Business of the House

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 27th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

Since 2017 local planning authorities in England have been required to maintain and publish brownfield land registers, and I am very disturbed to hear that that basic requirement is not being adhered to. We are committed to making the most of brownfield land in line with the national planning policy framework, but it is obviously hard to do that if sites are not identified. I shall make sure that the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities knows about this, and ask his officials to provide some advice for the hon. Gentleman.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

May I ask the Leader of the House to imagine the position of a family who are unable to acquire a house, then rent one, and suddenly —having put all their love and money and investment into that house—receive, with less than a month’s notice, a section 21 notice to quit from the landlord? That happened to my constituents Chris and Sandra Taylor, as was highlighted in the television programme ITV Calendar. May I just quietly say to the Leader of the House that Ministers, over the years, have made commitments to end this situation? As she looks to the next parliamentary Session and the King’s Speech, will she give an undertaking to the House that that loophole will finally be closed?

Business of the House

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this issue, which upsets enormous numbers of people. Of course, the bulk of the public are very responsible about not dropping litter, but new ideas are coming on stream about how we can better find the offenders who are largely responsible, particularly for fly-tipping. The next Transport questions are on 2 March, and I urge the hon. Gentleman to raise the issue then. Of course, he should also raise it with the local authorities concerned, as they will often be best placed to look at what camera infrastructure and so forth currently exists.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

I represent a rural community with 23 separate villages, and there are 24,000 people in households with no access to a motorised vehicle. We are totally dependent on public transport, so yesterday’s announcement in the media by the bus companies—which was not discussed first with me, as the local MP—that they intend to again cut services in Rthe communities I represent will send a shudder of fear through all those villages. Does the Leader of the House agree that the deregulation of buses has been a disastrous mistake for rural communities such as mine and many others throughout our country? Can we have a debate in Government time to see whether we can find a different way of operating public transport services, and particularly buses, in the future?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, and he is absolutely right: for many people in rural communities, those bus services are a complete lifeline and allow them to go about their daily business. He will know that we are providing up to £60 million over the next few months to assist with running those services and to keep fares down so that people can still use them, and we have also invested another £3 billion in such improvements. There are particular challenges, in part because of the fall-off in bus use during covid, but I shall make sure that the Secretary of State has heard the hon. Gentleman’s concerns.

Business of the House

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. Friend raises a subject close to my heart. I would normally say, “I shall write to the Minister who can advise him about further pots,” but I can probably tell him now because I have a 1930s lido in my constituency that I am renovating. I know how much the lido will mean to his constituents—it is not just a leisure facility but part of their heritage. There will be other funds, and we should connect him to other projects that have been supported through the coastal communities fund to really ensure that he has got the best advice to take that forward. I will write to the Minister on his behalf, but I am also happy to assist him with anything that I have learned along the way.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

In earlier comments, I found that the Leader of the House was trying to suggest that ambulance workers are not co-operating with management as nurses are. I recently visited my local picket of ambulance workers, and there was a protocol in place: when there was an emergency, the picket immediately and voluntarily went to see the patient. Will she withdraw her comments? Has she noted that this morning The Telegraph says that recent weekly statistics show that 2,837 more people than usual died, which is 20% higher than the average. Does she accept what is happening? There is not a shred of evidence that the strikes are causing these problems; it is a failure of management of the NHS by the Government.

[Penny Mordaunt]

Let me clarify for the hon. Gentleman that this is not about people not wanting to protect life. It is not about a moral judgement on behalf of those individuals. People who work in the blue-light sector and people who work in caring professions care deeply about the wellbeing of others. That is why they are in those professions. The problem is how these minimum service levels are arrived at and ensuring that we can have confidence in them and that they are also arranged in a timely way. Unlike nursing unions, which have a clearly defined and agreed way of working that covers the whole of the area affected by industrial action, the other services that I have referenced do not. They are very fragmented, and arrangements are often worked out with local management, as opposed to across the nation affected. This is about protecting the public and ensuring that when industrial action takes place, we can still protect the public. It is most acute, I am afraid, in the transport sector. I hope that that clarifies the position for the hon. Gentleman.

Business of the House

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for continuing to raise this matter. He will know that when the Ministry of Defence has looked at this and other issues, it has a judgment to make about whether a future inquiry would be in the public interest. The difficulty is, of course, that this is not necessarily a public interest, but a very private interest for family members and others involved. I will write to the Department on his behalf and ask it to explore other ways in which perhaps there could be some closure for that family.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Season’s greetings to you, Mr Speaker, and all members of staff of the House. On today’s nurses’ action, which has been taken most reluctantly, I want to say that two of the closest members of my family were gravely ill for weeks in Yorkshire hospitals, and I had an accident and almost lost the use of my leg, which was recovered thanks to the skill of the staff. The nurses looked after all three of us, as they do tens of thousands of other patients every day. They do not ask for anything, except that we leave that hospital better than we came in. They stand by us; it is time we stood by them. The Leader of the House no doubt believes she is an extremely persuasive person, and no doubt she is, so can she not, over the weekend, persuade the Prime Minister to make a statement on Monday or Tuesday—since there is another action on Tuesday—that he will resolve the nurses’ case to their satisfaction so that we can have a Christmas where the NHS begins to rebuild?

