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Dr. Evan Harris (Oxford, West and Abingdon): On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday, the Department
of Trade and Industry made an announcement via a written statement on civil partnerships. Given its nature, it should have been made first to the House. Indeed, you reiterated that point to the Department on 9 December. However, the announcement was extensively trailed in The Observer, including quotations from the Minister for Industry and the Regions, who then appeared on the "Today" programme before the written statement was available. The hon. Lady talked extensively about the content of the consultation document. Even then, copies of an 88-page document were not available throughout yesterday from any of the Vote Offices. When I entered the Chamber today, it was still not available, despite multiple requests by many hon. Members through the Vote Office to the responsible Department. Can you do anything to reiterate your urging on behalf of Back Benchers and Front Benchers who wish to know the content of these announcements in good time, and, indeed, to stress to Departments that such documents must be available to hon. Members through the Vote Office in the normal way, instead of being kept back, apparently for the purposes of media management?
Mr. Speaker: The House knows that I deprecate statements being made to the media about new policy announcements before they have been made to the House. In the case of the document to which the hon. Gentleman referred, I understand that what was published yesterday was a consultation paper, and that its publication was made known to the House in a written statement yesterday by the Deputy Minister for Women.
Dr. Liam Fox (Woodspring): On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. As you will know, the Government were defeated last night when the House of Lords voted overwhelmingly to call on them to revoke the Food Supplements (England) Regulations 2003 and renegotiate with the European Commission. Have you had an indication from Ministers, Mr. Speaker, about whether they want to clarify the Government's position? The need for such a statement is given greater urgency by the astonishing claim by the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Miss Johnson), during health questions today that supplements are being removed because they are unsafe, and it would give Ministers a chance to explain that supplements will remain on sale until they are banned by Europe.
Mr. Speaker: As the hon. Gentleman said, that was raised in Question Time today, and there is nothing to stop any hon. Member putting questions to the Minister concerned.
Mr. Tim Boswell (Daventry): On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I have given you prior notice of my point of order, and have advised the Members concerned. I wish to draw your attention to remarks by the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) in last Monday's debate on student fees. At column 730, he said
- "when we asked the House of Commons Library to comment on the Conservative proposals, it said:
'We couldn't understand the logic'."—[Official Report, 23 June 2003; Vol. 407, c. 730.]
I was concerned that the Library, which has a hard-won and universal reputation for scrupulousness and accuracy, should have been quoted in such a way. I today received a response from the Librarian, who rightly preserved the confidentiality of exchanges between herself and the hon. Member in question. However, she concluded that
- "the response as a whole was balanced and gave a fair assessment of an admittedly complex policy area."
- "satisfied that Mr Willis misquoted somewhat selectively and out of context from the information we gave."
Mr. Speaker: I should like to consider this matter. I will look into it and reply to the hon. Gentleman.
FINANCE BILL [WAYS AND MEANS]
Intangible Fixed Assets
- That provision be made in the Finance Bill amending Schedule 29 to the Finance Act 2002.—[Dawn Primarolo.]
Inheritance tax: gifts with reservations
- That provision be made in the Finance Bill amending section 102 of the Finance Act 1986. —[Dawn Primarolo.]
Finance Bill (Programme) (No. 5)
Motion made, and Question proposed,
- That in accordance with the resolution of the Programming Committee of 30th June 2003 and pursuant to the Programme Order of 6th May 2003 relating to the Finance Bill:
(1) Proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion 8 hours after the commencement of proceedings on the first of the Ways and Means motions relating to the Bill set down this day.
(2) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion 9½ hours after the commencement of the proceedings on that motion.
(3) Paragraph (2) of this Order has effect notwithstanding the practice of the House as to the intervals between stages of Bills brought in upon Ways and Means Resolutions.
(4) The proceedings on consideration shall be taken in the order shown in the following Table, and each part of the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the time specified in the second column.
| Proceedings | Time for conclusion of proceedings |
| New Clauses and new Schedules, except those relating to stamp duty land tax or stamp duty. | 3½ hours after the commencement of the proceedings on the motion referred to in paragraph (1) above. |
| Amendments relating to Clauses 1 to 41 and Schedules 1 and 2; amendments relating to Clauses 130 to 211 and Schedules 21 to 42. | 5½ hours after the commencement of those proceedings. |
| New Clauses and new Schedules relating to stamp duty land tax or stamp duty; amendments relating to Clauses 42 to 129 and Schedules 3 to 20; remaining proceedings. | 8 hours after the commencement of those proceedings. |
—[Dawn Primarolo.]
