Business of the House (Thursday)

Debate between Hilary Benn and Luciana Berger

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

I rise to oppose the motion. I must say to the Leader of the House that I had been expecting a better justification to the House of the thinking that lay behind this timetable motion. Perhaps he is embarrassed by the shambles of the past two days. Those who read The Guardian newspaper, as many of us do, will have read with great joy about the reference to the Liberal Democrats’ hokey cokey when it comes to voting. Perhaps he did not want to be outdone and decided to have his own hokey cokey on this motion. The timetable motion was on the Order Paper for Monday and was objected to. It was on the Order Paper for Tuesday and the Government did not have the courage to move it, and it is back again tonight.

The Leader of the House says that he has not received any representations about the time that will be allocated. I have news for him: he is about to get a lot of representations, and the most important one of all will be when Labour Members all go through the Division Lobby to vote no to this motion.

The content of the motion is not surprising, even though it has changed a little since the version of yesterday and the day before. It is clear that the Government want one thing and one thing only: to spend as little time as possible on this matter, and to get it out of the way as quickly as possible.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that if only half the Members of the House wanted to take part in the debate tomorrow, that would allow only 50 seconds per Member?

[Hilary Benn]

I do indeed, and that illustrates a point that I shall come to—the inadequacy of the time that the House is being given to debate the matter.