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Mr. Campbell-Savours: A parliamentary question has been asked.
Mr. Forth: How does the hon. Gentleman know the answer?
Mr. Campbell-Savours: Because the information is available. Additionally, as this Government always answer questions and do not hide behind claims of unreasonable cost, I presume that the answer that I receive will be comprehensive. If it is what I expect, it will set out in detail all the legislation that has been guillotined since 1979. If the answer is available tomorrow, hon. Members may wish to carry it with them, as it would help them in their debates.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said that there are 666 amendments, to one of which we objected. In other words, the Government support the great majority of amendments passed in the Lords. It seems to me that that is the Lords working at its best. If the Lords can accommodate that volume of business on consequential amendments that are inconsequential in nature and would not be treated as controversial in the Commons, thereby saving the Commons time, the Lords will have helped the legislative process.
Mr. Grieve : In the Lords, the Bill occupied five days in Committee and three or four on Report. Does the
hon. Gentleman think that the House should simply rubber-stamp the amendments that were made there?
Mr. Campbell-Savours: If it had not been for the efforts in the past 12 months of the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), we would have been able to find more time to discuss these matters. Although I understand why he and his colleagues do such things, in the past few years, they have repeatedly delayed legislation. It seems inevitable that, at the end of the Session, we are coming up against the buffers.
Mr. Hogg: Does the hon. Gentleman understand what he is saying? He is saying that primary legislation should be made in the unelected House, notwithstanding the fact that it relates to Parliament, the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill and will not be discussed in this place. Surely that must be a travesty of good sense, even to him.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: I cannot believe that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is suggesting that we are going to debate 666 amendments today. When the previous, Conservative Government were in office and hundreds of amendments were tabled, they were never all discussed on the Floor of the House. The justification given by Ministers in that Government was that the amendments had been dealt with in the Lords and were not controversial. I cannot see how the argument could have changed since then.
Mr. Forth: Surely the hon. Gentleman is not saying either that I, singlehandedly, can shape the entire legislative Session, much as I would like to be able to do so, or that--certainly since the House returned late from a three-month summer recess dictated by the Government--we have not had ample time, had the Government managed their business properly, to consider these matters in very great detail. What about all the non-sitting Fridays and all the evenings when everyone bunked off early? What about all the other occasions when the House could have considered these matters? The Government have controlled the timetable. It was not me.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: The right hon. Gentleman talks about non-sitting Fridays. It is all right for him, because his constituency is about 20 miles down the road, in Bromley. My constituency is 319 miles from London. It now takes me 11 hours to get home. The reality is that we have very limited time to discuss legislation on the Floor of the House.
Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North): Has not the summer recess always been from July to late October? Moreover, does my hon. Friend remember that, in 1992, we rose for the summer recess on 15 July, two weeks earlier than usual, but returned at the usual time in October?
Mr. Campbell-Savours: I do not really want to go down this route. If we compare one year against another over the years, the recesses broadly average out. It is legitimate to argue that we could sit on Fridays, but the fact is that, when it takes many hon. Members 10, 11 or
12 hours to get to and from London, we have to go home earlier in the week. We have to do that because of travel difficulties.
Mr. Elfyn Llwyd (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy): I think that the hon. Gentleman has said that none of the amendments, bar one, is controversial. I ask him to read Lords amendment No. 1, which the Government support. He says that we are talking about a non-controversial amendment. However, it reads:
- A person may not be appointed as an Electoral Commissioner if he . . . is a member of a registered party
- an officer or employee of a registered party
- within the last ten years.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: I can only say to the hon. Gentleman that I hope that he catches the Deputy Speaker's eye.
6 pm
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall): I note that the Secretary of State and the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman, the right hon. Member for Bracknell (Mr. MacKay), took a full hour to deploy their arguments, when we have only three hours to debate the motion.
Mr. MacKay: There were a lot of interventions.
Mr. Tyler: I acknowledge that there were some interventions. However, I hope to do rather better.
The debate shows clearly that the pantomime season has started already. We have had a lot of, "Oh yes you did" and "Oh no we didn't". The hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) is clearly rehearsing for the role of Buttons. Others may have other views about who is to take which role. It is clear that we are having a repeat performance of Monday evening's debate. Rather than repeat everything that I said then--others have repeated what they said--I shall refer the House to columns 676 to 678.
My fears were entirely justified on Monday evening. A guillotine is a blunt instrument. I am depressed to find that the Home Secretary--I am glad that he is still on the Treasury Bench--seems not to understand the difference between so-called programme motions and a guillotine. A programme motion allows us to have Divisions at particular stages of a debate. Such motions provide an opportunity for hon. Members on both sides of the House who have points to make to express their views and to vote. The problem with a guillotine is that we go right through the evening until everything falls, whether it is important or unimportant.
There was a classic example on Monday night. We spent three hours debating why there was too little time to debate amendments. I am sure that it would be wrong to suggest that there was waffle, because the Chair would
have called Members to account, but there were some prolix contributions. There was much elaboration and repetition.When it came to the vote on the guillotine, which we were told was so important and critical to the future of democracy, what did we find? Extraordinarily few Conservative Members remained to vote. In the words of the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), they bunked off.
Mr. Tyler: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making that contribution to my speech.
When we moved on to a debate on the substance of the Freedom of Information Bill, which Conservative Members were saying was of critical importance and we needed more time to debate, how many Conservative Members came into the Lobby in support of the Liberal Democrat amendment? The answer is one. That was even more disgraceful. It was the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) who joined us. I am sorry that he is not in his place this evening. He would have contributed a well rehearsed speech to the debate. However, he did that on Monday, and I think that we can take it as read that had he spoken this evening he would have made a similar contribution. He stuck to his principles and he voted. I think that there were seven other Members from other parties who supported us, along with Labour Members.
Mr. Forth: Is the hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting a new parliamentary principle? Is he saying that he will measure our assiduity in respect of parliamentary duties on the basis of whether we support Liberal Democrat amendments? That strikes me as a new principle. Does the hon. Gentleman really mean what he is saying?
Mr. Tyler: The right hon. Gentleman is most helpful on these occasions. I have now found the figures. I am able to report that five Members of other parties supported us, with 12 Labour Members and one Conservative.
Mr. Tyler: I am saying that we debated the amendment at great length, and the right hon. Gentleman will recall that it was an important one. When it came to a Division, what happened? In the right hon. Gentleman's words, his colleagues bunked off.
That is what happens during a guillotine debate. There is not a carefully rehearsed and orchestrated opportunity to debate the issues that the House wants to debate and to divide on them. Instead, Members waffle. We have now a real choice between that sort of blunt instrument and a much more precise instrument. Hon. Members on both sides of the House are present who are also members of the Modernisation Committee, and by consensus we developed the idea that it was for the Opposition to say what issues they wanted to debate and to divide upon. That provides opportunities for Members on both sides of the House, including Labour rebels.
It will be within the recall of hon. Members now in their places that when we debated the Transport Bill on Report, it was decided that it would be important for certain Members to speak on particular issues. They did so and there were Divisions. When there is a guillotine, the Government too have it in their hands to waffle, filibuster or delay.
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