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Mrs. Campbell: I am grateful to you for that intervention, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The debate on the guillotine motion is timetabled for up to three hours, according to the Standing Orders, as Madam Deputy Speaker has helpfully reminded us. That will change after 6 December, when we adopt the new Standing Orders and, sensibly, everything will be programmed.
Mr. Grieve: Given the number of amendments and the amount of time available even without any discussion of the guillotine, does the hon. Lady consider that there is sufficient time to discuss the amount of new material that has come back from the other place? We have seven hours in which to discuss 666 amendments.
Mrs. Campbell: I have been in the Chamber since the beginning of the debate and I have listened carefully to the arguments that have been put forward. Opposition Members should say how many of those 666 amendments they consider controversial, and why we are not being given an opportunity--as we shall be under the new Standing Orders--to debate those controversial amendments and decide how much time will be allocated to each.
Mr. Hogg: Will the hon. Lady give way?
Mrs. Campbell: No, I want to make some progress.
I brought up the example of the Freedom of Information Bill because I wanted to express my frustration at not being given the opportunity by the Opposition to make the point that I wished to make to the Minister on the Floor of the House. An Opposition who do not allow Government Back Benchers to make points to their own Ministers are incompetent, and the waffle that comes from that side of the House is, frankly, disgraceful.
I first came across a guillotine motion in, I think, December 1992. I was a member of the Standing Committee considering the Education Bill and I was disappointed that the then Government decided to curtail discussion and to impose a guillotine. The following year, right at the end of the parliamentary Session--despite what the Opposition spokesman said earlier--discussion of the Railways Bill was curtailed on 2 November, and on 3 November the Cardiff Bay Barrage Bill was guillotined.
Bills were being curtailed, and not just at the end of the parliamentary Session. Almost immediately after the opening of the new Session, a guillotine was imposed, on 14 December 1993, on not one Bill, but two--the Statutory Sick Pay Bill and the Social Security (Contributions) Bill. That was a period in which we, as an Opposition, were co-operating with the Government. There was no necessity to curtail discussion on those two
Bills at that stage in the parliamentary Session. The fact that guillotines were imposed demonstrates the hypocrisy on the part of Opposition Members tonight.I think that I speak for many of my colleagues on this side of the House when I say how much we are looking forward to the new Session of Parliament, which will begin on 6 December, when programming will become the norm instead of ridiculous performances such as the one that we are witnessing this evening.
6.19 pm
Sir George Young (North-West Hampshire): I propose to make the briefest speech so far in this debate. I begin by agreeing with part of what the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) said, in that the guillotine is the least satisfactory of all options. A more satisfactory one--if it can be secured--is an agreed programme motion that provides adequate time, to which I have often put my name when I believe that to be in the interests of proper discussion. The difficulty is that we can get an agreed programme motion only if the Government are prepared to offer adequate time. Given the scale of the amendments confronting the House this afternoon, I very much doubt whether the Government would have been able to open Parliament next week if they were first to concede the amount of time which, in my judgment, is necessary to deal with the Bills that are under discussion this week.
Mr. Hogg: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Sir George Young: Yes, but it will the only time, otherwise I will break my undertaking.
Mr. Hogg: I have already made the point to the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) that I have sympathy with the consensual timetable programme motion, but only on the basis that it is amendable. Many right hon. and hon. Members believe that those on the Front Benches did not actively reflect the identification of priorities. If we are to have programme motions, they must be amendable so that Back Benchers can seek to vary the allocated times.
Sir George Young: I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend. I do not think that he disputes my point that the least satisfactory option is the guillotine. A better option is the agreed programme, and then we can have a discussion about how to reach it.
Just over a year ago, when I wound up the debate on the Loyal Address, I said that the Government's programme was ambitious. I also said:
- For many of us, the shambles of the fag-end of the previous Session is still fresh in our memory--four guillotines in the last 10 days of the previous Session, and 820 amendments to the Greater London Authority Bill. However, far from learning the lessons of the end of the previous Session, the Government seem determined to repeat and amplify their mistakes.
- modernising and reforming the legislative process.--[Official Report, 24 November 2000; Vol. 339, c. 709-10.]
