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Mr. Straw: I think that I heard the right hon. Gentleman say that he had always opposed guillotine motions. If that is so, will he explain why he voted for the guillotine motion on the Football Spectators Bill on 17 July 1989?
Mr. Forth: That would have been when I was a Minister; that changes everything. I meant to say to the House--I am grateful to the Home Secretary for pointing it out--that I have always opposed guillotine motions as a Member free to make my own judgment. As the Home Secretary kindly pointed out earlier, for which I was grateful, I believe that I am now a Member free to make my own proper judgments on these matters--and I hope that he accepts that I exercise that judgment in a parliamentary context when I properly should.
However, if the Home Secretary is suggesting that, during the period in which I had the honour to serve as one of Her Majesty's Ministers, I should have exercised
that same freedom, he knows as well as I do that, at that time, I accepted the same degree of collective responsibility as he now accepts. It is for that reason, albeit on a slightly different subject, that the right hon. Gentleman appeared to be pleading a deaf ear moment ago, so let us not dwell overlong on such matters.The urgency pleaded for the Bill is spurious and the timetable that has been suggested denies all that we have been brought up to believe is proper and necessary in parliamentary procedure. Not only are we as Members of Parliament not to be given an opportunity to consider such vital matters, but, as the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey points out, we are not to be given any opportunity to listen to, to consult or to receive advice and input from legitimate outside interests, whether football interests or legal interests or others--none of that will be possible.
I suspect and fear that the result will be uniquely bad legislation, because of the way in which the Bill has been drafted and prepared, the haste with which it has been altered, the extent to which the House has been unable to give it proper consideration and, most important, the way in which Members of Parliament have been unable to receive proper advice and input from outside. That is wrong in every conceivable way. I can conceive of no justification for the Bill, for the way in which it is to be dealt with, or for the likely end result. For those reasons, I hope that the House will not go along with the suggested arrangements, because they are a recipe for disaster.
4.51 pm
Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich): I am an admirer of the current Home Secretary; unlike some others, I think that he does care about the House of Commons and that he makes every effort to listen to individual Members who raise valid points. However, although discretion might dictate that I do otherwise, I am afraid that I have to tell him that I am not happy about these arrangements. To push through such a guillotine in such a manner on such an important Bill is not a good idea. I believe that we shall end up with legislation that is not acceptable, especially because several of its provisions have a direct impact on people's civic rights. That causes me concern, even though I do not pretend to have an easy solution to the problem of those who would go abroad and wreck everybody else's cities, rather than stay at home and wreck their own.
I am also concerned about something that my right hon. Friend said, although I might have misheard him. During his attempt to explain why he was being so amenable, he appeared to imply--I am sure that I must be mistaken--that the hours he had spent engaged in discussions with people outside the Chamber ought to be considered part of the debate and, therefore, a reason to allow the legislation to make swift progress. That is a slightly worrying suggestion and I hope that my right hon. Friend will make it clear that he did not mean it.
Although it was an endearing moment, inasmuch as it appears that, for the first time in many years, we have heard discussed the byzantine ways of the usual channels--a moment that makes sitting here worth while even in the absence of any other reason--we still come back to the fact that if the House rushes legislation and has no time to consider the implications, it frequently makes mistakes. We have the right to push legislation
through in one day: it has been done in my lifetime and in yours, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I recall several Acts dealing with terrorism passing with total agreement and astonishing speed--although even some of those proved to be less than good legislation and had to be reviewed.I do not want to detain the House and I am trying not to say anything that I have said many times before, but my misgivings are real because the Bill is one that will affect the rights of the citizens of the United Kingdom. They may be reprehensible citizens of the United Kingdom; they may be people whom I do not want in my living room; they may be people whom I would oppose root and branch in political terms and in terms of their commitment to very extreme organisations; and they may be people who, I hope, never get to go abroad and represent the United Kingdom in any way at all.
However, I must say to my right hon. Friend that to rush a Bill through the House of Commons in short order at the end of the summer season, which is always a difficult period, may not be a good idea. I do not like it. I am not impressed with the Bill. Although my right hon. Friend has made enormous strides and has given way on various aspects of it, I remain extremely worried about the impact of the legislation.
4.55 pm
Mr. Roger Gale (North Thanet): Those of us who were in the Chamber at a late hour the other night have rehearsed some of the arguments already.
The Home Secretary has had two years since Marseilles, countless legislative opportunities to introduce a properly thought through, properly drafted Bill if he had chosen to do so, and ample opportunity for such a Bill to be properly debated in both Houses and for outside authorities to make representations and to have their views considered.
