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Mr. Wilshire: Is my right hon. Friend aware that it would be remarkably easy to table the questions? As so many written questions are being sent back to Members offering a reply shortly, all hon. Members would have to do is table the mountain of paperwork that the Government have been shunting around the place.
Mr. Forth: That would be one approach. Another would be to bear in mind that few Members will avail themselves of the opportunity that my amendment
offers, so the chances of being selected are high. This is a bargain offer, which I hope hon. Members will find irresistible.
Mr. Gale: My right hon. Friend has moved on from Friday. I am reluctant to return to it, but I am perplexed. I recall the Leader of the House complaining bitterly that we were not allowed to sit through the night last night because of the House of Lords. Although technically we cannot sit tomorrow, if the House sits through the night, it can continue to sit through tomorrow. Not for the first time, the House would be in Thursday while the rest of the world was in Friday. So tomorrow is available to us. If the Government were so anxious to sit through last night to complete the business, which we all want on the statute book, why not do it tonight?
Mr. Forth: That raises another interesting matter, which is that Labour Members complain that we were not allowed to continue to sit last night, whereas they have complained for years about late-night sittings. They must make up their minds. I love late-night sittings—
Mr. Keith Simpson: So does Mrs. Forth.
Mr. Forth: My hon. Friend refers to Mrs. Forth. He is on dangerous territory as to whether she approves of me being here late at night. I invite him to discuss that directly with her, and I wish him the best of luck.
Mr. Simpson: I withdraw my comment.
Labour Members cannot make up their minds. In most weeks in most parliamentary years they are desperate to get out of the building as quickly as possible and scuttle off to wherever it is they go—except for the one time when they think it might help the Government in their difficulties. Suddenly, they are prepared to sit late at night. That strikes me as inconsistent and odd.
Mr. Hawkins : Does my right hon. Friend recognise that many of us think it odd that Labour Members have complained about the House of Lords rising early whereas in fact, thanks to the Government's guillotines and change of hours in our House, the Lords has sat for far more days and for far later than us for the past couple of Sessions?
Mr. Forth: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that matter, because he allows me to speculate—I am sure this is in order—that if the House sits on Monday and Tuesday, as the motion provides, and if we have questions, as my amendment would provide, their lordships presumably would sit at the same time to deal with the business moving between the two Houses. That would allow us to reflect on the pattern of business here and in the other place. It is significant that their lordships sit for more days of the year than we do and for longer hours. Frankly—I get no pleasure in saying this—they do more work than us, and carry it out more effectively than us. That is why I disagree with Labour Members who keep going on about the supremacy of the House of Commons. It is no longer supreme; the
Government in the Commons are supreme—a very different thing altogether. That is why, in parliamentary and constitutional terms, we increasingly look to the House of Lords—it gives me no joy to say this—to hold the Government to account. We are failing because the Government no longer allow us to do that because of changes to our procedures.
Mr. Gale: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend, but those of us who have been in this place for a while notice Whips scuttling around and realise that there is the possibility of a closure. The amendment, which several of us have tabled, was not moved until about 15 minutes ago. I hope that you will allow a proper debate on it before considering a closure.
Madam Deputy Speaker: I have received no request for a closure. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I was in the Chair when the amendment was moved and know exactly how long it has been debated.
Mr. Forth: We are grateful for that observation, Madam Deputy Speaker.
We have a real prospect of sitting on Monday and Tuesday. That is made more likely by what the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) brought to our attention in her incisive way. Having been at the other end of the building observing the proceedings in another place, she let us know that the legitimate negotiations that take place at this stage of the Session have broken down due to a complete loss of faith by the Government. In one sense, that is the Government's problem, but in another sense, it is everyone's problem. We are here to deal with such matters and to hold the Government to account. We are watching carefully—this is what the motion is about—what is happening here and in another place while judging how far the provisions of the sittings motion will be required.
That brings me back to another point raised mainly by Labour Members. Why should either House sit indefinitely or all through the night tonight simply to help the Government out of their self-made difficulties? Why not finish at a reasonable hour tonight, here and in another place, and resume our deliberations on Monday, as the motion provides? What is so wrong with that? It would be interesting to hear the preference of the Leader of the House or his deputy. Would the Government prefer us to deal with the matters later and later into the night and go, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) said, into what for everyone else would be tomorrow, but for us would be today? Or would they prefer us to have a cooling-off period over the weekend in which the Commons and their lordships reflect on what has caused the difficulties, where the differences remain and how the negotiations could succeed? That would allow us to return on Monday in a calmer frame of mind, with all our questions tabled as a result of my amendment, which I hope the House will support, to have a proper parliamentary day with relevant questions, proper debate and further deliberations. Surely that would be a civilised way of approaching the problem.