We end this Session, as we ended the previous one, with an unseemly rush of inadequate opportunities to consider important legislation. The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill was dealt with expeditiously and amicably in this House. The Minister was kind enough to compliment Opposition Members on the way in which they conducted themselves. Third Reading was on 14 March. Second Reading in another place was on 3 April. The Bill then disappeared into a legislative Bermuda triangle, the map for which is jealously guarded by Sir Murdo Maclean. The Bill was glimpsed briefly between the clouds on 11 May. It then disappeared entirely until 10 September, when it reappeared, running dangerously low on fuel, in another place.
This is an almost unprecedented disruption in the legislative process. It was rather elegantly explained away by a Minister in another place who said:
- we have had an unfortunate break in the thread of continuity . . . But that has enabled us to have time to pause for reflection.--[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 October 2000; Vol. 617, c. 183.]
This is a serious Bill. It sets the framework within which the democratic process takes place. It is a constitutional Bill; it influences how elections are conducted and referendums held. I caution the Home Secretary and other Ministers against over-use of the "listening Government" phrase. We have heard rather a lot of that this week. They may be a listening Government, but they are also rather careless. These Bills have not been well drafted, and that has been part of the trouble.
The Home Secretary says that the Government have not brought in very many Bills. He is able to say that only because, in one case, three Bills have been put into one. The Transport Bill is actually three Bills--it deals with the National Air Traffic Services, the Strategic Rail Authority and charging. This Bill is also more than one Bill--it is the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill. So I urge caution about over-use of the argument about the number of Bills.
I spoke in yesterday's guillotined debate on the Countryside and Rights of Way Bill. Everybody spoke in a disciplined way--they stuck to the footpath and there was very little rambling. None the less, we could not do justice to all the amendments and the Bill was not fully considered. Exactly the same thing will happen to night.
The Disqualifications Bill also had a very unusual passage. Third Reading was on 25 January. Indeed, it was so important that the House sat all through the night. On 26 January, the Bill had its First Reading in another place and then disappeared off the radar until 27 July. It has now been amended substantially and this House is invited to accept that a Bill which the Government did not seem to mind about for six months now has to be rushed through in two days.
This is no way to manage a legislative programme; it is no way to treat Parliament and it is no way to scrutinise Bills. For those reasons, I will have no hesitation in voting against the guillotine.
6.26 pm
Mr. David Trimble (Upper Bann): I shall also try to be brief. As other Members will know, our party is generally against guillotines in any form, particularly in the case of this legislation, as it may deprive us of the opportunity of debating some measures that apply uniquely to Northern Ireland. That is the point on which I wish to make a few comments.
Earlier in our proceedings, I intervened on the right hon. Member for Bracknell (Mr. MacKay) and said that the concept of treating Northern Ireland separately from the rest of the United Kingdom with regard to foreign donations had been consistently opposed by our party. Shortly after that, the Under-Secretary of State for the Northern Ireland Office intervened to quote a passage of evidence given by the late Sir Josias Cunningham, who was at that time president of our party, which implied a willingness to accept foreign donations.
I wish to place this matter in context because I believe that the Minister has misled the House in this respect. The words that he quoted were said, but they were said on 17 June 1998, in evidence to the Committee. In the course of giving that evidence, Sir Josias also said that we would want a uniform system applied. If it were applied in the United Kingdom generally, we should not be omitted. On the point that I was making--that we objected and continue to object to Northern Ireland being treated separately on this matter--the evidence given on that date was quite clear. The comments that Sir Josias made on that occasion were in discussing foreign donations in general. They predated the recommendations in the report, because they were evidence given beforehand. Subsequently, the report was made recommending a ban on foreign donations. We have made it clear that we are quite happy to accept that. However, we have also made it clear, right through this matter, that when the Government brought forward proposals to treat Northern Ireland separately, we objected to them.
May I quote to the Minister from the letter that was sent to the party funding unit at the Home Office by the general secretary of the Ulster Unionist council, Mr. David Boyd, dated 13 October 1999? He said:
- We are disappointed that the proposals for restrictions on donations from overseas differ in Northern Ireland from Great Britain. This is the one area in which legislation for Northern Ireland should be at least as strong as that in Great Britain.
I make it clear, and I hope that the Minister will accept, that we have opposed the separate treatment of Northern Ireland. To suggest, as he did, that we indicated a willingness to be treated separately is not accurate. I reinforce the point by saying that the sentence that he quoted was quoted in another place on 10 October and the misleading impression was thereupon immediately corrected in another place. I am amazed that the Minister proceeds to quote the matter in a misleading manner, even though the error--if error it be--had already been corrected.
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