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Mr. Shepherd: Indeed. A Standing Committee is merely a subordinate instrument of this House, which enables the House to discharge more business than would otherwise be possible.

Mr. Woolas: I am listening to the hon. Gentleman very carefully, but I remind the House that an hon. Member can attend and speak in a sitting of a Standing Committee even though he is not a member of that Committee.

Mr. Heald: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can you confirm that that is the case? My understanding is that the Deputy Leader of the House is not correct. An hon. Member cannot attend a Standing Committee considering a Bill unless he is a member of that Committee. Indeed, that was the substance of the row involving my right hon. Friend the Member for
 
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Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) in respect of the Bill that became the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001. She was ejected from the Committee.

Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): That is my understanding of the matter, but I think that we should now proceed with the debate.

Mr. Shepherd: I was grateful for that intervention by the Deputy Leader of the House, because he betrayed all the characteristics of new Labour. As Cicero said,

"Those who know nothing of the time before they were born will remain forever a child".

We actually had the Deputy Leader of the House of Commons stand before us and assert something that is not correct. I regret that. He is the Deputy Leader of the House, but he does not understand the business of the House. Nevertheless, he will advise us to vote for something that I am arguing against. I hope that my party will vote against it convincingly, and I hope that the Liberal Democrats, on the basis of such an inadequate intervention from the Deputy Leader of the House, will also vote against the proposals.

I do not underestimate the importance of university fees and other such matters to the social framework of our country, but perhaps the most profound issue of this Parliament is war. I wish to point out what we will do by limiting freedom of speech through such motions. We were allowed only one day to debate whether we should go to war; the first time that Parliament had been given the authority to make the decision. We all know that representations were made to have more than one day of debate, but many hon. Members were unable to express their feelings about the defining issue of this Parliament. I commend my hon. Friends to vote against the motions.

4.32 pm

Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con): I shall follow in the spirit of my hon. Friends the Members for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) and for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack), because underpinning this debate—which may seem limited in its scope—is one of the paradoxes that has struck me more and more about the House of Commons. It is that the way in which our parliamentary system works means that the House of Commons is expected and asked both to provide and sustain the Government of the day and, at the same time, to hold it to account. That worked reasonably satisfactorily for a long time; indeed, until very recently, when this Government came to power with no respect for the parliamentary process. The present Prime Minister, throughout his career, has shown very little interest in the parliamentary process and the Government have been ruthlessly determined to use their majority to get their way without let or hindrance.

Mr. Greg Knight: What does my right hon. Friend think of the fact that as we debate two Select Committee reports, there is not a single Labour member of either of those Committees in the Chamber?

Mr. Forth: My right hon. Friend reflects the point that I am trying to make; interest among Labour Members in Parliament and the parliamentary process has
 
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diminished almost to zero. Of course, I exempt the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), who, as ever, has bravely tried to represent her entire party today, with her usual style and commitment.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills pointed out, a system that worked historically, informally and by tradition—all the things that are resented by the Government—has now almost completely broken down. What we have seen today is the culmination—although it may be only part of the way in a long process—of the diminution of the House of Commons and the rampancy and supremacy of the Executive. The apparently esoteric matters before us today form part of that process. The programming of Bills, deferred Divisions and the many other changes that have been made in the past seven years have reduced the opportunities for hon. Members to hold the Government to account through debate, delay, irritation, questioning and all the other means that have been used in the past. They have now almost all disappeared. Delay is now regarded as unacceptable. Debate is regarded as irrelevant and, as was reflected in one or two of the interventions today, the Government expect to legislate in uninterrupted fashion for four or five years.

That is not what I have always understood the parliamentary process to be. Although a Government, by definition, have a majority in the House and will almost invariably be able to legislate and have their way, I believe it is proper that the Government be delayed, held up and irritated and that Ministers be required to answer questions. That was part of the parliamentary process, but time and time again, in these procedural changes that are brought before us, we see that the Government regard debate as an irrelevance and votes as a formality—nothing should stand in the way of the Government and their Members.

Indeed, it is even worse than that: Members should not be inconvenienced in any way. That is what lay behind the change in hours and it is what lies behind the nonsense of the deferred Division. Time and time again, the word "convenience" has started to appear in the parliamentary lexicon. Members must be able to predict what will happen and when, so that nothing should inconvenience them and nothing should come in the way of their activities outside Parliament or outside the Chamber.

In my naivety, I cling to the view that the prime duty of a Member of Parliament is to be at Westminster in the House of Commons—in the Chamber and in Committees. Apparently, however, the new Labour view is that that is now a marginal activity, one that should be fitted, in a predictable way, into the many other activities that Members of Parliament apparently have, of which I have little understanding and for which I have very little sympathy. That is part of the rapid changes that have taken many of us by surprise over the past few years and are reflected in the motions to which we are asked to agree today.

Mr. Tom Harris (Glasgow, Cathcart) (Lab): The right hon. Gentleman will know that I am one of those Members who voted for the new hours and immediately regretted it when they actually came into force.
 
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I suspect that if we were to examine closely the Register of Members' Interests, there would be far more Conservative Members with outside interests than Labour Members. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that support for the new hours had nothing to do with outside interests, but more to do with an intention to bring the House, and the Chamber, into the 21st century—flawed though those moves may have turned out to be?

Mr. Forth: I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman says, because he uses the phrase "into the 21st century", as if it explained everything and was in itself sufficient reason for making the changes that are proposed. I do not see what is significant about the 21st century. I am not sure what can have suddenly happened when we passed from 2000 to 2001 to give rise to such changes. This is the obsession with modernisation—a word that I have come to detest and which, as far as I am concerned, means nothing, certainly nothing positive, and has given rise to all the adverse changes to which we have been subject.

I resent and oppose the whole concept of programming. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills pointed out, in his typical way, programming, which is a benign enough sounding concept, has been the mechanism whereby the Government have taken the tightest possible grip on parliamentary process and procedure, and diminished the role of Standing Committees to such an extent that they are now merely a cipher. That is symbolic of the relationship that now exists between the Government—the Executive—and Parliament, the House of Commons.

Sir Nicholas Winterton: I am following my right hon. Friend's argument with great care, so I think that he will accept what I am about to say. When a Procedure Committee issues a report on House of Commons matters, it should be dealt with by a decision of the House; it should not be for the Government of the day to produce a response on a matter that is entirely the responsibility of the House and nothing to do with the Government.

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