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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. Much of the debate so far has been on the Bill's merits. This is a timetable motion and hon. Members and the right hon. Gentleman should confine their remarks to that.
Mr. Clappison: I take issue with what the right hon. Gentleman has said so far in such a partisan way. If the Opposition's conduct was as he described, why, in a written answer, did he thank all hon. Members who took part in the Committee, including the Opposition, for the careful way in which they had considered the Bill?
Mr. Straw: That does not for a second alter what I said. Can the hon. Gentleman explain to me where he made proposals to strengthen the Bill? If we examine the record, the Opposition spent 14 hours trying to weaken the controls on hauliers. That is the truth, and he knows it.
Mr. Clappison: One example, which the Under- Secretary of State will confirm, concerns clause 45, where we strengthened the arrangements for appeal for people with criminal convictions, for which we were explicitly thanked by the Minister.
Mr. Straw: I wonder how long the Opposition spent on that. They spent 14 hours trying to weaken the controls on hauliers.
The extraordinary U-turns of the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald--[Interruption.] Conservative Members laugh, but they must explain how, in the space of three weeks, the Opposition here and in the other place
have gone from supporting amendment No. 135, which restores cash benefits to asylum seekers from whom they withdrew those cash benefits in 1996, to the milk and water amendment that they are now putting forward by way of an alternative. That shows that the right hon. Lady says one thing and does quite another. She has turned once and she intends to turn again. The Government simply will not risk any disruption of our major modernisation of the asylum system as a result of the Opposition's tactics.
There are other reasons why we need the Bill on the statute book by the end of the Session. It improves control; it ensures greater fairness; it bears down heavily on abusive asylum seekers and criminal facilitators, and it takes control of unscrupulous immigration advisers and the avaricious lawyers who often lie behind the abusive asylum seekers.
The right hon. Lady said on the "Today" programme last Friday that the Government had "unstitched" most of the 1996 Act. That is completely untrue. The Bill seeks to make the 1996 Act much more effective, in many cases, by changing it--as, for example, in respect of the white list--in ways which, so far as I understand, never once in Committee, in the House or in the other place did the Opposition speak against or, still less, vote against.
It is well known that Governments of all parties have to resort from time to time to guillotine motions. If the right hon. Lady wishes me to read out a long list of timetable motions to which she put her name or for which she voted I shall be happy to do so. When we had to introduce a timetable motion on 15 June on Report, the right hon. Lady sought to distinguish the Government's record on timetable motions from hers on the curious and eccentric ground that she had never gone in for what she described as double timetable motions; whereas, it was asserted, we had.
Miss Widdecombe:
What about this motion?
Mr. Straw:
The right hon. Lady wants to get off that point because her point was completely false.
Mr. Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills):
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. With the best will in the world, there are rules and Standing Orders. I know that you are listening carefully, but the Home Secretary has blathered on for a while now without addressing the motion, which is to curtail debate upon the Bill. It is distressing to have such an exchange when many of us wish to speak on the Bill itself.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
How much time is taken up on this is a matter for the House and for the orders of the House. I have given one ruling on the content of the debate and the Home Secretary has not strayed from that in the past few moments.
Mr. Straw:
I think that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, would accept that, in speaking on timetable motions, it is in order to explain some of the background to them, which often involves the previous Administration's record on such motions.
This timetable motion is entirely consistent with those which we often had under the previous Administration. I can think of a number of Bills which came back from
the other place with a substantial number of amendments attached to them. There is adequate time to debate the key issues that were raised in the other place. I remind the right hon. Lady, and I shall return to the matter if I reply to the debate, that when she was a member of the previous Government, and before that one of their supporters, that she voted for guillotine motions time without number, whether single or double.
Miss Ann Widdecombe (Maidstone and The Weald):
I have heard some inadequate speeches in support of a guillotine motion, but that one reached an all-time low. The Home Secretary has given little reason for a guillotine motion being necessary in our discussion of the amendments before us. It is that guillotine motion and these amendments that we should be addressing, not the past history of guillotine motions or what happened during the Bill's earlier stages.
This guillotine motion is the arrogant motion of an arrogant and incompetent Government. They are, in fact, profoundly embarrassed by what they have done. If they were not, the right hon. Gentleman would have behaved in his usual courteous way. Of 369 amendments, the Government have tabled 367, so it is not the Opposition who seek to impose on the time of the House. To table so many amendments at such a late stage without a single explanatory note is odd enough, but it is even odder because we want to vote on only one amendment. Under normal circumstances, we would have said that that was totally reasonable for a five-hour debate, but the guillotine motion is so constructed that it is virtually impossible to vote on that amendment. That is the essence of my opposition to the motion.
The hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) has raised the important issue of the Government's preparedness to introduce a system of vouchers. The amendment passed by the other place would prevent the Government from introducing a system of vouchers unless they had already reached their target of six months. We softened that considerably, to spare the--
Miss Widdecombe:
I shall give way when I have finished this point.
We softened our stance considerably, specifically to spare the right hon. Gentleman embarrassment, and tabled amendment (a), which is in the first group. It will not be voted on. It asks the Government to do nothing more than come to the House when they introduce vouchers to give an account of the administrative systems that will underpin them and certify that they will be adequate. That is all it asks them to do.
Mr. Straw:
On 26 October, at column 818 of Hansard, the right hon. Lady told the House that what is now amendment No. 135 was "supported by us". It was supported by the official Opposition in the House and in the other place. Why has she changed her view?
Miss Widdecombe:
Straightforwardly, we believed that it was necessary to call the Government to account
Miss Widdecombe:
I shall finish my point. I believe that the amendment we have substituted for it is vastly better--in the spirit of the 1996 Act and of the Bill--and yet, under the guillotine motion, the right hon. Gentleman is not even prepared to put to the vote a suggestion that, when he introduces vouchers, he should do nothing more than come to the House to assure us that the right administrative systems are in place.
Mr. Straw:
The right hon. Lady mentioned Lord Cope and said that he had not really supported the full effect of amendment No. 135, but it says clearly:
"An asylum-seeker . . . shall be eligible for any social security benefits to which they would have been entitled if"
the 1996 Act had not been in force. His name, on behalf of the official Opposition, was on that amendment. They were not Johnnies-come-lately; they supported the amendment, root and branch, to restore cash benefits to everybody. Why did they do that?
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