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Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. One or two hon. Members are making an exhibition of themselves; I shall make a bigger exhibition of them if they cannot keep quiet.
Mr. Garnier: My point may be of no concern to Labour Members, but it seems a denial of democracy for the Government to railroad the Bill, at very short notice, into another Committee that is subject to timetable problems, when hon. Members may already be serving on other parliamentary Committees.
Mr. Lidington: Not only my hon. and learned Friend's point but the raucous laughter with which his serious remarks were greeted by certain Labour Members indicate that the programme is a pretence at providing an opportunity for scrutiny; it is nothing like the real thing.
The truth is that even if the Chair was minded to exercise its discretion, that would leave precious little time either for Members or outside organisations to reflect on the implications of last night's vote and to draft and table amendments to allow debate about their concerns. The situation will be even worse on Report and Third Reading when the proposition before us, that Members will be restricted to a total of three hours, is outrageous and a complete denial of our constituents' right to have their voice heard through their representatives in this place.
Lembit Öpik: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the programme motion compresses two years of painstaking work, not least by the Minister, into one day's consideration? In effect, those of us who genuinely accepted at face value the merits of the suffering and utility test will have little opportunity to try to put back the good provisions on the exemption of hunting with dogs that the Minister and even the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster) have acknowledged would be acceptable.
Mr. Lidington: The hon. Gentleman has pursued a consistent course in all the debates on this subject. Not only he but many people both inside and outside the House will feel grievously betrayed by the way in which the Government are now handling the matter.
Mr. Hugo Swire (East Devon): My hon. Friend talks of consistency and indeed the middle way group have at least been consistent, but does he agree that a body that has been spectacularly, if predictably, inconsistent is the Liberal Democrat party? The hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George), who said that he disapproved of what happened last night, abstained on both new clauses 11 and 14. Is he aware of any morning-after pill that the Liberal Democrats—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That is far too long for an intervention.
Mr. Lidington: My hon. Friend makes his point in characteristically forceful style.
The truth is that we now have a Bill whose intentions and consequences are radically dissimilar from those of the Bill that the Minister introduced last year. Until last night, the Minister had followed an approach that I certainly regarded as seriously flawed but at least had about it a measure of logic and coherence. There was the exhaustive evidence of the Burns report. There were three days of hearings in Portcullis House, where the
Minister listened to the evidence presented by outside organisations, and the Government's proposals have been examined for 77 hours in Standing Committee.On 14 May this year, the Minister wrote in his letter to the Deputy Prime Minister that
- "there is a golden thread from the principles through to the evidence to the conclusion."
If the motion is agreed to tonight, we will, in effect, send to the Lords a Bill that the House of Commons has been denied the opportunity to scrutinise and challenge. The House needs more time to carry out that task. For example, we need time to debate the implication for enforcement of what is now clause 6.
Paddy Tipping: Does the hon. Gentleman recall the comments, which he has made on many occasions, that the House has had far too much time to give to the Bill? He is now arguing that there is too little time. Does he not agree that the time has come to resolve this matter once and for all?
Mr. Lidington: I believe that the Government's decision to give higher priority to a Bill on hunting than to a Bill on health speaks volumes about the way in which Ministers are now drifting out of touch with the priorities of the British people. I argue that, when the Government choose to set a priority and to introduce legislation, the House should have the time to subject it to proper scrutiny and challenge on behalf of our constituents. Let me give the hon. Gentleman some examples of why that time is needed.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: Does my hon. Friend not agree that one way to ameliorate this draconian timetable would be for the Committee to sit all day Thursday, all day Friday, all day Saturday and all day Monday—four days in Committee? If my hon. Friend cannot get enough hon. Members to serve on the Committee, I volunteer my services.
Mr. Lidington: I am sure that my hon. Friend's enthusiasm will have been noted by the usual channels.
The Minister himself said in his letter to the Deputy Prime Minister that the new clause approved last night would
- "undermine the strong, simple framework of enforcement that is set out in the Bill."
- "The so-called 'complete ban' amendment would disregard those tests"—
- "and make it possible that wild mammals would suffer more".
Why are the Government in such a rush? Perhaps they have changed their mind, although I doubt it. Are they embarrassed, or do Ministers perhaps just want to sweep the Bill out of the way as quickly as possible? After last night's shenanigans, I am tempted to believe that the Government's actions are explained more by cock-up than conspiracy. However, I fear that there is another motive at work. I suspect that the Government are working to an overall timetable that includes plans to apply the Parliament Act and that if it were not for that timetable, the programme motion would be unnecessary.
I detect a glimmer of hope from No. 10's reluctance today to commit the Government to using the Parliament Act and, indeed, from the omission of any such pledge from the Minister's opening speech. I respond to the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) by saying that Asquith and Lloyd George designed the Parliament Act to deal with a situation in which the House of Lords had rejected not relatively minor legislation—in the overall scheme of things—but a Budget. The proposal to limit the power of the Lords in such a way was endorsed not once but twice by the people after a general election campaign.
Mr. Kaufman: As the hon. Gentleman refers to me, perhaps he recalls that the last time that the Parliament Act was used was not in the circumstances that he outlined? The Conservative Government used it to put through a war crimes Bill, which was not proposed in any party's manifesto.
Mr. Lidington: In fact, the Parliament Act was last used by the present Government—I think that they have used it twice since coming to office in 1997. My point is that its purpose was to enable the Commons to assert its will over the Lords if grave issues of policy were at stake and the policy supported by the Commons had been clearly endorsed by the people. However, the Government seem to want to use the Parliament Act to force through a measure that Ministers opposed until last night and that they even now believe to be unworkable and unenforceable, even if they are scared to say so. Using the Parliament Act in such circumstances would be nothing short of a grotesque abuse of parliamentary procedure. On those grounds alone, the House should resist the motion. The fact that the Government insist on trying to ram the measure through is the clearest demonstration yet that they have completely lost touch with the priorities of the British people.
11.8 pm
Andrew George (St. Ives): I said earlier that I strongly objected to the fact that we did not have the opportunity to vote last night on new clause 13. I wanted the opportunity to do that, and it was a procedural failure that all the options were not available. I suspect that the new clause would have fallen in any case, judging by the nature of last night's debate, but of course we will never know. [Interruption.] Despite the unwarranted sledging
from Conservative Members, important matters must be sorted out prior to the debate in Committee. [Interruption.] Conservative Members appear to be incapable of engaging in intelligent debate.Everyone has already said the same things many times in the debate. Many people seem to be determined to rehearse all the arguments all over again, and that will probably happen in Committee on Thursday and up to Monday. I am worried that that will be an abuse of the Standing Committee.
I want the Government to manage business in the Standing Committee so that we have an efficient use of the available time. It is clear from the vote last night that, despite the Minister's best efforts to persuade his hon. Friends that we should go for a registration scheme, the will of the House has been expressed and it wants what will amount to an outright ban. To achieve the necessary changes in the Standing Committee, over what I hope will be no more than two sittings, it is important that we discuss a raft of amendments rather than reopen debates that we have had many times before.
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