12.44 pm
Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst): I do not understand why the Minister does not see fit to explain to us why on earth so little time is being allocated to such important material. The Government seem at least to be acting consistently in their wish to deny the House proper opportunity to debate the matters before it.
I suspect that were the Minister to seek to catch Mr. Speaker's eye, she would make some spurious claim about the programme motion being agreed in the Programming Committee. That, from my information, may be technically true, but the Minister knows that, in effect, the Opposition had no choice. We were offered inadequate time or potentially no time at all. Faced with such an option, my hon. Friends on the Programming Committee were probably right to accept, reluctantly and under the Government's pressure, inadequate time, because we would otherwise get even less time. I hope the Minister will not say that the Opposition signed up to the programme motion and were content with it. We are not.
The reason we are not content is straightforward. The Finance Bill is always a special Bill, not only because of its content and the effect it has on everybody's daily lives, both individual and corporate, but because there exists no safety net in the House of Lords, as exists for other Bills. That puts the Finance Bill in a special category. I have never accepted an excuse that may be offered from time to time by the Government and others that if, by some mismanagement, we do not have adequate time in this House to scrutinise a Bill and hold the Government to account, there is always the safety net of the House of Lords.
As we know, their lordships do a wonderful job of scrutinising legislation. They sit for more hours and more days than we do, and they do the job that we should be doing. The reason we cannot do it is that the Government do not let us do it. Systematically, and this is another case in point, the Government take an arbitrary view of how much time the House requires to scrutinise the Government, and then feign surprise when we fail adequately to do so, in spite of the sterling efforts of my right hon. and hon. Friends. The Finance Bill is therefore in a special category. We have no safety net and no alternative to the scrutiny that the House can bring to bear. That is the general point.
What are the Government seriously suggesting in the programme motion? Not only are they arbitrarily imposing an overall time limit on our proceedings, but they compound that error by claiming to know how long the House will require for each grouping within, as we call it in this place, the knives. In the first grouping there are, by my calculation, nine distinct and separate issues to be considered in a mere three and a half hours. Those include items such as ISAs and PEPs, children's tax credit for persons subject to immigration control, capital allowances for small and medium-sized enterprises, and a very controversial issue that affects many people—vehicle excise duty on historic vehicles.
One could argue that each of those issues would merit three and a half hours. I am sure that hon. Members could take up that time subjecting those matters to proper scrutiny, but the Government tell us that all those issues together will be allowed only three and a half hours. There is the potential for several hundred Members of Parliament to want to contribute to a debate on behalf of their constituents on issues that may affect them individually, whether through their investments in ISAs and PEPs or their much loved historic vehicle, but they will be allowed only that limited amount of time.
In the next group there are seven major issues and 30 Government amendments. The Government are at this stage introducing substantial amendments to their own Finance Bill, yet they have the gall and the impertinence to tell us that only two hours will be allowed to consider those seven separate issues covered by 30 Government amendments. That is an insult to the House.
Finally, and perhaps worst of all, the Government are allowing us only two and a half hours to consider, of all things, stamp duty and stamp duty land tax—a major and extremely important issue covered, by my reckoning, by about 90 separate amendments. I hope that the point has by now become clear: whereas historically we have always been allowed two days for this stage of proceedings on the Finance Bill to consider such matters, the Government have taken it upon
themselves to say, as they did originally, that one day should suffice, and they have only grudgingly given us a little extra time so that we now have eight hours in total to deal with all the matters that I have just adumbrated.Why do the Government take the view that we have to finish our work and deliberations here in the House of Commons at 10 or 11 o'clock tonight? What is so magical about that hour? Does the Paymaster General turn into a pumpkin? Are we no longer able properly to consider the Finance Bill at later hours, as many of us who have been around for a while used to do routinely? Are the Government now telling us that so delicate are Labour Members, so lacking in stamina, so lacking in commitment to the parliamentary process, that they insist on bunking off at 10 or 11 o'clock at night regardless of whether the measure before the House has been given proper scrutiny? That is the only conclusion that we can draw—it really is. Instead of saying, "Let us examine the size, scope and nature of the issues and then attempt to agree on what constitutes a reasonable amount of time", the Government march along in hobnailed boots—I am sure the Paymaster General rarely wears such footwear, but I suspect that on this occasion she did so—and tell us that this arbitrary amount of time is the time that we will take: three and a half hours for nine major issues, two hours for seven further issues, and two and a half hours for a group encompassing 90 separate amendments. The figures speak for themselves.
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