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Mr. Hain: My hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House tells me that that figure has decreased. On Committees, only four out of the 23 Programming Sub-Committee resolutions put to the full Standing Committees on the Bills concerned were divided on—in other words, three quarters of Standing Committees were content with the resolution agreed by the Programming Sub-Committee. I submit that that shows that the programming procedure, which we have modified in response to points made by hon. Members and, with the will of House, intend to modify further this afternoon in response to representations from the Procedure Committee, has been improved to the extent that it now operates across the board with a massive degree of consensus.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab): In which case, I am sure that my right hon. Friend can say how much of his legislation during the past Session has not included 600 or 700 amendments on Third Reading and in the House of Lords. If that efficient manner of examining legislation is so highly commended, he can surely demonstrate that the Government are not amending their own legislation in increasing numbers of instances on Third Reading?

Mr. Hain: My hon. Friend makes a good point. We are seeing a lot of Government amendments, which I do not encourage as Leader of the House because they do
 
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not make for smooth business. However, we have seen increasing consensus on the management of business, and some of the sticky points that were apparent in the early days of programming have now been removed, and we can move forward together on that basis.

Mr. Mark Francois (Rayleigh) (Con): The right hon. Gentleman obviously has many statistics at his disposal this afternoon. Regardless of the resolutions made in Programming Sub-Committees when Bills went Upstairs, how many of those programme motions were voted against on the Floor of the House when they were brought down to the main Chamber and appeared on the Order Paper?

Mr. Hain: My hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House will reply to that point, if he can obtain the information. If the hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) examines the progress of Bills in Committee, which is the key area, and in the House, he will find consensus.

Ms Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab): Does my right hon. Friend agree that the scrutiny of legislation in this House is to a large extent dependent on how well informed hon. Members are? No structure can ensure that well informed hon. Members scrutinise Bills. Does he remember how much time was wasted in this House in 1992–97 by filibustering, which was done in the name of scrutinising legislation? It was not scrutiny; it was wasting hon. Members' time.

Mr. Hain: John Golding provides a classic example of successful Labour filibustering in opposition—he once spoke expertly for some 17 hours to the great advantage of the Labour party—but whether that can be defended as a sensible use of parliamentary time is an altogether different question. In my initial period in the House between 1991 and 1997, I recall constant filibustering by Labour Opposition Members—it was part of the game. Now we can focus on the clauses that really concern Opposition Members and provide enough time for them to be scrutinised and debated properly.

That point is demonstrated by the consistent consensus in Committees, where the Government have even structured sitting schedules around the Opposition's requests. On the Civil Contingencies Bill, for example, no Thursday morning sittings were scheduled to allow the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald), to prepare for business questions, where—this shows how generous we were—he gave me a tough time. On Tuesday 10 February, the Committee that considered the Traffic Management Act 2004 did not have a morning sitting to allow one Conservative Member to attend divorce proceedings. [Laughter.] The consensus is considerable.

Mr. Heald: On the Civil Contingencies Bill, despite the courtesy of the excellent Government Whip, we voted against the programme motion.

Mr. Hain: There you go.
 
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As the Modernisation Committee's 2003 report pointed out, there was never a golden age of full scrutiny of all clauses of all Bills. Before the introduction of programming, the haphazard nature of scrutiny caused deep and widespread dissatisfaction. Programming was a response to considerable pressure from hon. Members on both sides of the House and others over a number of years for the sensible timetabling of Government Bills. Properly applied, programming is a positive development, allowing more effective scrutiny of legislation.

Neither the Modernisation Committee nor the Procedure Committee opposes the principle of programming. That is important. They both made sensible suggestions, some of which we have already taken on board—and in the case of the Modernisation Committee, some of which we will take on board this afternoon, with the will of the House. For all their protestations, I do not believe that the Opposition would abandon programming were they in government.

We propose that the programming Sessional Orders be made permanent. There is little to be gained from continued annual debates on the matter. Programming is now an established part of our procedures and that should be reflected in our Standing Orders.

Mr. Forth: Before the Leader of the House continues to pray in aid the Modernisation Committee and even, if I may say so, the Procedure Committee chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), can he confirm for the record that the Modernisation Committee was set up by the Labour Government in 1997; that it is, uniquely, chaired by a Cabinet Minister, namely himself and, formerly, his predecessors; and that it has a large Government majority? We should be in no doubt that these Committees represent the will not of the House but of the Government.

Mr. Hain: The right hon. Gentleman has had a severe bee in his bonnet about the Modernisation Committee all along. It so happens that his successor as shadow Leader of the House has taken his seat on the Committee, and a very good thing too. The idea that it is some kind of Government fix is nonsense. I can say from personal experience that the fact that it is an independent Committee gives rise to a lot of discussion, as well as some concern, within Government about the likely directions and recommendations of its inquiries. All its Back-Bench members are very independent-minded, including the shadow Leader of the House.

We acknowledge, however, that certain improvements to programming could be made. Perhaps most significantly, we propose to implement the Procedure Committee's recommendation that where everyone is content the Standing Committee should be able to make decisions to vary the programme without need for the Programming Sub-Committee to meet. I understand that there is some disappointment that the Government did not go further in agreeing to the Procedure Committee's other recommendations, but I can assure the House that they were given very careful consideration.

I shall take each of the amendments in turn. First, the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) and others suggest that the Committee's recommendation
 
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in paragraph 52—that a factual statement of clauses and schedules not considered in Committee should be produced—should be implemented. We gave careful consideration to this recommendation but in the end were not persuaded that it would be useful to produce such a statement. The information would be misleading. Clauses and schedules may not be debated for a variety of reasons, not least because they are uncontroversial and the Opposition do not want to. Moreover, although a clause itself may not be debated, amendments on that clause may have been well debated with groups of amendments on earlier clauses. If Members wish to know whether debate in Standing Committee was curtailed by the operation of the programme motion, that information is readily available through reading the relevant Standing Committee Hansard. All the information is already in the public domain.

Sir Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield) (Con): Why could not the Leader of the House meet that point by producing an annotated list pointing out where clauses were uncontroversial?

Mr. Hain: As I said, the information is readily available. If the hon. Gentleman or any other right hon. or hon. Member is worried that a Bill has come back to the House without being sufficiently scrutinised in Committee, they can check that for themselves. If, as he wants, we put this into Standing Orders, that would give the Opposition a ready-made opportunity to create, for partisan reasons, circumstances whereby certain clauses are not debated, and then say that the Bill has not been properly scrutinised.

Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD): Will the Leader of the House give way?

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