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Mr. Forth: That is what happens with a guillotine.
Mr. Straw: No, it is what happens when an Opposition cannot see sense. If I had been on the Opposition Benches, I would have found many more opportunities to have a pop at the Government. Conservative Members completely failed to use those opportunities. It was hopeless. We could truncate this debate, but it is possible that we will get into a similar position today.
Mr. Grieve: Does the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge, as I think his colleagues on the Treasury Bench have, that at no time has the Bill been subject to any sort of filibuster in this place--not in Committee, on Report or on Second Reading? There has been complete co-operation in an attempt to get through substantial constitutional legislation in proper form. Will he also understand that the complaint today is that, at the end of the process, we face 666 amendments and have minimal time to consider important further changes?
Mr. Straw: My understanding is that the Conservative Opposition behaved very constructively in Committee, and we are grateful to them for that. The difficulty that they face is one that we faced for part of the 1980s, although after a few election defeats, we finally learned our lesson. The Conservative party cannot speak for its Back Benchers when we discuss voluntary arrangements. That is a fact of life.
Many of the guillotine motions that were introduced between 1979 and 1997 were introduced in the 1980s. That is because we thought that our constituents needed to see us arguing about tiny points into the small hours of the morning. Gradually, we came to the view that our constituents wanted us to examine legislation sensibly and rationally, and the best way to do that is by voluntary
agreement. It gives an Opposition more flexibility, but there must be a backstop. We can then get on with our other job of representing our constituents.
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall): Can the Home Secretary confirm that no attempt was made to reach a voluntary agreement on a programme motion on Monday night, yesterday or today? The Government have not given the House the opportunity to decide how best to arrange these matters or how to avoid the filibustering which, as he rightly said, took place on Monday night.
Mr. Straw: As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am not privy to the discussions through the usual channels. However, if he is right and the Government did not invite discussion on the timetable motion, there is nothing to stop the Opposition Chief Whip or the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip making such a suggestion. We have hard experience of dealing with the official Opposition, if not the Liberal Democrats, and Conservative Members have taken the opportunity to speak at length--that is a statement of fact--so I think that Government business managers judged that the risks of taking the approach that the hon. Gentleman suggests would be too great.
One complaint about the guillotine motion for the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill is that it is being introduced for a long Bill to which there are 666 amendments. However, if one makes that complaint about that Bill, one cannot make a similar complaint about the Disqualifications Bill. I cannot think of a shorter Bill that has come before the House in the whole Session. It is one page long, with just one operative clause and two consequential ones. It is a simple Bill with just three clauses--
Mr. Forth: It is a constitutional Bill.
Mr. Straw: I know that opinions about the Bill differ. In fact, some Conservative Members feel so strongly about it that, if there were no backstop to the debate, they would do their best to talk it out.
The Bill has been the subject of considerable discussion in the House. It was introduced in December 1999 and its Second Reading, Committee and Report stages were held on 25 and 26 January and lasted more than 26 hours. That was a memorable occasion. The Government were not having their best week; Prime Minister's Question Time was coming up, offering the Leader of the Opposition a great opportunity to shine. What did Conservative Back Benchers do? They took away the opportunity provided each week for the Leader of the Opposition to shine. [Interruption.] All the leadership bids take place in the Conservative party.
Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby): The Home Secretary has just said that, in his eyes, an important constitutional measure is much less important than the little bit of spin that may be put by one party or another on Prime Minister's questions. Those of use who care about the constitution of this country were very concerned about the Disqualifications Bill, and we remain so. The fact that we debated it at length show the care that Conservative Members took. The Home Secretary seems to think that a little bit of spin from Prime Minister's questions is more important than that.
Mr. Straw: I do not recall saying that--indeed, I did not say it. I was making the point that Conservative
Members managed to talk out not Government business but the important part of the parliamentary week in which the Prime Minister is subject to questioning, not least by the Leader of the Opposition. I found that an eccentric consequence. There were many Conservative Members, although obviously not the hon. Gentleman, who found it an eccentric notion as well.
Mr. Gerald Howarth (Aldershot): Will the Home Secretary give way?
Mr. Straw: No. If the hon. Gentleman will excuse me, I must make progress.
The Bill has been discussed at great length. It has also been discussed in the other place. It is unfortunate that in the other place, clause 1 was knocked out, but it is widely accepted that it is entirely legitimate for this House to seek to put the operative clause back in the Bill.
The Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North and--
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. George Howarth): Sefton, East.
Mr. Hogg: The Home Secretary is not very good at constituency names.
Mr. Straw: I am good at many other things, but I am not very good at long constituency names which do not reflect a serious sense of place. If my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East (Mr. Howarth) were simply called the hon. Member for Kirkby, which is a proper place, I would know it. The problem goes back to Peter Walker and the artificial boundaries in the Local Government Act 1972. Constituencies were given the names of all sorts of strange places and even brooks in towns, which we had never heard of, and nor had the people in the town.
Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West): This is a filibuster.
Mr. Straw: No, it is not a filibuster. I have one more point to make.
There will be complaints from the Opposition about the guillotine motion, as there always are from the Opposition, whichever party is in opposition. We used to make such complaints in the 1980s, but by the 1990s, particularly in the Parliament between 1992 and 1997, even when we disagreed with the principle of the Bill, we sought to enter into voluntary agreement wherever we could, because we thought that that was much more sensible. There was one Session, 1994-95, in which there were no guillotines at all, because of co-operation from the Opposition. It is a learning curve for the Opposition.
I rest my case by repeating the sage and amusing words of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions--
Mr. Forth: Which constituency?
Mr. Andrew MacKay (Bracknell): North or South?
Mr. Straw: One or the other. Sunderland, South. Winding up the guillotine debate on Monday, my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) said:
- I have never managed to work up much indignation about timetabling. However hard they search the Official Report, Opposition Members will not find one scintilla of indignation from me on the subject of guillotines during my years in Parliament. In my early days in opposition, I recall spending the best part of 150 hours considering the Bill that became the Water Act 1989, but covering barely 10 clauses. At the end of that, the Minister in charge, the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), announced a guillotine. At that point, the Opposition were all supposed to rise and say how outrageous it all was. Personally, I could have kissed him.--[Official Report, 27 November 2000; Vol. 357, c. 711.]
5.13 pm
Mr. Andrew MacKay (Bracknell): Well, well, well. National guillotine week carries on. The only surprise is that the affable Home Secretary has chosen to be chief executioner every day.
Some of us who were in the House in the 1970s are reminded of poor old Michael Foot--in those days of greater honour, the Leader of the House used to move guillotine motions, rather than leaving it to departmental Ministers. I remember poor old Michael Foot moving five guillotine motions in one day. That ruined his reputation as a parliamentarian.
We value the Home Secretary's reputation as someone who is serious about this place. He is in such stark contrast to the Prime Minister and others who treat the Chamber in a cavalier way, but I regret that by moving four guillotine motions this week, he is following Michael Foot's road.
The Home Secretary cannot be comfortable with what he is doing today. It arises from the fact that an arrogant and incompetent Government have got their legislative programme horribly wrong. Labour Members who shake their heads--especially the parliamentary private secretary, the hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Caplin)--need to think about what the business managers have done.
This Labour Government have the biggest majority in the House in modern times and have reformed the other place to their supposed advantage, but in the final week of the longest Session in nearly 80 years--in the run-up to a new Queen's Speech which, unusually, will be delivered in December--we need to ask why they have been so incompetent and arrogant. The Home Secretary maintains that there is not an excessive number of Bills. I can let that remark pass, but I cannot ignore the sheer incompetence of not getting the Bills ready in time and, having got them ready, not being able to proceed with them.
Let us be specific about the two Bills that are relevant to the guillotine motion. As my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) reminded us in his powerful intervention, the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill started in Committee in the other place on 11 May, but its second day in Committee was not until 10 October. That was pure incompetence--there was no filibustering or delay by the Opposition parties. The Government did not have their Bill properly drafted, could not make progress and did not know what they wanted
to do. Month after month, like a rabbit in front of headlights, progress on the Bill remained absolutely stationary. We are rushing it through tonight on a timetable motion because of the Government's delays, not because of filibustering by the Opposition.The Disqualifications Bill will be rushed through the House tomorrow. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien), will recall that way back in January we stayed up all night because it was being rushed through as a matter of urgency. It was so urgent that it did not appear in the other place until October and has only just returned to us. Why such a huge delay? Again, it is due to total incompetence. Many people did not want the Bill; the Government lost their nerve; pressure was put on them by the Irish Government and Sinn Fein; and they had to reintroduce it in the other place. Once again, there was no undue delay or excessive, unreasonable opposition in the other place.
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