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Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must be careful. The Chair would never allow filibustering.
Mr. Gorrie: I stand corrected, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I apologise.
Mr. Paterson: The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) made it clear that Liberal Democrats oppose the motion. When I asked what their answer was, the answer was about as satisfactory as chewing cardboard. Will the hon. Gentleman explain what methods the Liberal Democrats would propose?
Mr. Gorrie: My hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove found that he was being led into a long disquisition on subjects not really relevant to the debate. I may receive another deserved rebuke from you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if I take them up. My hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) have put forward proposals to the Modernisation Committee, some of which would meet the point made by the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson).
Mr. Stunell: Bearing in mind that there will be a second debate on guillotine motions, there may be an opportunity to colour in the picture that I sketched earlier.
Mr. Gorrie: I look forward to enjoying my hon. Friend's impressionistic skills.
My main point--a fresh, if, perhaps, a cheeky, one--is that, as a Member of another, much newer Parliament, I know that it learns from this Parliament, and bad habits are easier to copy than good ones. The Government treat this Parliament with a good deal of disdain, and Parliament does not adequately check that Government. Those facts set a tone that the Parliament in Edinburgh is tending to copy. We ought to scrutinise the Government properly to encourage newer and younger parliaments to do the same. We owe it to others to set the House in order by scrutinising the Government properly and by stopping these ridiculous guillotines.
Mr. Gerald Howarth (Aldershot): I, too, pay tribute to the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) for an outstanding speech, which
demonstrated the distilled wisdom of an hon. Lady who has been an active participant in the House for a great many years. Without wishing to embarrass her, I hope that her speech will become compulsory reading for all new Members. She demonstrated her wide and sensible understanding of how the House operates, and she reflected exactly what is so important about Parliament.This institution is under fire. Its powers are haemorrhaging away, and I use that word deliberately. They are haemorrhaging to the European Union, the constituent parts of the United Kingdom--to Scotland and to Wales--and, come 1 October, even more greatly to the courts. For that reason, this debate is timely. We ought to oppose the guillotine, and should debate some of the wider issues at stake, as you are allowing us to do, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
I was a Member in the 1980s, and I recall sitting up all night. I loathed it, and I thought that it was a stupid way to operate. I had not been here long when I arrived home at 3 am or 4 am once, only for my then young daughter--who now works a few yards from here--to jump on me at 7 am. I said, "Emily, go away, daddy is very tired." She answered, "Daddy, do you know what MP stands for?" I said, "No." She said, "It stands for Mouldy Person."
It can be difficult to combine life in this place with family life. However, it was important in the 1980s fully to debate the matters that were discussed. The Opposition were rightly given every opportunity to oppose a Government with a majority of 140, of which I was happy to be one. There was then far greater opposition to the Government--by Bob Cryer, then the hon. Member for Keighley, and by the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). Every night, there would be a 45-minute debate on the money resolution. Good luck to them. I was an idiot to believe the Whips who told me that I had to be here. I should have gone home long before I did.
The House does itself a disservice in the manner in which all Governments deal with the Committee stage of Bills. Virtually no amendment introduced in Committee by an Opposition Member can possibly be accepted by the Government of the day. It will be dismissed as defective, as striking at the heart of the Bill or destroying the Bill. Then, however, we come to Report, and the Bill requires 300 or 400 Government amendments. That tends to lower the esteem of the House in the eyes of the public. Governments--Tory, Labour or whatever--would do themselves much good by accepting that a Bill can be improved by the Opposition.
On how we facilitate opposition to legislation, I cannot see a way around our existing rules, save at the expense of reducing yet further the powers of the Opposition to oppose. The Government of the day have a huge raft of powers and levers that enable them to dragoon their people into their Lobby. Not least is the power of patronage. If Members do not do as the Government say, they will not have the benefit of a magnificent office as parliamentary private secretary to the Under-Secretary of State for Pensions or whatever illustrious office it may be.
Mr. Gerald Bermingham (St. Helens, South): Does the hon. Gentleman agree that reducing the hours of this
place would lead to even greater problems because of the occasional inability of Governments to listen to common sense?
Mr. Howarth: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. He is entirely right.
I have some sympathy with the hon. Member for Gloucester (Ms Kingham), who has taken the trouble to come to the Chamber this evening, although I did not have the opportunity to hear what she had to say. I read what she had to say over the weekend, and I agree that it is difficult to combine membership of the House with bringing up children.
Ms Kingham: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Howarth: In a moment. I am somewhat old- fashioned, and I believe that bringing up children is an extremely responsible job. One of the great contributions that women make to the continuation of society is the exercise of that responsibility. I recognise that it is hard to combine that job with being a Member of Parliament.
Mr. Howarth: Before the hon. Lady intervenes, let me also tell her that my right hon. and noble Friend Baroness Thatcher, for whom I had the privilege of being parliamentary private secretary for about six months, managed to combine both things. So does Nicola Horlick, who earns a great deal more than we do. In the City, she combines a demanding job with bringing up, I believe, five children.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We are straying away from the motion before us. The hours of work in the House are being considered by the Select Committee on the Modernisation of the House of Commons.
Ms Kingham: I should like to knock one inaccuracy on the head. I have no difficulty in combining my domestic arrangements with my work. My husband is at home looking after my children; in the same way, male Members of Parliament have left their wives at home with their children for many years. I have been criticising the long hours that we spend in this Chamber that are not worth while and in which we do not debate issues of substance that affect our constituents. I have no objection to working long hours; I have always done so. Nor do most of my hon. Friends have any such objection. There is no problem concerning my combining my family with working practices. I do not find that difficult at all.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: On that note, therefore, and as we know what the hon. Lady's thinking is, may we return to the motion before us?
Mr. Howarth: I could not agree more, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You are wise to draw to our attention the need to return to the heart of the matter. I would say only that I do not recall having seen the hon. Lady in the Committee on the Nuclear Safeguards Bill on 10 April. I was rudely interrupted then by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Rutherglen (Mr. McAvoy)--the Government's pairing Whip--who moved the closure, but my last words
were "extensive powers". As my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) made clear, the Bill contains powers that have been described outside Parliament as draconian.My hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) pointed out that it is our duty to scrutinise legislation to ensure that, if we are conferring draconian powers on officials, we do so with the full understanding that, first, those powers are necessary; and, secondly, there are adequate mechanisms to safeguard them so that they are not abused.
Before I was interrupted on 10 April, I was saying that the powers in the Bill are extensive. Clause 5(4) states:
The guillotine motion is unnecessary and wrong because the Bill is important and the House has not had an adequate opportunity to discuss it.
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