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Mrs. Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) rose--
Sir Nicholas Lyell: I give way to the hon. Lady.
Madam Speaker: Order. May I bring the right hon. and learned Gentleman and the House back to the procedural motion on the Order Paper? It is interesting to have some of the examples that have been given, but I now ask hon. Members to stay within the motion before us. Given my ruling, does the Hon. Lady still wish to intervene?
Mrs. Ellman: Yes, Madam Speaker.
Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that the Bill has involved so much time because detailed consideration is being given to every precise point that Opposition Members, including him, are making?
Does he agree that that is a strength of the Bill and the reason why this procedural motion should be agreed to without much more ado?
Sir Nicholas Lyell:
I am most grateful to you, Madam Speaker, and to the hon. Lady for bringing me back to the point. The answer to her question is yes and no. Yes, there has been valuable scrutiny and, without wishing to praise the Opposition too much, we have made and tested some sensible points and shall continue to do so for some months to come. However, it is not too unfair to those with the job, in both the Government and the Financial Services Authority, of getting the Bill into workable order to say that they are still busy consulting and thinking through much of the detail, which, ideally, should have been thought through before the Bill began.
Mr. Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove):
As a member of both the Modernisation Committee and the Procedure Committee, I welcome both the general proposal and the specific proposal in relation to the Bill.
On the carry-over procedure, the House has an underlying difficulty because those with the power to change procedure are inevitably the Government of the day, while those most in favour of reinforcing the powers of the House are inevitably those who sit on the Opposition Benches. Thus, at any stage of any Parliament, a delicate balancing act must be performed if the House's procedures are to be moved forward constructively. Our carry-over procedure achieves that delicate balance, and will achieve some extra capacity for the House to keep a grip on legislation that the Government put before it.
The right hon. and learned Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell) made some of my points for me. This is a difficult and complex Bill. The alternative to carrying it forward is not to abandon it, as the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) might hope, but to rush it through in the remaining fortnight of this Session. That is traditionally how Governments have dealt with complex Bills when they have got to the end of their time and the end of the Session.
This motion enables us to give complex Bills proper consideration right the way through, and thereby improve them. I am a new Member and, like every inhabitant of the United Kingdom, I have been subject to the laws of the House since the day of my birth--and probably even before that. The laws produced by various Governments and endorsed by the House in various configurationshave frequently had serious defects and have had to
be revisited. Those defects have often arisen because proper consideration had not been given to the detail of the Bill. I am sure, Madam Speaker, that you would not want me to illustrate that at great length; it can be taken for granted.
This provision will allow the House to exercise better scrutiny in better time, which it is hoped will produce better outcomes. The Bill has already gone through consultative procedures that are new to the House and to the other place, and they have produced improvements. More improvements can be made if we proceed with this motion.
The right hon. and learned Member for North-East Bedfordshire asked whether the carry-over procedure should become more widely used. I hope that it will be more widely used. Legislation is sometimes rushed and fumbled, because our legislative cycle inevitably compresses the consideration of detail into the end of the parliamentary Session when we are least able to manage it. If we were rational, not only would we have an announcement in the Queen's Speech of the Bills that the Government propose to introduce during the Session, but we would be given the order in which they would be introduced so that the work on those Bills could proceed in an orderly and thorough way through the procedures of the House. Inevitably, Bills introduced in the second half of the Session might require the carry-over procedure.
Mr. Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale, West):
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that another rational approach would be to introduce fewer Bills, thus allowing the House of Commons to do its job more effectively all the time, not just when carry-over is permitted?
Mr. Stunell:
The hon. Gentleman may have a point that fewer and better laws would be good for everyone, and perhaps our summer recesses would be even longer. However, given the complexity of our modern society, every successive Government since the war has introduced more Bills than their predecessor, regardless of their political complexion. I do not foresee that changing unless we get a legislative benefit from devolution, but I shall not hold my breath on that. Although it is a nice wish, it is not a realistic proposition.
Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich):
Does not the hon. Gentleman realise that there is a benefit in the House of Commons having a limited time to examine legislation? In other legislatures, including the so-called European Parliament, which do not have that discipline, consideration of legislation goes on for ever, and they often do not have the ability to take legislation off the books when it manifestly should not be proceeded with, and when any sane person would say that it should be dropped. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that there is a benefit in the House of Commons having a set timetable and knowing that at the end of that time it must deal with a Bill?
Mr. Stunell:
I am grateful for the hon. Lady's intervention, because it enables me to say that the Modernisation Committee considered the point very carefully. That is why the carry-over procedure allows a Bill to be carried over only once, which I consider appropriate.
It has been suggested that if we had had more time,we could have had a shorter Bill. That is along the lines of the observation by the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) that perhaps we should have fewer laws. In fact, we are not likely to have either fewer or shorter laws in the future. What comes before the House needs to be considered carefully by hon. Members. We may or may not be able to make Bills shorter: I would not want to hold my breath on that. The main point is that output from the House must be good law which is enforceable. That may involve a little extra time and effort, but I believe that that is what we are here for.
I consider the case for carrying over this Bill to be practically overwhelming. It is a complex Bill, and hon. Members have argued that it should have been shorter and simpler--but it is not. It is before us now, and the choice is not good. We can try to get it through in the next fortnight, or we can do as the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst suggested and withdraw it completely. The City is anxious for the Bill to be passed. Its regulatory procedures need attention, and the Bill addresses that need. I do not honestly think that the right hon. Gentleman is really signing up to a crooks charter, with the Bill withdrawn and no progress made on the regulation that is required. That cannot be what he intends to achieve.
Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst):
I strongly oppose the measure, so I am disappointed thatmy right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) indicated his acquiescence to it. I say that for a number of reasons. The first is a matter of principle: I have never accepted the argument that it is desirable for us to find means of allowing more and more legislation to emanate from this place, rather than less legislation, including fewer Bills.
I have never seen this place as a legislation factory. I have always supported procedures making the passage of legislation more difficult rather than easier, because I believe that, although there is an enormous propensity among politicians to produce more legislation in order to justify their existence, it must be in the greater interest of people for there to be fewer Bills. I therefore feel that any measure facilitating an increase in the amount of legislation is counter-productive and undesirable, which is why I was not in favour of the so-called Modernisation Committee's so-called progressive measures to facilitate that.
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