Crime and Courts Bill [Lords] (Programme No. 2)

Debate between Ian C. Lucas and Peter Bone

Wednesday 13th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is a great honour and privilege to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who has put the case exceptionally well. I disagree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes): it is not a problem for the House to sit late in the night if we are doing a proper job of scrutiny; and the idea that it is impossible to stop the House sitting late if there is no programme motion is wrong, because it is possible to bring in a guillotine. There has been a programming motion for every single Bill in this Parliament. The Library has confirmed to me that the present Government have guillotined more debates than were guillotined during the previous Parliament. So the idea that it is impossible to stop debate is unfounded—in fact, I was stopped in mid-flow the other day by a Whip moving a closure motion.

We will, of course, solve this problem entirely if we have an open and transparent business of the House committee. But at the moment what happens, behind closed doors, is that two sets of Whips decide whether they are happy with the amount of debate. If Members on the Back Benches do not happen to agree with either lot of Whips, bad luck you—you just do not get a chance to discuss the matter. I urge the Minister, who is a great democrat—or was, before he became a Minister—to try something different with the Bill. Let us abandon the programme motion, and the other programme motion, and see the self-discipline of the House. When we are talking about things as important as Leveson—although I am probably going to disagree in principle with the views of the hon. Member for Rhondda—we must have this debate. This is the mother of Parliaments and the debate should take place here.

We can spend hours and hours—[Interruption.] We can talk for hours about unimportant things, but when there are really important things to be discussed, the Executive—and, for that matter, the shadow Executive on occasion—get together to restrict debate. This is a great opportunity. I doubt very much whether the minority parties in the House have been involved in these discussions at all. Certainly, no one has asked anyone on the Back Benches what they think about the time allocated to the Bill.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Not me.

[Mr Bone]

Indeed. Let us just try. If I am wrong, Members can tell me so, but let the Government withdraw the original programme motion, let us have an open timetable on this, and see how we get on. If I am proved right, let us do that in the future, and let us bring the business of the House committee into being. Let us not go for this Stalinist central control.