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Business of the House
12.30 pm
Mr. Oliver Heald (North-East Hertfordshire) (Con): Will the Leader of the House please give us the business for next week?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Peter Hain): The business for next week will be as follows:
Monday 13 September—Second Reading of the Children Bill [Lords].
Tuesday 14 September—Opposition Day [17th Allotted Day]. There will be a debate on higher education, followed by a debate on pensions. Both debates will arise on motions in the name of the Liberal Democrats.
Wednesday 15 September—Procedure motion relating to the Hunting Bill, followed by proceedings on the Hunting Bill—[Hon. Members: "Hear, hear"]. I think it would assist the House if I gave notice that we will be sitting later than usual in order to complete those proceedings.
Thursday 16 September—Second Reading of the Civil Partnership Bill [Lords].
Friday 17 September—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the week following the conference recess will be as follows:
Monday 11 October—Second Reading of the Mental Capacity Bill.
Tuesday 12 October—Remaining stages of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill [Lords].
Wednesday 13 October—Opposition Day [18th Allotted Day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.
Thursday 14 October—Motion to take note of a European document relating to justice and home affairs work programme, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Horserace Betting and Olympic Lottery Bill.
Friday 15 October—Private Members Bills.
The House will wish to know that the date of the state opening of Parliament will be Tuesday 23 November.
Mr. Heald: The Leader of the House will recall that I have been pressing him for a debate on the draft Regional Assemblies Bill. He knows our views about the referendum in the north-east, but surely he would acknowledge that the details of the regional assembly to be approved by the referendum—
Mr. Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con): Or not.
Mr. Heald: Or not. The details should be debated before the ballot papers go out, so may we have a debate in Government time, either next week or the first week back, so that Ministers can explain their plans before the electors receive their ballot papers?
The Leader of the House will realise—as was apparent when he announced the business—that there are differing emotions in all parts of the House and in the country about his announcement on the Hunting Bill,
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but may I press him on a number of matters? Surely, a Bill of that kind needs more than one day's consideration—[Hon. Members: "Hear, hear"]. Will he think again about the time allowed?
When the Bill was sent to the other place last time, there were outstanding issues concerning compensation and the breadth of the offence. Can the Leader of the House assure us that the procedural motion next Wednesday will allow us to debate amendments on those issues? He may say that under the Parliament Act the Bill has to leave this place in the same form as last time and that a Committee stage is therefore inappropriate, but is not it correct that the House is able to put forward suggestions for amendments to the Bill in a separate motion to accompany it to the other place even under that procedure? Can he confirm that after the Second Reading debate there will either be a Committee stage or that more time will be allowed before Third Reading for suggested motions to be considered—and not just Government motions? Can he also explain how much time is to be allowed for each stage of the Bill?
Finally, will the Leader of the House accept that there are concerns about the way in which he is proposing to deal with this matter? The Government have been up hill and down dale over hunting for seven years, yet now we are being told that it is so urgent that the Parliament Acts have to be invoked, but at the same time that the ban can be delayed for more than two years.
The Bill involves taking away an aspect of liberty from people in rural areas. Surely time must be made available for proper debate of the issues involved. Will the right hon. Gentleman think again about the use of the Parliament Acts? It is wrong to use what is, in parliamentary terms, the nuclear option when it is not necessary and there is plenty of time available.
Mr. Hain: I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman survived his reshuffle—or his leader's reshuffle—yesterday. I see that he now has an expanded portfolio, as shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs; I congratulate him on that, but I notice that even with that expanded portfolio he has still not been able to get into the shadow Cabinet. So the Leader of the House of Commons is in the Cabinet, but the Conservative party treats the House with such derision that it will not even appoint the shadow Leader of the House of Commons, with his expanded portfolio, to the shadow Cabinet.
On the hon. Gentleman's specific points, I had hoped, and I had been promising him, to publish the draft Regional Assemblies Bill by now. We will publish it just as soon as we can. The referendum is some weeks off—just under two months away—so there is plenty of time for that. On Monday, there will be a statement by the Minister for Local and Regional Government about this referendum, in which he will specifically address the issue of postal voting as well as other issues, and the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to put his questions to him then.
I accept that there are differing emotions on hunting; there is no question about that. Within the hon. Gentleman's own party there were Members who voted for the ban on hunting, and the same applied on the Labour Benches. On the question whether there should be more than one day for debate, may I remind the hon.
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Gentleman how many times the issue of hunting has been debated in the House? The Bill, which is about to come before us again next week, was debated fully, in detail—in the House, in Committee, on the Floor of the House—and if we look back over the past seven years of Labour Governments, and indeed throughout the 1990s and the last phase of the Conservative Government, we see that this issue came up time and again. Time and again the House expressed its absolutely clear view that there should be an end to cruelty to animals through such a ban, and that view has been thwarted and denied by the House of Lords, which filibustered on the Bill in the last Session.
At issue is how we take this matter forward and how the will of the House of Commons to implement a policy that has been agreed on overwhelmingly by the House of Commons can be exerted. I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman, as shadow Leader of the House of Commons, would be standing up for the rights of the House of Commons in this matter.
May I first deal with the timetable and then deal with the specific points that the hon. Gentleman raised? I am sorry to take so much time to answer this question, but I know that the issue is very much on Members' minds. The intention next Wednesday would be to move the business motion at half-past 12. That could run till any hour—unless a closure motion is moved and you accept a closure motion earlier, Mr. Speaker. The Second Reading debate will run for five hours from half-past 12, so a vote would be expected at around half-past 5. Then the debate on the motion on the suggested amendments that the Government will be tabling early next week, to postpone commencement of the legislation in respect of hunting, will run for three hours. I accept that if other amendments to the Government's motion are tabled and are in order, they could be taken at that time too, so we would expect votes on that motion at around 8.45—certainly before 9 o'clock. Then debate on Third Reading can run for half an hour following a Division, and it would then be possible to send the Bill through to the House of Lords, accompanied by a message hopefully suggesting the amendments, and the Bill would then get its First Reading in the Lords probably next Thursday. That is the procedure that we have suggested.
There are three common-sense reasons for a delay in the commencement of the legislation, which I should have thought everybody would understand.
First, all of us are concerned with animal welfare, and we should all wish to do all that we can to provide time for the re-homing of dogs used in hunts or their humane dispersal if that is required. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has offered—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) asked me these questions; I am giving him the answers. The RSPCA has offered to help, based on its experience of re-homing greyhounds, and we hope that hunts will be able to work with it to achieve that.
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