Debates between Mark Spencer and Peter Bone during the 2010-2015 Parliament

Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill [Lords] (Programme) (No. 3)

Debate between Mark Spencer and Peter Bone
Tuesday 26th February 2013

(11 years, 3 months ago)

Commons Chamber
Read Full debate Read Hansard Text
Peter Bone Portrait Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope).

I want to query a couple of things that the Minister said. She is a first-class Minister, and I think that had she been a shadow Minister, she would have been arguing for more scrutiny. I notice that she has now been left alone on the Front Bench with just one Whip, which seems to indicate that nobody in Government wants to be associated with this programme motion. When the Deputy Leader of the House sat on the Opposition Benches, he was a fine proponent of opposing programme motions, and it must be very sad for him to have to take this line today.

There is an intellectual flaw in the Minister’s argument. If she is saying that this is not controversial and that three hours gives us plenty of time for debate, why bring in another programme motion, because the debate will automatically finish within three hours anyway? The centralist, Stalinist approach of this Executive is such that they want to be wedded to programme motions.

I know that that is not the Prime Minister’s view, because in his excellent speech “Fixing Broken Politics”, which he made in May 2009—I am sure that every Member has read it—he roundly criticised programme motions and said that they reduced scrutiny. Basically, a Bill is thought up in Downing street, pushed through its Second Reading and then goes to a Committee that is stuffed full of Members who support it. There is no way of getting on a Committee unless the Whips support the decision. Then, when the Bill comes back to the Chamber to be considered, Back-Bench Members who are interested in it but who could not get on the Committee do not have enough time to make amendments or discuss it. I guarantee that that is exactly what will happen today if the programme motion goes through. Amendments will not be reached and they will not be discussed, and that, of course, is fundamentally what the Government want. They do not want scrutiny of this Bill. Such a situation occurs when Members on both Front Benches are in league together. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), has let slip that he is happy with the programme motion and that the usual channels have agreed to it.

Mark Spencer Portrait Mr Spencer
- Hansard - -

How does my hon. Friend square that argument with the fact that every single Government member of the Committee criticised the Bill on Second Reading?

Peter Bone Portrait Mr Bone
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I hate to criticise the Whips Office, but it was clearly not doing its job properly when it let hon. Members such as my hon. Friend—serious parliamentarians who want to scrutinise the Bill—slip through.