was directly responsible for five or six Opposition Members forcing Divisions.
Fiona Mactaggart:
The right hon. Gentleman asks what else a Member can do. That seems to be the nub of the problem. We need to establish procedures whereby Members can make their views known and have their questions answered through a sensible, reflective procedure, rather than by dancing round and round in circles at 2 o'clock in the morning.
Mr. Maclean:
We have those procedures. We asked the Minister for Transport some questions. She had a Parliamentary Private Secretary behind her who could have run to the Box to obtain the answers. As usual, she had her big red folder. I suspect that all the answers were in there to begin with, but she decided not to respond. Whether that was out of arrogance and contempt for the House, or whether she did not like the questions and did not want to respond, we do not know.
We do not need to invent some new fancy procedure. The Minister could have read out the answers in her briefing notes if she had wished to do so. Because of that failure, as everyone knows, some unnecessary Divisions were called. The hon. Member for North Cornwall was right that that was the genesis of some of the Divisions on Monday night but, being a typical Liberal Democrat, he castigated the Government for causing the problem and then castigated some Opposition Members for voting. It was an absurd charade, he said. Fortunately, I have had the benefit of checking Hansard. He and other Liberal Democrats voted in almost every one of those Divisions--certainly between midnight and 1.30 am.
The hon. Member for North Cornwall has re-entered the Chamber. I am refreshing hon. Members' memory, mentioning that he said that some of the votes on Monday night were absurd. I notice that he participated in those votes, but I congratulate him on getting the point correct: those votes happened because of the Government's arrogance in not responding.
As a result of that, we have a guillotine motion. There is no question of delays on the Employment Relations Bill being caused by any Opposition Member. The delays on the Bill were caused by the Secretary of State for Trade
and Industry. He deliberately delayed the Bill after 9 o'clock, when he got the message to keep talking until the Government cooked up a guillotine.
Mr. Patrick McLoughlin (West Derbyshire):
It was not only the fact that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry spent a considerable amount of time speaking in yesterday's debate that caused the problem. It was also the fact that, because of the Government's bad drafting of the Employment Relations Bill, a huge number of Government amendments had been tabled. If there had not been so many Government amendments, there would not have been so many groups of amendments to discuss.
Mr. Maclean:
My hon. Friend is right. No Labour Member can deny that.
The Leader of the House made a virtue out of making a very short speech on the guillotine motion. She said that she did not want to take time out of the rest of the debate. We know why she made a very short speech: she had nothing the say. There was no justification for the motion. She could not justify it on the basis that the Opposition were delaying the legislation yesterday. The Opposition were not; they were co-operating fully. The only person delaying it was the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.
The Leader of the House could not justify the guillotine motion on the basis of the behaviour of the Opposition, the Government or anyone else on the Committee that considered the Foods Standards Bill. I have served on quite a few Committees and taken a few Bills through the House; parts of some of them were opposed vigorously by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills. I cannot remember a time when a Committee was conducted in such a spirit of sensible co-operation.
We had the odd stormy moment but, in the main, there was complete co-operation. The Opposition--Conservatives and Liberal Democrats--tabled amendments. The spirit of some of them was accepted by the Government, who are coming back with improvements. On other occasions, Ministers pointed out why the amendments were helpful but not necessary, saying that, through guidance or codes of practice, the point would be addressed. Ministers know that.
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