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1.42 am
Mr. Charles Clarke: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I am acutely aware of criticisms about the time taken to address the Bill and consider its various aspects. Let me return to what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said earlier--we have had a substantial and full discussion of the points of principle. Moreover, we have
sought, as the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) and the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) have acknowledged, to work in the most consensual way possible--for the practical reason that we wanted to get the Bill through both Houses as quickly as possible, and for the equally practical reason that the more consensus there is in the House, the easier it will be to put the Bill into effect.Important judgments remain to be made. Ultimately, the important question is whether we are determined to do all in our power to stamp out the football hooliganism that has so disfigured our society. The Government are determined to do so, and to ensure that international and club games can take place in a more positive and constructive atmosphere than has existed until now. We are determined to carry the Bill through, and I hope that it receives the unanimous support of the House so that the other place may consider it in its entirety. I commend the Bill to the House.
1.44 am
Miss Widdecombe: After a fairly consensual approach, I hate to end our proceedings on a note of dissent: the procedures that have been inflicted on the House today--although not those debates that we have been allowed to hold--amounted to a farce.
We have tried to discuss the Bill responsibly. The Government obtained a Second Reading with no difficulty, in the same time that would have been taken if we had debated it on the Friday originally proposed by the Government. We have been in constant discussion with the Government about possible or agreed amendments. We have done all we could. All we wanted today was the opportunity to debate some major issues in Committee.
We wasted more than two hours discussing the ill-considered guillotine motion when we should have been discussing the Bill. As a result, half the amendments tabled in Committee were not debated. If we had been allowed to complete the Committee stage properly, it would not have been necessary to return to some matters on Report: we could have debated and voted on some important issues.
When the Bill was introduced, we made it clear that, if we were to support it at later stages, certain matters were extremely important to us--for example, the presence of magistrates in the ports. Today, we held an important discussion on magistrates warrants. We were not able to vote on that matter--not because there had been no debate, but because the guillotine fell at midnight and we had not yet reached that point in the order of consideration.
The same point pertained in another important discussion on magistrates in the ports. The debate was held, but we were not allowed to vote. We have not been able to amend the Bill to our satisfaction. What is even worse is that we did not even debate the amendment on the criminal standard of proof. That issue is central to the Bill. It came up tangentially in other discussions, but the amendment was not debated.
Against that background, we have made it clear throughout the Bill's proceedings that we will not obstruct its further consideration. We shall not obstruct sending it to another place. However, it goes there in a much less
satisfactory form than if there had been no guillotine today and if we had been allowed to co-operate as we have done all along.
Mr. Charles Clarke: Does the right hon. Lady agree that the political divisions in the Conservative party are the main reason for today's guillotine? We saw those divisions on Second Reading, when Conservative Members voted against the right hon. Lady's lead. Moreover, certain Conservative Members have made a practice of disrupting the business of the House. It is the Opposition's failure to control their Back Benchers that has led to what occurred today--there are splits and divisions in the right hon. Lady's party, as she is aware.
Miss Widdecombe: That is utter tosh. The Minister is well aware that we made it clear through the usual channels that we did not expect any undue delay in tonight's proceedings and that we expected to conclude them at a reasonable hour--although certainly not by 10 pm, which would have been the effect of the original guillotine that the Government had the gall to table. We gave such assurances as we could in the circumstances, having talked to all the people who had difficulty with the Bill.
The Government had no grounds other than their own muddle and incompetence for tabling the guillotine motion. The hon. Gentleman should not say that it had anything to do with divisions in the Conservative party. There have been divisions over the Bill in the Labour party, too--a fact which the Minister persistently ignores. The Bill will receive quite a rough passage in the other place--and not only from the Opposition. Considerable disquiet will be expressed by Labour Members; they will not say that they want to curtail discussion of the measure because they fear dissension in one particular party. I am sorry that it has come to this, for the simple reason that, until the guillotine motion was tabled, we were proceeding in a spirit of co-operation. We could have had a sensible debate tonight and we could have reached and voted on the other issues. The Bill that is being sent to the other place would have been in better shape, and that would have been better for the Government had they wanted it to receive the quick passage through the other place which I suspect it is most unlikely to receive.
1.50 am
Mr. Simon Hughes: I note that three hours and 10 minutes remain to debate the Bill, but it may be for the convenience of the House to learn that I anticipate that we shall finish this debate in 10 minutes and not three hours.
Mr. Corbyn: Do not talk the rest of us out.
Mr. Hughes: I know that other hon. Members wish to speak.
I share the general view, as expressed by the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe), about the procedure that has been used. It is nonsense that Parliament has been asked to take all the Bill's stages in two days and, in particular, that in the past 12 hours we have taken its Committee and Report
stages and are debating its Third Reading with no chance to consult people between those stages. We have not been able to consult key people such as the police, the courts, the football authorities and the rest. The House has been asked to consider amendments on Report to a Bill that was not even before us simply because it had not been printed as amended in Committee. People who had not been here would not have been able to follow debate on the Bill that we were amending, and those of us who were here all day have found it difficult to follow the implications of each and every amendment.It was not necessary to take all these stages today. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) said last Thursday, and as the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr. Davis) argued earlier, we could have held the Committee stage today and the remaining stages on Wednesday. The whole House could have participated and we would have completed the Bill in time for it to go to the other place. The Lords could have completed its consideration on separate days and that would have still left some days before the end of term. Not only was the guillotine motion bad practice, but it has probably resulted in bad legislation.
On the policy issues, we have always said that we wanted further legislation to deal with football hooliganism. We have always said that the problem was particularly an English one and that it was logical, because of the procedures that we use, to have a Bill that covered England and Wales. We have always said that we would support a Bill that would make international a domestic ban and that, in such cases, the courts could make it a requirement to surrender a passport.
However, we have also made two points very clear. We said that banning orders must have the precondition of a conviction. We moved an amendment to that effect on Report, but we were not able to carry the House with us even though Members from both the other main parties supported it. We also said that we were not willing at this stage--without testing for toughened legislation with further bans and further entitlements to remove passports--to intrude so much into the individual liberties of the citizen that we would introduce summary detention on the basis of a record that might not have involved a conviction or that might never involve a conviction. That would be a piece of legislation too far. We tested that proposition and, again, we had support from Members of both parties, but we were unable to carry that point in Committee.
It would be inconsistent of us to say that we were now happy with the Bill. Let me be honest with the Minister. If this were a single-Chamber Parliament, we would have the crude choice between voting against the Bill, knowing that we had no chance to improve it, and seeing no Bill on the statute book. This is not a single-Chamber Parliament and another Chamber will give the Bill significant consideration next week. We hope that it will pick up many of the unresolved issues that have been left from these debates.
It would be churlish of me not to acknowledge that the Government have moved their position and not to accept the co-operation that they have offered and that there has been between the three parties. That has improved the Bill, but it is still not a good Bill and, in some respects, it is still a dangerous Bill. The dangerous, extended
provisions, which my colleagues and I do not think are good law or good drafting and which are not justified, mean that we feel obliged to vote against Third Reading.If the Bill is passed tonight and goes to the Lords, we hope that they will amend it and teach the Government that it will be better to have the Bill without the fourth provision than to have a badly drafted Bill with the fourth provision included against considerable opposition in this House and elsewhere. The Government have about nine days to think again; we hope that the other House will persuade them to do so.
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