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Mr. Bercow: My hon. Friend is a parliamentary traditionalist, who has 17 years of experience in the House. He referred to the short debate that took place in Committee. Is he shocked by Labour Members' enunciation of an entirely new parliamentary doctrine: a Bill's brisk consideration in Committee somehow justifies a Government decision to truncate, through a guillotine, its consideration on Report? Does he agree that the Committee reports the Bill to the House and that hon. Members who did not serve on the Committee should have a proper opportunity to contribute to its consideration on Report?
Mr. Nicholls: My hon. Friend is right. He can make that point only because, before he entered the House of Commons, he knew something about the profession that he was entering. I shall embarrass my hon. Friend for a moment by pointing out that he has a degree in politics. However, I am sure that he agrees that, whatever length of time one has wanted to go into Parliament, and whatever trouble one has taken to equip oneself to understand the work, one does not realise until one arrives here exactly what the job entails.
Labour Members have been here for three years. They are better informed but clearly none the wiser. They should have realised by now that some constitutional proprieties mean that they should return home at the weekend and, instead of saying, "Feel sorry for me; I've had to work long hours for my £48,000 a year", claim, "I have scrutinised the Executive. I have responded to a Whip; we all do that, but I have also considered the legislation to ascertain whether I can make a private point to the Whips, out of the Opposition's hearing." That is not happening.
What passes for debate and scrutiny has been utterly reduced. The people speak; the Minister comes into the Chamber; she optimistically looks at the clock; she speaks about the force-feeding of the public with hamburgers in the royal parks. She thinks that she can simply walk off with her salary, which exceeds £80,000 a year, believing that she has done the job of a Minister of the Crown. The Minister yawns; it may be the tedium of my speech or the realisation that she will be here in the early hours of the morning. If we cannot make the Government behave as they should and scrutinise Bills; if we cannot win in the Lobby, we can at least expose the Government to the shame that they should feel for treating the House and their constituents with conspicuous contempt.
9.22 pm
Mr. Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove): In a previous debate, it was a considerable pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). I feel less privileged on this occasion. However, I repeat the point that I made previously: the Government have gone way over the top in their response to apparent provocation by scheduling two guillotines and four Bills for one day. Liberal Democrats believe that that is the wrong response. We shall vote against the guillotine, which we believe is out of place. I deployed arguments for that in the previous debate.
Mr. Nicholls: How does the hon. Gentleman conclude that criticising Bills constitutes provocation whereas voting against them does not?
Mr. Stunell: The hon. Gentleman was so committed to resisting the Government that he was not present during the previous debate on a guillotine. Had he been here, he would have heard the case that I presented. I suggest that he has a quick look at Hansard tomorrow morning. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman does not take much pleasure in having it pointed out that he did not listen to the debate.
Hon. Members: We are talking about this evening.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Can we stop the interventions from sedentary positions and proceed in a more orderly fashion?
Mr. Stunell: I am happy to take interventions when appropriate. The debate on the guillotine on the first two Bills was enlivened by interventions by Labour and Conservative Members, who believed that I should explain an alternative way forward in more detail. I gave an undertaking to do precisely that during this debate. The Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office, nods his head. Therefore, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I hope that you will think it in order for me to do so.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) and I have submitted a paper to the Modernisation Committee that suggests ways to deal with the immediate problems, starting from the Queen's Speech in November. The principles that we suggest could be applied to the remainder of the Session, if Members on both sides of the House were willing. We propose setting up a legislative business Committee, which would include all parties--Back Benchers and Front Benchers--the usual channels and representatives of minority parties. Immediately after the Queen's Speech, it would consider at what time during the year Bills should be introduced, in which House they would be most appropriately introduced and what would be a sensible time to allow for debate.
Let us deal head on with the overloading of the House. Whereas one of the Opposition's weapons against the Government is holding them to ransom on the day's timetable, one of the Government's weapons against the
Opposition is holding us to ransom on the year's timetable so that we do not even know when the summer recess will begin, let alone when it will end.
Mr. Forth: In that great scheme of his, how would the hon. Gentleman cater for the regrettably ever more common eventuality that, after publishing a Bill in good faith and even undertaking a pre-legislative stage, the Government have to table several hundred amendments during proceedings? How would his neat consensual timetable deal with that?
Mr. Stunell: The right hon. Gentleman raises an important issue--the quality of the legislation that is introduced. The House has approved the proposal from the Modernisation Committee, which he so disparages, to ensure that far more Bills receive the benefit of pre-legislative scrutiny, which involves not only hon. Members considering the legislation, but its being overhauled and reviewed with the benefit of outside evidence taken by a Select Committee.
No one can entirely legislate for Government error and fault. No one can entirely imagine everything that may go wrong and all the amendments that might be necessary, but I share a view with the right hon. Gentleman. If the Government have to abandon half a Bill in Committee--as happened with, for example, the Utilities Bill--and have to table a couple of hundred more amendments, the Liberal Democrats would take the view that different procedures should have been applied before it entered the legislative mill. The Chamber is not unlike a computer software slogan, "Rubbish in, rubbish out". If one begins with ill-considered, ill-drafted legislation, it is likely to remain so, however much we mess about with it.
If a legislative business Committee and adequate pre-legislative scrutiny were in place, many--but not all--of the problems that the House faces would be addressed and we could say, "This heavy legislative programme represents 35 or 40 weeks' work." However, after the Queen's Speech, we do not know in which month a Bill will be introduced or what consultation period will be involved, and there is a scramble to pass legislation before the summer recess. We cannot allow all that to continue.
The House has approved the possibility, in defined circumstances, of carrying legislation over into the following Session. That avoids another of the problems that we face: the somewhat light programme between the Queen's Speech and Christmas, a heavy Committee programme and the scramble as measures return from the House of Lords. Our system could hardly be better designed to ensure that we foul up, because we are rushing and scampering at the wrong times.
Surely, the aim of both Government and Opposition is to make certain that the legislation that emerges from this place is appropriate. The Opposition will want to challenge the principles of a Bill, and to ensure that the mechanics are right or, at least, favourable to the interests that they prefer; the Government will want to ensure that they produce working, workable legislation in a timely fashion. We do not obtain the best quality of government or of legislation from our current arrangements, which I would describe as boom-and-bust legislative procedures. It is filibuster and guillotine, boom and bust, and we have problems with both parts of that.
We oppose this guillotine, although, if these were any parks other than royal parks, any half-decent council would have referred the matter to the environmental health committee and it would have been sorted out in 10 minutes. What has happened in regard to the Royal Parks (Trading) Bill is no advertisement for Parliament. It is particularly strange in the light of yet another proposal submitted to the Modernisation Committee for the improvement of scrutiny of European legislation.
The hon. Members who have spent so much time talking about royal parks are the very ones who repeatedly complain here about the House's failure to control and monitor properly the flood of European legislation that arrives on our shores; yet it is they who prevented the Modernisation Committee from recommending the establishment of additional Select Committees to scrutinise such legislation. The reason given was that they did not have enough Conservative Members to staff the Committees. They have enough Conservative Members to keep us up talking about royal parks, but not enough to man Select Committees to scrutinise European legislation. One sometimes wonders if they deliberately design to fail: I can think of no better way of doing it.
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