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Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst): Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Hill: No, the right hon. Gentleman will have plenty of opportunity to contribute to the debate.
Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham): What a pathetic performance from the Minister. He does not even know, Madam Speaker, that you are Madam Speaker, although I am pleased to say that you have been in that post for a long time. He does not know whether he is the Minister for London, or whether the Minister for Housing and Planning still has that job. We know that there is a back-seat driver, and there may even be a front-seat driver sitting next to this junior Minister.
The Government need more guillotines than the French revolution, and for rather less consequence, but this Bill should not be guillotined tonight, because the Government are rewriting it as they go along. I have never seen such a mighty list of amendments tabled so late to a Bill. More
than 800 Government amendments have been tabled, reflecting the acceptance by the Minister in the other place that the Bill is a mess and a farce, and the acceptance by the draftsmen that the job that these Ministers have done is so bad that great chunks of the Bill had to be rewritten after it had been through its Committee stages in both Houses of Parliament. Any decent, self-respecting Government would start again. They would come here to apologise and say that they have made a mighty mess. They would start again with a new Committee stage and a new Bill that had been properly amended and properly thought through, so that we could scrutinise it and do our job.
The Minister may say that we do not need to debate this motion, but he does not like democracy. I have got news for him: people outside the House value their democracy and they think that such major constitutional measures should be properly drafted and properly discussed. They will share my sense of outrage and insult that the Bill is being treated in this way and that the House of Commons has been sidelined and scoffed at by the Minister, who should know much better.
Mr. Nigel Beard (Bexleyheath and Crayford):
Was it a symptom of the right hon. Gentleman's attachment to democracy that he supported the abolition of the Greater London council, which left London with no democratic authority whatever?
Mr. Redwood:
My credentials in favour of democracy are extremely strong. I am a great believer in elected boroughs throughout London that can carry the voice of the people into the council chamber and make the right decisions. What I dislike about this Government is their attitude towards this great Parliament and their refusal to let us have proper debate. They stifle debate and then return with an apology of a Bill which has so many amendments that the House does not have a chance to consider them.
Do not just take my word for how unsatisfactory the legislation is. We have on the record from another place the view of the Minister, Lord Whitty, who has been handling it there. Stating how bad the Bill was, he said:
There are many things wrong with the Bill that require time for proper debate on the Floor of the House, in the light of the Government's revised views. It is time to bring the public up to date with the shenanigans over transport in London. We know that the Government are about to sign up to a public-private partnership, or at least, we think they are, because we have read it in the press. Some of what the Government tell the press is accurate. In this case, I believe what the Government are telling the press. They probably are close to signing up to a public-private partnership.
What is the point of electing a mayor to high office in London to sort out London's transport system, if the main decisions have already been taken by the Secretary of State behind closed doors, without proper scrutiny, without a proper statement to the House of Commons and without even a proper debate on the issues tonight if time is used up on other momentous points before we reach those crucial clauses?
We are worried about the Government's attitude to parking and congestion. We know that their policy in general is tax and tax again--if it moves, tax it; if does not move, tax it; if it both moves and stays still, tax it on both occasions. We know that that is their policy, and deep in the clauses and amendments there are powers and statements relevant to it. That surely is worthy of a major debate in the Chamber this afternoon and this evening, but we will not have enough time for it because of the Government's mean-minded guillotine motion.
Mr. Phil Hope (Corby):
The right hon. Gentleman is taking up time.
Mr. Redwood:
I am told that I have no right to complain about the allocation of time. I intend to keep my remarks short. The Government cannot be bothered to give us a decent amount of time for the Bill, but I have every right in this place to tell the public of London and the nation how we are being treated, how they are being treated, how measures on big issues such as parking, congestion, traffic and transport are being rushed through, with huge powers in the Bill and huge changes in the amendments, and no opportunity to discuss them properly.
We heard on Thursday, in a debate that was full of substance and was not part of any filibuster--there was no filibuster--that there is no serious power in the Bill to allow the Assembly to control or discipline the mayor. What is the point of the Assembly unless it can engage with what the mayor is doing and, in extreme circumstances, remove the mayor from office? We had no satisfactory answers from Ministers.
We are now told that our wish to discuss that fundamental constitutional principle, with many good contributions from both sides of the Chamber, was part of a filibuster and justifies the Government's action in imposing the guillotine today. They should look at the facts of that debate. If they saw what took place on Thursday, they would know that in a debate of five and three quarter hours, Ministers and Labour Back-Benchers took up two hours, and half an hour was spent in Divisions.
I have seen hon. Members trying to filibuster in the House, particularly when Labour was in opposition. I remember Ministers speaking for three or four minutes, and Opposition Back Benchers speaking for three or four hours. That is the sort of balance that occurs when there is an attempt to talk a Bill out. The debate on Thursday was serious. It was constrained because we were all conscious of the lack of time, and the fact that the time was so evenly balanced across the Chamber shows that Labour Back Benchers and Ministers also recognised that there were serious points at issue, which needed proper discussion.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Mr. Nick Raynsford):
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Can he identify a single issue raised in that debate that had not previously been debated in Committee and in the other place?
Mr. Redwood:
All the issues were new, because they concerned new wording for the Bill proposed by the Government. The Minister cannot say that we were not entitled to scrutinise the detailed recommendations or lack of them because some of the general points had been discussed previously. We had before us a most important amendment that needed to be discussed on the Floor of the House, and I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman dares to suggest that the House should not have been able to discuss a matter of such fundamental importance. I stress that we were not trying to talk the Bill out; we were trying to talk some sense into it.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham):
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way because, as is usual these days, he has singularly understated his case in dissecting that of the Government. Does he not agree that it is highly significant that, there are only five Labour Back Benchers present to witness this denial of democracy that the Government intend to perpetrate today? Will it not be interesting to observe whether they are members of the pre-programmed robotic tendency or whether they feel able to deliver themselves of a word of criticism of the Government's outrageous conduct?
Mr. Redwood:
I agree with my hon. Friend's thrust. I hope that some Labour Back Benchers will realise that the Bill's drafting contains serious defects and bring that to the attention of the House.
Mr. Peter Brooke (Cities of London and Westminster):
Has it occurred to my right hon. Friend that we did not range even wider last Thursday because a number of us sat on our hands and kept our mouths shut in order to make progress?
"I am not going to put my hand on my heart and say that everything is absolutely right with this Bill and that we shall not have to legislate within the foreseeable future."--[Official Report, House of Lords, 1 November 1999; Vol. 606, c. 673.]
Even after 800-odd Government amendments, the Minister accepts that the Bill is still a mess, that the Government may have to come back to the House in the future, and that there may well need to be amendments to the amendments, some of which are no doubt already amendments to amendments, so many stages has this miserable legislation undergone.
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