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Mr. Banks: The right hon. Gentleman presents interesting hypothetical stuff—I am finding it most enjoyable. Would he care for a wager? I should like to wager 25 guineas with him that we will not sit on Monday. What does he say to that?
Mr. Forth: I shall not take the hon. Gentleman's bet—I suspect that he is a much more astute gambler than I shall ever be. I hope and expect that matters will be resolved today. I know that the motion is a threat that the Government are dangling mainly over their Members and supporters, knowing their desperation to get away from this place on almost every occasion. The motion does not frighten my hon. Friends and me—we should love to be here on Monday and Tuesday—but I bet that it scares the hell out of the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends.
David Taylor: The right hon. Gentleman has the advantage of us because we have constituencies and constituents who like to see us from time to time. The good people of Bromley and Chislehurst do not give a damn whether they see the right hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Forth: I invite the hon. Gentleman to come with Mrs. Forth and me to Waitrose in Bromley, where we are to be seen every Saturday morning and where I move happily among my constituents, blessing them as I go.
The motion is sensible and I hope that hon. Members agree that the amendment, too, is sensible.
Mr. Burns: My right hon. Friend is wise not to be tempted by the wager of the hon. Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks), who may know a little more than my right hon. Friend. If we sit late today or on Monday or Tuesday, the Criminal Justice Bill is the only measure that we can discuss.
Mr. Forth: I am grateful for that helpful information, which demonstrates that we are likely to resolve such matters today in a proper way and we will not need to take advantage of the motion. Nevertheless, I hope that the House will see fit to approve the motion so that we can do our job properly. I therefore also hope that hon. Members will support the amendment.
3.37 pm
Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate): I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for accepting the amendment. Accepting a manuscript amendment an hour after the debate has begun is unusual if not unprecedented. It is an indication of the attitude of the Chair, if I may be impertinent enough to impute an attitude to the Chair, to the Government's conduct and their business management.
I want to speak briefly about the amendment. My hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) has made it clear that we are highly unlikely to sit on Monday and Tuesday.
Mr. Hain: As the hon. Gentleman is speaking about the amendment and others have asked questions about the subject, I want to make it clear that the Government will not accept it. The sittings motion provides for the completion of any unfinished business between the Commons and the Lords on Monday and Tuesday if
necessary. If we can complete the business today, we are willing to sit as long as anybody wishes tonight to achieve that. Perhaps that policy will help the hon. Gentleman when he speaks about the amendment.
Mr. Blunt: I am sorry that I gave way. That intervention was extremely disappointing. Given that it was suggested that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) would be unwise to take a bet from the hon. Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks) on the basis that we are unlikely to be here on Monday and Tuesday, the amendment provides a useful opportunity to establish the principle that if the House is likely to sit, it is appropriate in all normal circumstances for questions to be tabled to Departments. I thought that if the House was unlikely to sit, it would in all normal circumstances be appropriate for questions to Government Departments to be tabled. I do not understand the objection, either in principle or in fact. We are here as a Parliament—as a House of Commons—to hold the Government to account, and if the House is to sit, Ministers should be able to come here.
Mr. Greg Knight: Was not the intervention by the Leader of the House disgraceful? He was saying, in effect, that Ministers might be around, but would not be open to scrutiny.
Mr. Blunt: It was both disgraceful and disappointing, and in a sense typical of the way in which the Government have managed their entire business. Everything must be stitched up, down to the last detail, with the least possible opportunity for the House of Commons to hold the Government to account.
We need only look at the motion to see how unusual it is. Next to it, in brackets, appear the words "Until any hour". When I was elected in 1997, that was the norm. It is, perhaps, a sad testimony to the lack of stamina among Labour Members that over the past six and a half years the Government have ensured that "Until any hour" rarely appears on the Order Paper, and that therefore the House of Commons seldom has an opportunity to explore both sides of an issue properly. Nowadays "No debate" is the norm. No doubt the Government would like that to apply to everything, so that there would be no debates on anything and we would simply be Lobby fodder, with no chance of discussing the issues.
Tragically, that is what the House has actually become, because of the Government's total lack of respect for Parliament as an institution. What was so extraordinary about the speech of the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell) was that he made much of this being a democratic Chamber. In fact it is a cipher, a tool of the Executive. Until Members exercise their responsibilities with the bravery shown by the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) to stand up for the rights of the House of Commons, and for what we believe in and know to be the truth, the House will remain a cipher—even compared to the House of Lords, with its minimal powers of delay and scrutiny.
Mr. Banks: The hon. Gentleman reminded us that he came here in 1997. I seem to remember making endless speeches rather similar to his between 1983 and 1997,
when his party was in Government, and I do not recall a Tory Back-Bench rebellion on the scale of the rebellion we have seen on this occasion. I do not think the hon. Gentleman should point the finger at us and suggest that we are not trying to hold the Executive to account.
Mr. Blunt: The rebellion seemed to be going quite well until there was a possibility of the rebels winning, when it collapsed in short order. We observed the operations of the Labour Whips and others. Had the previous scale of the rebellion been sustained, the legislation on foundation hospitals would have been knocked back.
Mr. Evans: I was elected in 1992, and I am sure that my hon. Friend and other Members will remember the great Bob Cryer, who used to hold the Executive to account nightly. We would discuss into the early hours of the morning a number of subjects that were open to debate, but that opportunity has now been removed.
Mr. Blunt: Of course, one commends hon. Members on exercising their own judgment on issues like foundation hospitals or the right to trial by jury instead of adopting the views of the Executive. However, the real disaster is that Government Members who are not in the Executive have been party to shredding the House's ability to do its job properly, including even scrutinising legislation. I have served on Standing Committees, as have other hon. Members, which are now subject to a guillotine and timetable. If our constituents knew that vast amounts of legislation and dozens of clauses go through without any scrutiny at all they would be astonished. I do not think that they are aware of the fact that we simply do not do our job as a legislature. It is hardly surprising that the only effective and detailed work to hold the Government to account is taking place in the House of Lords. That is a serious reproach to Members who are not part of the Executive, and is also a reproach to the Executive, who are not prepared to open themselves up to scrutiny. They are not even prepared to open themselves up in principle to scrutiny by allowing questions to the Home Office and the Department of Health in the unlikely event that we are here on Monday and Tuesday.
Mr. Gale: Is not one reason why the other place has had to table so many amendments that a great deal of legislation has gone through Committee and, indeed, the House without proper debate? Is that not why many amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill have already had to be accepted by the Government, and is it not the case that we are only talking about two more?
Mr. Blunt: Absolutely. My hon. Friend speaks with enormous authority as a member of the Chairmen's Panel. As a Committee Chairman, he has witnessed Committees being unable to do their job. That should be a serious reproach to us all, and it must change. We simply cannot do our job properly if Bills and other legislation go through the House without any consideration at all.
I do not know whether it is unprecedented for Mr. Speaker to accept a manuscript amendment an hour after a debate has started, but it is certainly highly unusual. However, it was accepted and would establish the principle that there would be questions to the
Executive on Monday and Tuesday if the House were sitting. It was utterly symptomatic of the Government's behaviour that the Leader of the House should say that they are not prepared to accept the amendment.
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