Health and Social Care Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The problem with what the Government are presenting this evening is that, having had a pause, they have decided to fast forward without the intervening period. The truth of the matter is that they will not inspire confidence in the running of the NHS by moving at a gallop and they will not improve morale by moving at such speed without proper scrutiny. I must say to Government Members that last night’s business motion, which stated that no amendments could even be moved today, was an absolute disgrace. What are they frightened of?

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

In a moment.

Are the Government frightened that some of their Back Benchers might vote for an amendment? I can assure them that there are very few courageous people on their side of the House, but the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) is one of them.

[Mr Bone]

I agree with the sentiments that the hon. Gentleman is expressing, but could he explain to me why the official Opposition did not object last night?

[Chris Bryant]

Because there was no opportunity to have a debate last night. It would have been nice to be able to expose the problems with the way the Government are dealing with the Bill, but unfortunately such an opportunity was unavailable to us. It is a disgrace that there is no opportunity for amendment. It is also a disgrace that the whole Bill is not being recommitted. We have seen none of the amendments. The Government are basically saying, “We’ve decided where we want to change the Bill, and only those bits shall be available for discussion by the Committee.” That is a completely inappropriate abrogation of the powers of this House to the Crown. The person who should be most disgraced by that is the Deputy Leader of the House, because he has said so many times that he believes in better scrutiny and yet is now abandoning that.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will not give way. If he had allowed more—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. There is very little time as it is, and screaming at each other does not help.

[Chris Bryant]

If the Deputy Leader of the House had allowed more than an hour for debate today, I would give way to him, but I am not going to give way now. We have already heard from a Minister for 15 minutes.

It is a bizarre selection of clauses that the Committee will be allowed to discuss. For instance, it will not be allowed to discuss clause 239 on NICE’s charter, nor clause 240 on its functions, but it will be allowed to consider clause 242, on the failure of NICE to discharge its functions. There is absolutely no logic to what is being presented to us.

In addition, the programme motion does not allow enough time. The Prime Minister is profoundly confused about all this, because he said many times this morning that 10 days would be allowed. Indeed, he said:

“Ten days… I don’t want to sort of misquote the Monty Python sketch but when we were in opposition we used to dream of tens days to debate a government bill”.

Well, yes, we are dreaming of 10 days now. We would love to have 10 days, but there will not be 10 days; there will be 10 sittings.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The Prime Minister is not very good on detail, because the Criminal Justice Bill to which he referred, and whose Committee he sat on, actually had 38 sittings over eight weeks.

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but surely the key point is that we need to do this scrutiny properly. The Government may think that they are doing themselves a favour by trying to get the Bill out of this House by the summer recess, but all it means is that those in another place will have to do a proper job of scrutiny, and I bet that they will not get it out of the second Chamber before next year.

Finally, the motion states that we have to commit the Bill to the same set of people. Now, some splendid people sat on the Government Benches in that Committee, including the hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb). He is a splendid Member of Parliament whose integrity I do not want to be questioned, but he will now have to force all the people whom he forced previously to vote for one set of proposals in the Bill to vote for exactly the opposite. I therefore beg Government Members, if they value the hon. Gentleman’s career, to vote against the motion.

I say that because, theoretically, the Committee Chairman could rule that some amendments cannot be taken or selected because we have already presented them and the same Committee is re-sitting. We will find, however, that many Government Members have to stand on their heads and vote for the exact opposite of what they voted for earlier.

I understand that one of the great passions in life of the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh), who speaks for the Liberal Democrats, is weight-lifting. Well, he did no heavy lifting of any kind on the previous Committee, and if there are changes to the Bill they are the work of Opposition Members, not the hon. Gentleman. He said that it was a wonderful Committee and could not have been better. Well, why was the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston)—somebody who knows about general practice—not put on it? Of course, we know the reason: she did not agree with the Government.

I do not believe that the new Committee should include the same set of people, in particular because the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), on the final day in Committee, asked the Minister one of his great insightful questions: “What is the point of clause 249?” He is clearly a man of insight. In addition, he later said:

“I am still a member of the Committee, I think.”––[Official Report, Health and Social Care Public Bill Committee, 31 March 2011; c. 1268.]

We should have a new set of Committee members. There is no point in every Member who sat on the previous Committee, including those with direct financial interests in the Bill, being on the Committee in future, so I say, “Vote against this ludicrous, shameful and disgraceful programme motion.”