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Mr. Heald: I thank the Leader of the House for the business.

At the beginning of this year, while blocking my Bill designed to protect civil servants from political interference, the Government promised to publish their own civil service Bill during this Session. Here we are eight months later; when will it be published? If there is to be pre-legislative scrutiny, can it be done by a Joint Committee?

May we have a debate about parental contact and the family justice system? That would enable us to ensure that the system was fair to fathers and to look at how expert evidence should be dealt with to avoid the tragedy of children being taken from their families unnecessarily.

We have normally had an annual debate about the United Nations in the main Chamber, although I realise that there is a debate today in Westminster Hall. Bearing in mind the reports of widespread corruption in
 
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the oil-for-food programme in Iraq, which is said to have netted Saddam Hussein and his friends $10 billion, and the concern that the Secretary of State for Defence expressed in the House that such money was funding the current insurgency, surely we should have the annual debate here in the main Chamber.

May we also hear from the Deputy Prime Minister as to how he is responding to the north-east referendum? With only a week to go, the ballot returns are tiny, and there are reports that 17-year-olds have received ballot packs in Northumberland and that voters in Darlington have reported that their packs contained a charity envelope rather than a voting paper. I know that Ministers are begging people to vote, but is that not a step too far, and may we have an early statement?

Earlier, the House heard the Home Secretary apologising for putting out a press release that said that he had announced the murder review during the debate on the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill when that did not prove possible. Unfortunately, the Leader of the House had allowed so little time for the debate that the Home Secretary was unable to speak. Was that not an example of Ministers shooting themselves in the foot by trying to be too clever, the Home Secretary jumping the gun and the Leader of the House curtailing debate so that hon. Members could go home? The day before, he was extolling the virtue of systematic guillotining of Bills, and he forced through his motions in the teeth of opposition from the official Opposition, the Liberal Democrats and all other parties in the House except the Labour party. What does he say today? Will he put an end to this sort of nonsense?

Finally, a fox managed to walk into Portcullis House yesterday—[Interruption.] Or possibly ran. In any event, does the Leader of the House have any plans for the systematic hunting of foxes in Portcullis House?

Mr. Hain: I am completely foxed by that question. I hope that there will be no hunting in the Palace of Westminster and that Opposition Members who are great huntsmen will not encourage that practice.

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman did not have the grace to thank the Government for our great generosity in providing an extra half-day of Opposition time on Thursday 11 November in return for a statement having invaded an Opposition day.

On the draft civil service Bill, a document will be published shortly. There is no intention to put it to a Joint Committee. On parental contact, the Government are just as concerned as the hon. Gentleman to address the issue, although we do not accept the Fathers 4 Justice manifesto in its entirety, as he has perhaps suggested. We are concerned about parental contact and will address the issue in the near future.

On the hon. Gentleman's request for an annual United Nations debate, I shall certainly look into the matter. I note his point about corruption and Saddam Hussein's siphoning off of billions of pounds of United Nations money under the oil-for-food programme. That is one of the many reasons why the situation prior to the invasion was unsustainable. We were seeing widespread corruption and Saddam enriching himself and his elite, while Iraqis continued to be impoverished.
 
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On the Deputy Prime Minister and the north-east referendum, the hon. Gentleman said that there might be tiny returns. I think that he might be surprised. I understand that the returns are now accelerating, and I hope that the people of north-east England will vote yes. They are entitled to their voice for their region, just as Wales is entitled to its voice, and has it, and just as Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own national voices as well. As for the reports of charity notices in ballot packs, I am tempted to say that that is a very charitable gesture by the Government, but I am afraid that I do not know anything about that detail.

It is not acceptable for the hon. Gentleman to use the difficulty yesterday, on which the Home Secretary has reported to the House and apologised, to try to undermine the whole principle of programming. It has nothing to do with that. Indeed, on the contrary, timetabling yesterday and for all Bills has enabled the Opposition to put their case vigorously, and that will continue to be the case.

Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall) (LD): Among the business just announced is the consideration of Lords amendments. Very extensive Lords amendments seem to be on their way to us, including on the Hunting Bill. Perhaps I can take this opportunity to express sympathy to the Leader of the House for the incident that he faced last night. Frankly, the rational discussion about this issue that I saw reported from the other place is in stark contrast to the irrational thuggery to which he was subjected in Oxford last night. I happen to think that the Bill is misguided, but I hope that hon. Members in all parts of the House will deprecate what happened to him last night.

May I ask the Leader of the House to make a statement about the appropriate way for Ministers to make statements? I wholeheartedly accept the apology that the Home Secretary has made, but surely the business managers should have apologised to him, as they could have protected last night's Third Reading on the Order Paper if they had wished to do so. In any case, the Home Secretary's statement this afternoon in answer to an urgent question demonstrates that we needed a proper statement. The fact that Mr. Speaker enabled such a statement to be made demonstrates that a brief statement on Third Reading would not have been sufficient, because it would not have provided an opportunity for hon. Members on both sides of the House to question the Home Secretary.

The case is not isolated. May I draw the Leader of the House's attention to the written statement made last night by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about UK emissions, which is an extremely important issue? It contains the second retreat on that matter this year and should surely have been made in the House to enable all hon. Members to question the Secretary of State. Indeed, I understand that the Secretary of State wanted to make such a statement, but other Ministers—the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry—opposed her and the Prime Minister overruled her. Surely that undermines the UK Government's position in relation to both the presidency of the Union and the chairmanship of G8.
 
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Emissions are a global threat, which some think more important than terrorism. May I draw the Leader of the House's attention to early-day motion 1839 and ask for a proper statement from the Secretary of State in the House?

[That this House condemns the decision of the Government, announced first to journalists and pressure groups and only subsequently to the House, and then in a written rather than oral statement to apply to the European Union to increase by almost three per cent., the UK's permitted carbon emissions under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme; sympathises with the Environment Secretary whose wishes to hold the line were overruled by the Prime Minister; notes that the only interventions by the Prime Minister on environmental matters, notwithstanding the promise held out by his speeches, are when he seeks to weaken environmental protection; and suggests that he will find it difficult to achieve his stated aim of persuading other countries in the EU and G8 to take the fight against climate change seriously if he fails to do so himself.]

Mr. Hain: On that last point, we are strongly committed—indeed, we are one of the leading Governments in the world on these matters—to the Kyoto treaty, solving the problems of climate change and reducing emissions, which is why the Secretary of State made her written statement. However, our approach must be balanced between the competitive needs of our businesses and the need to reduce emissions to meet our obligations and reduce the threat of climate change. I agree that climate change is a menace that faces the planet, and the hon. Gentleman is right to make that point.

I understand that this Government have made as many statements as any previous Government, and the Prime Minister has made more statements over equivalent periods in the House of Commons than either of his two Conservative predecessors. It is simply not the case that we are churlish about making statements. We come to the House whenever we can to make statements, but we must maintain a sense of proportion or we will interrupt the other business of the House.

It is also important for the hon. Gentleman to recognise that we can only protect Third Reading debates if we have programming. We do not want to return to the old days in which proceedings ran on into the night, causing chaos and inconvenience not only to hon. Members, but members of staff in the House. He should keep his comments in proper proportion.

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's remarks about the attack on me at Balliol college, Oxford, last night. We must distinguish between the legitimate case that the huntsmen must make, which I respect, and their right to protest against Ministers and Cabinet Ministers, like me, and what he described as "irrational thuggery". Hon. Members and Ministers are vulnerable to violent attack. Had it not been for the presence and diligent intervention of an armed police officer in the room in
 
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which I was speaking at Balliol college, I would have been assaulted, so I am grateful to the police for their co-operation.

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