Mr.
Gibb: I want to add my thanks to those of the Minister to
House officials, police and doormen, for all their work over the past
few weeks. My thanks also to the Clerks, Mr. Shaw and
Mr. Davies, for their work
and advice, and thanks to the Hansard writers and the staff of
the House for their patience, particularly over the past 48 hours. On
behalf of all the Members of the Committee I would like to thank both
Chairmen, Mr. Chope and Mrs. Humble, for their
studious and fair chairmanship during what has been a long and troubled
Committee.
I offer my
deepest sympathy to the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport on the loss
of her father—it must be a terrible time for her. I am grateful
therefore to my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness who
stayed away while she was away—if not him, then somebody else to
take his place during the Committee.
I would also
like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne for his lively
contributions to our proceedings and my hon. Friend the Member for
Basingstoke for helping out with her specialist knowledge on early
years and children’s issues, and of course a great big thanks to
my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings for his
erudition and his careful scrutiny of the DIUS parts of the Bill. I
have worked on three Bills with him and it is always a pleasure,
despite our occasional disagreements on
philosophy.
Jim
Knight: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing
me to intervene, because this gives me an opportunity to right a wrong.
I forgot to mention the Children, Schools and Families Minister, my
hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, North, and the Innovation,
Universities and Skills Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for
Birmingham, Erdington. They have done an admirable job on their first
occasion to lead on a Bill as Ministers and I am extremely grateful to
them.
Mr.
Gibb: Finally, I would like to say a big thank you to my
hon. Friend the Member for Leominster for his huge help, particularly
during the past 24 hours, which without him would have been extremely
difficult. This whole Committee has been difficult for me. The burden
of Committee proceedings falls on the Opposition and this has been the
most extraordinary Bill Committee I have served on in my 12 years in
the House, and I have served on many during that period. We have had
Ministers voting the wrong way on clause 49—not just once but
twice—we became inquorate, and we had Labour Members failing to
turn up for a 9 o’clock start and as a consequence losing three
votes. Those things are forgivable and one could maintain a sense of
humour about them if it had not been for what then happened, which was
a totally unnecessary long session out of sheer petulance, an approach
I am sure will be monitored outside this House and about which I am
quite cross and angry—as are other members of this Committee. We
met from 9 o’clock on Thursday through to 4.30 in the
morning, with periodic breaks, and from 8.15 this morning until 12.20
today. We met for just four hours today. We could easily have concluded
our deliberations next Tuesday, especially with a longer sitting, as
had been agreed on Thursday. We have now finished this Committee and
yet we have a full day’s Committee left in the programme motion.
The cost to the House of Commons in terms of taxi fares and other
expenses will run into thousands of pounds—something I hope to
find out about through the Speaker’s Office.
More important
even than that, is the disruption to staff who work in the House. More
than the disruption, which they are used to periodically, at no point
was any clarity given so that they could phone their families and tell
them what was happening to their working day, which I find deeply
uncaring and surprising coming from Members of a party which claims to
be caring for people in their working lives. I find it rather offensive
and difficult to understand. Ministers claim that there has been
filibustering—I know what filibustering is, I have been in the
House long enough to identify it. Although the hon. Member for Yeovil
goes on a bit sometimes, as does my hon. Friend the Member for South
Holland and The Deepings, neither of them was doing anything other than
his normal thorough scrutiny of the Bill, which as the
Minister said involved 256 clauses, 16 schedules and more
than 200 Government amendments.
Hostility to
parliamentary scrutiny is a sign of arrogance and of the final months
of a tired and dying Government, as is the failure of Government Back
Benchers to be bothered to get out of bed to be here for the
Committee’s 9 o’clock start. That is all I want to say on
that matter, Mr. Chope. I thank you and Mrs.
Humble for your careful chairmanship of the Committee. I hope we never
again have proceedings in Committee so poorly managed by Ministers and
so petulantly directed from the Government Whips
Office. I
am grateful to my hon. Friends for their support and to the hon. Member
for Yeovil for his support on some of our amendments and for his very
valuable contributions to the scrutiny of the
Bill.
The
Chairman: Before I put the question, I wish to express my
very great appreciation to my co-Chairman for all her work in
Committee. I must congratulate her on her foresight in accepting so
readily my invitation, which I gave to her almost 24 hours ago, to take
over the Chair from 4 o’clock on Thursday. I do not think that
even she could have realised the extent to which that obligation would
extend. She has enabled our proceedings to go extremely well, and I am
glad that she has been able to fulfil some of the commitments that she
already had for
today. May
I also thank the Clerks, the Hansard reporters, the Badge
Messengers, the police, catering staff and all other servants of the
House who have been involved in helping us in our proceedings.
Sometimes I think that the thanks given are almost ritual, but in this
case they are extremely heartfelt. I would like to put on record my
apology to the Members of the House and officials to whom I gave
information on the basis of information provided to me, which was that
the proceedings would be adjourned when we got to clause 215. I passed
that information on to them and it turned out to be
erroneous.
During
today’s proceedings I have put on record my concern at the
nature of communications with the Chair. I am sure that other members
of the Chairmen’s Panel will wish to discuss it. It is
absolutely essential that the Chair is recognised by members of the
Committee as having an important part to play in being informed of what
is happening. I just put that on record again.
I do not
think that the Committee would have been able to operate on automatic
pilot, as it did on one occasion when I was a member of a Committee
chaired
by Mr. Ted Leadbitter. In the early hours of the morning, he
was in the Chair asleep and, when he woke up, he congratulated the
Committee on having been on automatic pilot without troubling him. That
is a reminder of the fact that it used to be pretty commonplace for
Committees to sit through the night. It is not so common now, but
perhaps new precedents have been set in the consideration of this
particular
Bill. I
can tell right hon. and hon. Members that I gain some comfort from the
fact that members of the Committee are now more familiar with some of
the rules of procedure and Standing Orders than they were at the outset
of our proceedings. That can only be to everyone’s benefit. We
will find out in due course how our proceedings have been treated in
terms of precedents and whether Committees have sat continuously for
longer. I recall—again, many years ago—when the Greater
London Council
Paving Bill was being debated. I think that it went on for a day and a
half sitting continuously, and at the end of it all, the British
Printing Industries Federation sent those of us who had participated in
all Divisions a certificate of thanks because we had contributed so
significantly to the profits of the printing industry. I am not sure
whether any of us will qualify for such a certificate as a result of
our deliberations, but I hand out a hint to the printing
industry—if it wishes to proceed in that way. Without further
ado, I shall put the motion to the
Committee. Question
put and agreed
to. Bill,
as amended, to be
reported. 12.25
pm Committee
rose.
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