There has been a considerable number of debates around the subject. It is a disgrace for the Home Secretary to present to the House in a knee-jerk reaction, a fortnight before the end of the summer Session of Parliament, a Bill hastily cobbled together on the basis of the "do something" school of politics, rather than do the right thing. The right hon. Gentleman knows that, and he knows that that is why he has had to table amendments today, in a desperate attempt to cobble together some sort of coalition that might allow the measure to get through the House tonight, in order that their Lordships can try to do a damage limitation exercise and turn the Bill into something remotely workable.
This is a bad Bill. Hours of debate tonight--even the protracted hours that we are now told we are to be allowed to have--will not get it right, for the reasons given earlier by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth). A few hours, without proper consultation, will not turn a bad Bill into a good Bill.
The Home Secretary had to concede the other night, because he had no alternative, that the Bill's writ will not run in Scotland or Northern Ireland. All the commentators who have said that it is a Bill to control football hooliganism are wrong. It cannot do so, because the football hooligans can fly abroad from Scotland or Northern Ireland.
What is needed--this is why the timetable is wrong--is time, after the Committee stage and the acceptance of a few relatively minor amendments, to work out how to do properly the job that the Home Secretary says he wants to do. There is time. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst pointed out that it is wrong for the Bill or any legislation to be driven by a football match, or even several football matches, on the continent in the autumn. What matters is not that we do something, but that we do the right thing. The Bill is not the right thing; it is patently the wrong thing.
My friend the hon. Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks) said the other night, recalling the dreadful and now infamous Dangerous Dogs Act 1989, that he did not believe that the Bill was a replica of that. I am one of the relics of that Act. I am ashamed to admit that I was one of those who initially supported it. It went through under a Conservative Government, but with cross-party support. It was legislation in haste, which was repented at leisure. That was dreadful legislation because it was a knee-jerk reaction, on the basis of the "do something" school of politics, and it took us five years to amend it. It is still bad legislation, although it is marginally less bad than it was when we put it on the statute book.
What we are about to do, at the Home Secretary's behest if he is allowed to ram the Bill in its present form through the House in 24 hours, is to recreate a dangerous dog's breakfast. I do not believe that the right hon. Gentleman wants to do that. Even at this very late hour, I say to the Home Secretary, for pity's sake, allow the Committee stage to go through today, as it must, and then allow time, so that proper representations can be made and there can be a half-decent chance of our getting proper legislation on the statute book that stands an outside chance of working.
4.59 pm
Mr. Paul Flynn (Newport, West): The Bill is coarse and degrades Parliament; it is a tabloid Bill. We are discussing it today because of tabloid reaction to Euro 2000. The tabloids demanded that something be done; they always do. In such circumstances, there are great scandals and tabloid headlines; dogs bark, priests pray and politicians legislate. The statute book is littered with such legislation--for example, the Dangerous Dogs Act 1989, which has already been mentioned. We were told that if we opposed it, we were in favour of young children having their faces mutilated by dogs.
After the well-publicised, tragic death of a young woman from drugs, the Public Entertainments Licences (Drug Misuse) Act 1997 was passed. It was meant to achieve three objectives: to change the licensing of clubs in which drugs might be used; to alter the conditions of the licences and close specific clubs, and to persuade local authorities to change their licensing system. Nothing has resulted from that Act.
Horror comics were banned from being imported to this country in 1955. There was a Bill to control the windows of sex shops. There is a long list of legislation that has come to the House because of a demand from the press. Politicians have prostituted their office and this institution by not legislating in the right way, and by throwing away opportunities and wasting time on measures such as this Bill in order to seek popularity.
I gave advice, as I always do, to my party. I suggested 18 months ago that Ministers should stop taking the tabloids. Sadly, that has not happened. We have evidence that the leaders of our country, like the leaders in the previous Government, need to be hooked to a drip-feed of daily admiration from the press. If they do not get it, they become nervous and fretful. We should be in touch with the public mood, but not with the lowest common denominator of racism and hatred of other nations. We should be in touch with the public's best instincts.
The Bill is the result of a misreading of the events of Euro 2000. We have heard a great deal about Charleroi and Brussels, but nothing about Eindhoven. The essence of what happened can be distilled in the difference between the approach of two police forces--between intelligent, subtle policing and--[Hon. Members: "Drugs."] I do not need to mention that. I am talking about the difference between intelligent, subtle policing and crude, tough policing. It resembles the difference between reaction in this country to the miners strike and the current farmers demonstrations.
Farmers are taking similar actions to those of the miners during their strike: blocking roads, breaking the law and committing acts of vandalism. As far as I know there have been no arrests and no court cases involving farmers. However, the miners were imprisoned, some for a long time.
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