I hope that there are many contributions on the motion and my amendment, because it will be interesting and instructive to hear what colleagues on
both sides of the House have to say. I cannot believe that anyone would want to oppose my amendment. It is permissive: it would allow hon. Members to table questions and to turn next Monday and Tuesday into much more lively and relevant parliamentary days than the Government contemplated in their original motion. All those possibilities are before us.The second provision of the motion is that
- "the Speaker shall not adjourn the House until any Message from the Lords has been received and a Committee to draw up Reasons which has been appointed at that sitting has reported."
Reasons Committees are a neglected corner of our parliamentary activities. Once, I took it upon myself to initiate a short, but I thought very relevant, debate on the membership of a Reasons Committee—something to which I hope to return many more times. I have always wondered why the House accepts so meekly and without any discussion the proposed membership of such Committees. They are an important part of our proceedings. They do important and interesting work and yet we usually sit there, assuming that they happen more or less automatically, and allow these people—who ever they may be—to be appointed to the Committee to speak on our behalf.
Mr. Forth: Surely it would be much better if we could appoint a representative Back Bencher to a Reasons Committee so that we could have a voice on it, rather than it being stitched up by the usual channels—talking of which, I shall give way to my hon. Friend.
Mr. Wilshire: Is my right hon. Friend aware of what can happen with a Reasons Committee? The guillotines introduced by this wretched Government mean that certain matters may not even have been discussed. We then vote to reject what the other place has proposed. Subsequently, a Reasons Committee is sent to the room behind the Chair to draw up a reason for rejecting something on which the House has not even expressed an opinion. Does he not find that absolutely extraordinary?
Mr. Forth: I do, but I do not want at this stage—there may be an occasion for it in the future and perhaps my hon. Friend and I could work on that—to query the whole point of Reasons Committees, what they do and what they are supposed to contribute to our parliamentary proceedings, although that would be of real use.
For the purposes of today's debate, and to attempt to keep in order, I accept that the Reasons Committee is a given—for the moment. We are considering the implications if we start to take the Reasons Committee much more seriously, in terms of the motion before us. For example, what might happen if the House decided to take a more direct interest in the Reasons Committee and to have a little debate about its membership—or, perhaps, to move amendments to its membership to satisfy ourselves that we were being properly
represented on it, instead of it being the usual stitch-up? That could have implications for the terms of the motion, which is,
- "the Speaker shall not adjourn the House until any Message from the Lords has been received and any Committee to draw up Reasons which has been appointed"—
- "at that sitting has reported."
This debate gives me the opportunity to flag up to colleagues that they may want to pay much closer attention to the Reasons Committee to see whether we can make it a more effective and representative element.
All in all, I hope that we can resolve in a proper and civilised way the outstanding matters with regard to the contentious legislation that is moving back and forward as we speak. I have never accepted the analysis that has been attempted by the Prime Minister today and repeated by the Leader of the House, that if their lordships oppose one key part of a Bill, the entire Bill has to be thrown away. I see no logic in that. It is a crude political play by the Government, but it will not wash. No one out there will believe a word of it. We can have all the good things that have been agreed in both of the Bills in question; it is the Government's decision whether they want to throw everything away for the sake of one element. We are all part of that decision, of course.
I do not believe that the public will accept that part of the analysis that the Prime Minister and his friends have been trying to put forward—"If you won't let me have this part of my Bill, the whole Bill is going to disappear", said in that petulant tone to which we have become used. Let us have none of that. Let us hope that there will be a proper discussion and negotiation to resolve these difficulties. If that cannot be the case, however, I am more than prepared to accept the thrust of the motion—hopefully, with my amendment—so that we can contemplate some valuable sitting time next Monday and Tuesday. I shall draw my comments to a close so that other hon. Members can voice their support for my amendment.
A potential problem lies at the far end of this process. It is possible that if we found ourselves sitting at length next Tuesday, a direct conflict could arise with the Queen's Speech on Wednesday—the state opening of Parliament. I do not know whether anyone has given that much thought. Have the Government devised any way in which to resolve that? We should be told what the Government intend to do if we reach midnight next Tuesday without resolving the matters of conflict between this House and another place. That is a highly relevant consideration. If the Government take the trouble to table a motion to provide for Monday and Tuesday sittings, surely they have thought beyond that and considered what might happen if the Tuesday sitting were prolonged.
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