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Mr. Christopher Fraser (Mid-Dorset and North Poole): I was a member of the Committee that considered the Utilities Bill. We sent it back on the ground that it did not do that for which it was intended because the Government had messed it about. I was a member also of the Committee that considered the Television Licences (Disclosure of Information) Bill, as was my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway). During our consideration of it we put some good points to the Government. Only today I have received comments from the Minister, saying how grateful she is to us for making those points. Our suggestions should have gone into the Bill at that earlier stage. That flies in the face of what the Government are doing.
Mr. Fabricant: My hon. Friend makes a serious point. When the House is working at its best, we co-operate to try to improve legislation. Both these Bills are non-contentious. Both sides want them to succeed. However, that does not mean that they should simply
receive a Third Reading. They must be workable, just and correct. It is not unreasonable that amendments should be debated fully and, if necessary, at length. When the Government say, "No, we object to true democracy in the House of Commons", we must question their presidential attitude. The House of Commons is here to scrutinise legislation. It is not here to be timetabled.
Mr. Paterson: My hon. Friend should not give the House the impression that the Royal Parks (Trading) Bill is not contentious. We are talking about extending the power of the law and the confiscation of private property. Surely our first role is to defend citizens from an over-mighty state.
Mr. Fabricant: My hon. Friend makes his point in his way, but I am not sure that I agree. No doubt we shall discuss the point when we discuss the Bill, although we shall not do so at length because of the guillotine. I am a free marketeer and libertarian, but the basic principle of the Bill is to provide the same powers to the parks police as the Metropolitan police already have. In that way, traders will not simply be displaced from one area to another.
Mr. Maclean: With respect to my hon. Friend, has he not missed the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson)? It is not so much the substance of the Bill that we are questioning under the guillotine motion as the fact that its consideration has been largely completed already. Only one amendment remains to be discussed in full, as well as a group of amendments that we were more than half way through. Can my hon. Friend recall a case in which a Government imposed a guillotine when so little remained to be debated on a Bill that had almost completed its Report stage? We could probably have completed the Bill last week if the Government had not slipped in a statement that day.
Mr. Fabricant: My right hon. Friend is correct, of course. I was present when we debated the Bill until the Government decided to cease consideration at 10 o'clock. Only two groups of amendments remain for discussion, including the one on the power of seizure, retention and disposal of property that we were half way through. After that, there remains a single amendment to do with counterfeit goods. We had no votes on the Bill, so keen were we that it should proceed rapidly. There is general agreement that the House wishes the Bill to be enacted once it has been made good, fair, accurate and just.
At present, however, the Bill is none of those things. Nor is the Television Licences (Disclosure of Information) Bill. We all want people aged over 75 to have free television. Indeed, I must declare an interest because my mother is 89, alive and well, and living in Lichfield. She is looking forward to not having to pay for her television licence. [Interruption.] For the record, I should say that she does not live with me in Lichfield, as some hon. Members have suggested.
The Bill needs to be discussed at length. One group of amendments relates to offences and penalties. There is potential for gross intrusion. The previous Government introduced the Data Protection Act 1988, and there is some doubt about whether the Television Licences (Disclosure of Information) Bill breaches the principle of that Act. It will give private organisations access to
information contained on databases which are maintained by the Department of Social Security and which were previously regarded as secure.These are important issues. Yes, we want the outcome to be that people aged over 75 should have free television licences. I am certainly keen that traders should not be displaced either from parks on to public streets or vice versa. However, we must get the measures right. Is it so unreasonable to say in the House of Commons that we want legislation to be right?
What do the Government say? They say no. They say that we must decide on all those measures quickly, even though there are several contentious issues, and even though, time and again, the Government get their own legislation wrong. We saw that with their introduction of new clauses on these Bills and on previous measures.
In conclusion--because my voice is giving up on me--the Government have an unhappy record on legislation. They try to railroad it through, like some victorious power; they are heedless of democracy and of what is right. However, while doing that, they cannot achieve quality; time after time, they have to correct their legislation--usually at a late stage.
It would be in the Government's interest not to impose a guillotine on these measures, because only with time do they find out that their legislation is fallacious. Was it not a year after the Opposition made criticisms of the Utilities Bill that those criticisms finally seeped through to the Department of Trade and Industry and into the mind of the Secretary of State? It took a whole year.
I am not suggesting that we spend a year discussing either of the Bills, but I am arguing that we should debate them properly. There was a teacher who always used to interrupt me when I was giving a little discourse to my class--like certain Labour Members who intervene on me to try to shut me up, but that tends to make me speak for even longer, because interventions make people talk longer. I suspect that the Government would find that, if the legislation were not guillotined and they had not drawn stumps, we should have held the Third Reading debate more than a week ago.
The measure is imperfect. An imperfect Government are trying to force through far too much legislation too quickly--it is deficient and has to be corrected. The use of the guillotine 50 times in three years, compared with 60 times in 11 years when we were in government, demonstrates clearly that the Government are not concerned with democracy. They are not interested in Parliament. They make announcements to the press before they make them to the House. They try to sideline Westminster.
Power is centred more and more on Whitehall, but the electorate are listening. They are watching; they have seen through the Government. Every time the Government make an announcement, the electorate say, "What, again? More money? We don't believe it because we don't see it." Perhaps a year from now, just before the election, money will be announced and the Government will be telling the truth, but no one will believe them--
Madam Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is straying a long way now. A moment ago, I thought he was in his peroration.
Mr. Fabricant: To conclude, the bypassing of Parliament achieves nothing. In the short term, it results
in imprecise legislation. In the long term, the public see through it. In two or three years' time--under a Conservative Government--the legislation will come back and we shall have to correct it, because, when the Labour Government railroad legislation through, they consistently get it wrong.10.29 pm
Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross): The length of a speech and its quality are not entirely related. The hon. Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) should take a leaf out of the book of Abraham Lincoln and his Gettysburg address, which took less than five minutes. It echoed down the ages because of its content.
I do not complain that the debate on the motion promises to be rather longer than the debates on the substance of the Bills. The management of legislation is in many ways more important than its substance. I only regret that, in speaking against the guillotine, Conservative Members' views have been sustained by such weak arguments. It is peculiar to latch on to these two instant Bills to make such points.
The Royal Parks (Trading) Bill owes its genesis to the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke). He was a member of the Standing Committee and expressed himself to be more than content with the way in which the Bill had been introduced. In so far as he had any criticisms to make--and he made them--he expressed considerable irritation that the Bill had not been introduced earlier and had not been dealt with more expeditiously. His absence speaks eloquently of his irritation at the performance and gyrations of some Conservative Members who have done so much to prevent the Bill from becoming law.
Mr. Maclean: The right hon. Gentleman is correct in so far as my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) was concerned about the delays in getting the Bill to the House. The Government caused those delays last year because of the time it took them to get the private Member's Bill that my right hon. Friend introduced through the legislative process. Unfortunately, he had to introduce his Bill late in the Session and it did not receive a Second Reading. His concerns were caused by delays in the Government machine. The Government approved a Bill which they eventually decided was uncontentious.
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