| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Darvill: I agree that it is. I hope that my hon. Friend will agree that we need to look at every piece of
legislation and the time that we spend on it. If the House had been debating a piece of legislation for four months and that was deemed to be too long, it must have come to a decision to cut short the debate.The Sea Fishing Grants (Charges) Bill obtained support from all parties in the House. It closes a loophole in the law. The Second Reading debate was wide ranging; the debates in Committee were quite detailed; and the amendments which were tabled--I do not think that they were selected--would not have changed the purpose of the Bill significantly. The amount of time spent debating that piece of legislation could well have been adequate with a short timetable.
Sir Patrick Cormack: To echo the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), why, in the name of goodness, are the Government seeking to guillotine a Bill when there is no Report stage because no amendments have been tabled and when, by common consent, it would receive a brief, expeditious and sensible Third reading? Why take a sledgehammer to this Bill?
Mr. Darvill: That is a fair point. In the time allocated to both pieces of legislation, there is sufficient time within the timetable motion to discuss that. It seems perfectly reasonable.
I made the point earlier about the number of amendments tabled in Committee, and the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) made a specific point about it. My point was that when Back-Bench Members are considering the controversy of a Bill and the issues that it contains, they should look at how that Bill was debated in Committee. That is not to restrict Back-Bench Members in tabling amendments, but, in coming to a balanced view on the time that we give to legislation, one factor to consider--although not the only one--is the way in which a Bill was dealt with in Committee.
Mr. Bercow: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that another factor to consider is the number of new clauses and amendments tabled on Report--32 in this case. Will the hon. Gentleman at least be guided by precedent in the debate, and give the House an example, with specifics, of a situation between 1979 and 1997 when a Bill that had a truncated Second Reading and was debated in Committee for only 1 hour and 12 minutes was nevertheless thought appropriate for the imposition of a guillotine?
Mr. Darvill: No, of course I cannot give the hon. Gentleman an answer to that question. One would need to analyse the debates that took place over that period.
The two Bills before us are uncontroversial in the view of the majority of Members of the House. All those who have contributed to the debate have signified support for them, certainly in Committee. Despite some opposition from individual Members, these two Bills have received support from all parties.
Mr. Paterson: We are discussing a Bill under which a person who contravenes its provisions when it is enacted will go to jail for up to two years or have imposed on him
an unlimited fine if he goes before a jury. Does the hon. Gentleman think that that is uncontroversial? Is not our first role to come here to defend the liberties of our constituents and to ensure that legislation is properly considered, in great detail, before casting them upon the whims of a jury?
Mr. Darvill: That is absolutely right. It is a question of the time that we allocate to that process. Many Bills that pass through the House have provisions of the sort that the hon. Gentleman has described. Such issues have not been ignored during our debates. Time has been given to them. They were considered on Second Reading, they were debated in Committee and they will be debated this evening.
Mr. Bercow: I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is being characteristically courteous.
Let us move the debate on from generalities, in which the hon. Gentleman is indulging, to specifics. He will have heard me say earlier that the hon. Member for Gloucester (Ms Kingham) was content with only seven and a half minutes of debate on each new clause and amendment, and that was assuming that there would be no Divisions, which was a rather improbable scenario. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that seven and a half minutes per new clause and amendment is wholly inadequate consideration? If he does, will he put a figure on what he thinks would be a more appropriate allocation of time?
Mr. Darvill: The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that the amendments would be grouped and discussed on that basis. There would not have been seven and a half minutes' consideration per new clause and amendment. Such an analysis can be used to discredit any allocation of time motion. The overall time allowed would have been sufficient if we had moved on to the new clauses and amendments sooner.
Mr. Fabricant: The hon. Gentleman rightly says that the time available to discuss the amendments and new clauses has been attenuated. I suspect that we shall be left with one hour to discuss the Nuclear Safeguards Bill. It contains 32 clauses, which means that we shall have less than two minutes to consider each one of them, and that is assuming that there are no Divisions. Even if we take the amendments as five groups and consider them on that basis, we shall have only five minutes per--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): Order. Some interventions, and not only the hon. Gentleman's, have been overlong. Make them brief in future.
Mr. Darvill: I think that I answered the point made by the hon. Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) when I responded earlier to the intervention of the hon. Member for Buckingham.
Mr. Paul Keetch (Hereford): We supported the Bill on Second Reading and in Committee, and we supported the closure motion. The debate has moved on and the Bill is next to be considered on Report. However, does the hon. Gentleman accept that there is a great difference between the Government wanting legitimately to get their
legislative programme through the House, including Bills that have cross-party support, and introducing four guillotine motions in one day?
Mr. Darvill: First, we are debating guillotine motions on two Bills. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman was a member of the Committee that considered the Bill. He had the opportunity between Second Reading and consideration in Committee to table amendments that reflected his and his party's point of view. I note that there was only about one hour and 17 minutes of debate. A factor that I am taking into account in establishing whether we are achieving the right balance and providing the right time for debate in the Chamber is whether the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues tabled any amendments in Committee. Had they done so, had they spent a significant amount of time debating them and had they analysed key issues, those opposing the motion would have a much stronger argument to advance.
Mr. Winnick: Is it not a fact that there are 32 amendments and three new clauses to consider when we come to the Nuclear Safeguards Bill? Without the motion, we would not complete consideration on Report this evening unless the Government decided to let the debate proceed until a late hour. At most, we would have completed consideration of the one Bill. It is more than likely that that process would have been completed at 3 am, 4 am or 5 am. Many amendments would not have been debated. That is the only alternative to the motion that is before us.
Mr. Darvill: As ever, my hon. Friend, who has much more experience in the House than I, makes an extremely good point.
It is regrettable that the number of guillotine motions introduced by Governments is increasing. That is partly because of the weight of legislation. That must be acknowledged. Increasingly, Governments have large programmes of legislation because there is a demand from society for that. That should be reflected in the way in which we deal with our business. We must establish the right balance when determining the time that we can devote to legislation and how Members can cope with that in terms of their parliamentary and personal lives. Against that background, I am in favour of more timetable motions. Provided that we have the appropriate safeguards, that is the way forward. I shall support the motion.
6.15 pm
Mr. Donald Gorrie (Edinburgh, West): I thank the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) for restoring my faith in democracy, which was being sat on by various heavy quarters in various places. It was an admirable speech.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) was criticised by the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) and by the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) on various parts of his speech. I understood that my hon. Friend was making it clear that Liberal Democrats oppose the motion. However, he was adopting the sound attitude of Voltaire, pointing out that he disagreed with many of the arguments of Conservative Members but fully supporting their right to advance them. He added that
sometimes they produced good amendments that deserved support, but often there is filibustering, irrelevant debate and general time wasting, which most people think brings Parliament into disrepute. He was supporting the Opposition's right to oppose guillotine motions and saying that the Government should not impose them.I strongly agree with my hon. Friend that we must consider Parliament's procedures and the way that we run our democracy. It is clear that Parliament is failing in its duties to hold the Executive to account and adequately to scrutinise Bills. To the dismay of Conservative Members, my hon. Friend said that a decent voting system would greatly diminish the power of the Executive. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) similarly said that Parliament must review its procedures in order to do things better. He argued that there are better ways of holding the Government to account than ambushes late at night and filibusters, for example.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |