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Mr. John Greenway (Ryedale): Before my hon. Friend continues his catalogue of Lords amendments, will he agree that we might not have needed to consider Lords amendments at all if the Minister had listened to our arguments when we considered the Bill in Committee? Most of the amendments made in the other place were amendments that were first tabled here. If the Government believe that this House should have supremacy over the other place, when will the House make its own amendments to legislation rather than having to rely on the other place to do it?
Mr. Evans: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He will remember, as I do, that we had to sit through a guillotine motion when the Bill first came through the House. We ought to look for consensus on such important constitutional matters, yet the Government keep introducing guillotines.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Mike O'Brien): While the hon. Gentleman huffs and puffs about important constitutional matters and the outrage of a guillotine on such a Bill, will he explain why the Opposition took the view that they did not need to vote against the guillotine on 20 January? If it was so important, why could they not even be bothered to vote?
Mr. Evans: The Minister should just wait until the end of this timed motion to see how we will proceed. We all know the game that the Minister is playing. He wishes us to spend 20 seconds on the guillotine motion and then go on to the detail of the amendments, but he knows full well that the time that is allowed to discuss those important amendments means that we will be lucky to get past the first or second batch. We know his ploy, but we are not going to fall into his trap. Tonight, we are seeing a denial of democracy and we are not prepared to stand for it.
The Minister has rolled out several pilot schemes. He will know that, because he had to answer a written question on 29 February from the shadow Home Secretary, asking him to list all the pilot studies for which he had given permission. However, if it had not been for that question, we would still be waiting for such a list. The Minister gave that list to other organisations first and the press also had a copy, but the House had to wait. In fact, the House still has not officially been given the full list of pilot schemes so that we can question Ministers about them.
Mr. O'Brien:
I am concerned if the hon. Gentleman thinks that there has been any discourtesy to the House,
Mr. Evans:
That is a rather thin response, and the Minister knows that it is doubtful whether any of the local authorities whose applications for pilot schemes he has already approved will later be told that they will not get those schemes. It would have been far better if he had told the House at the same time as he told the local authorities. He could have done so through a written answer, or he could even have come to the Dispatch Box and answered hon. Members' questions on the issue.
The pilot schemes are important, as I am sure that the Minister agrees, but many other issues contained in the amendments need to be discussed.
Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield):
Is my hon. Friend aware that, in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill, which we will discuss next week, the Government are purporting to amend this Bill to allow the Electoral Commission to intervene with local authorities in respect of pilot schemes?
Mr. Evans:
I am fully aware of that and, if we are able to reach the amendments that deal with the pilot schemes, I hope to go into more detail. However, that is not the Government's intention. They do not want us to investigate the amendments, and that is what the guillotine motion is designed to achieve.
At 10.15 pm, we started to discuss the money resolution. We have now started to discuss the guillotine motion, for which we have an hour, but that will eat into the two hours that the Government have allowed for the discussion of these important amendments. It is an absolute disgrace. We face a double guillotine. Even Wilkinson Sword never produced a blade that shaved as close as the guillotine motion that the Government have produced tonight. True democrats will look on tonight, not in amazement, but in disgust.
There is no surprise at the Government's antics. After all, this is the Government who rigged the referendum on devolution in Wales. This is the Government who rigged the internal elections for its leader for the Welsh Assembly. This is the Government who rigged the selection of the mayoral candidate for the Labour party, so they have ended up with two Dobsons. We are all wondering when they are going to drop the dead Dobson. The Government even rigged the procedures for grammar school votes. Now, they want us to trust them on the amendments tabled tonight. The Government want us to trust them with a referendum on a single currency, but they have another thing coming.
Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark, North and Bermondsey):
I shall be brief. However, like the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans), we Liberal Democrat Members want to register our belief that it is an unacceptable use of Government power to apply a guillotine motion to a Bill which, up to now, and as the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) noted--has benefited from the consensus agreement of a working party. That working party was chaired very ably by the Under- Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the hon. Member for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East (Mr. Howarth).
However, the Government now want to steamroller this relatively small number of groups of amendments--
Mr. Douglas Hogg (Sleaford and North Hykeham):
There are 100.
Mr. Hughes:
There are 100 amendments, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman says, in 12 groups, and some of them contain controversial and important matters. One highly controversial subject--the use of electoral registers--was discussed in a long debate in the House. Should they be sold commercially? Should people be allowed to remove their names, or make money out of the registration process? That is not an uncontroversial topic, and it would be perfectly proper for the House to debate it in the context of citizens' liberties.
Another controversial matter is the possibility of holding pilot schemes for voting on Saturday or Sunday, or early in the morning, or on voting for a week, or by electronic means. My hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mrs. Michie) has made it clear that there would be great unease in her part of the world if it were suggested that voting should be held on Sundays. The Bill contains a provision to decide such matters locally but if, as a result of pilot, the Government were minded to implement a proposal more widely, there is much concern that safeguards should be adopted to protect communities with different religious views, traditions or cultural backgrounds.
Thirdly, and self-evidently, the list of amendments goes further than the Government's concession on freepost facilities, which stemmed from an agreement between the parties. For instance, another amendment deals with whether one candidate can refer to the name of another, or to other parties. The Government's majority means that they will always be able to get proposals through the House. However, they do not enjoy a majority in the country, and they did not even gain a majority among those who voted at the general election. The electoral process has merely given the Government a distorted majority in the House.
Mr. Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills):
The two preceding speeches have been important, but I want to concentrate on the way in which the motion has been
I speak firmly because, again, this is an impossible motion. Not many hon. Members have been in the House a long time, but I have been here 20 years. I have seen the gradual squeezing by a jealous, self-aggrandising Executive of the freedom to debate and properly discuss the issues.
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