Business of the House

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

The hon. Lady’s claim is not borne out when we look at who people vote for across Scotland. The Scottish National party is now a single-issue party. It is not gripping the issues affecting people in Scotland, and there is growing disquiet about that. This week we heard from the Auditor General on the subject of financial mismanagement; there are hundreds of millions of pounds relating to the ferry contracts that he cannot even account for. As we come out of the pandemic and we want our public services to be able to recover, and that should be the focus of the Scottish nationalist Government.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

The Leader of the House may know that yesterday, during discussions about biodiversity in Canada, the Secretary-General of the United Nations said that humanity was is in danger of becoming a “weapon of mass extinction”. In my constituency there is proposal for a major incursion into the green belt that would threaten 27 separate native species, including some ancient woodland. Will she find time to reaffirm the Government’s commitment to green belt land and biodiversity, and may we have a debate on this essential subject, which should provide the background for any planning decisions for the future?

[Penny Mordaunt]

The hon. Gentleman will have heard the Prime Minister express his commitment to the green belt during Prime Minister’s questions this week, and the 2030 target to halt species decline is one of the planks of the Government’s environmental strategy. I am sure that a debate on that strategy and its success to date would be popular, and the hon. Gentleman will know how to apply for one.

Business of the House

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her continuing campaign. Business questions is becoming known as “Freeport Thursday” in my office, because she is always championing the project. I also congratulate her on the non-partisan way she does so. In addition to campaigning in Parliament, she is winning over supporters from her community and from across the political divide: I understand that the Isle of Anglesey County Council is putting jobs and local prosperity before politics and is supporting her and the Conservative manifesto commitment to enable this project to go ahead, bringing benefits not just to Wales but to the whole UK.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Everybody in the House knows that the reason the Bill on Monday has been changed is that the Government cannot deliver a majority for their top-down, random house building targets to be imposed on various local councils. May I make a helpful suggestion to the Leader of the House? Why not have a debate about house building and how we deliver our targets without damaging local democracy? That would test the views of the House and give me a chance to oppose a 3,000-house development in south Featherstone, which will do massive damage to the community and the local environment.

[Penny Mordaunt]

We are continuing with the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. There will be a second day on the Bill. That will happen shortly, and I will announce it in the usual way. The delays to some Bills are because of things such as the Finance Bill, which is pretty important, but house building is incredibly important. We want to ensure that people have the opportunity to have a safe, secure home and also the opportunity to own their own home, so I am sure that a debate on that topic would be welcomed by all Members.

Business of the House

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mark Spencer]

The International Trade Committee had six months in which to examine the agreement before the commencement of the CRaG process. The Government’s commitment to holding debates on free trade agreements during that process is subject to the timeliness of requests and the availability of parliamentary time, and my hon. Friend will doubtless appreciate that there is a wide range of competing demands on time in the Chamber before the House rises for the summer recess.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

I am sure you will agree, Mr Speaker, that fish and chips are the great British culinary gift, and that the local fish and chip shop is often the centre of a community. You may not agree that the best fish and chips in the world are made in Yorkshire, but I will concede that the second best are on the other side of the Pennines.

Mr Malcolm Tully has run the same fish and chip shop, feeding the same community, for 30 years, having used his miner’s redundancy money to set up the business. However, it is now under threat because of the rising costs of various artefacts that he needs to use, and there are tens of thousands of other small businesses in the same perilous position. Will the Leader of the House organise a debate in Government time so that we can discuss the pressure on fish and chip shops and all the other small businesses in the country?

[Mark Spencer]

I declare my interest, Mr Speaker.

Let me join the hon. Gentleman in congratulating Malcolm Tully on the work that he does. Fish and chip shops are indeed a great community asset, and there are some great ones in my constituency. They do face huge challenges—particularly the price of sunflower oil, which is driving many of their costs—but the Government recognise the great contribution that they make to our communities, and we should support them.

Business of the House

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Since this subject was last raised in the House, I have become slightly conflicted, because there is a freeport bid coming in from quite near me, in Bristol. However, it would not be right for me to campaign for my own area from the Dispatch Box. Freeports are a fantastic idea, which is why there is so much support for them and why so many Members want them in their constituencies. I congratulate my hon. Friend on his welcome efforts to campaign for a freeport in the east midlands, and I will make sure that his representations are passed on to the Treasury. He really is a great advocate for his constituents, and I hope that they will be able to reap the benefits of a freeport, but then I hope that the economy generally will be able to reap the benefits of many freeports.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab) [V]]

We rarely debate the Government’s poor treatment of the north, where life expectancy is falling for the first time in a century, but where we have seen the severest cuts to public health service provision of any region. There are now 195 fewer GP surgeries in Yorkshire and we have the slowest declining covid infection rates. Meanwhile, the Government sent half of the north’s vaccine supply down south. We know that they cut free school meals for the autumn break, but hunger, poverty, service cuts and covid all march hand in hand. May we therefore have a debate in Government time on their disgraceful health record in the north of England?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Mr Speaker, I will of course bow to your wisdom on this, but I believe the word “balderdash” is parliamentary, and it applies to the hon. Gentleman’s question. The Government have stood with the north throughout this pandemic, with over £10 billion in support for local authorities, additional Nightingale capacity and millions of vaccine doses already delivered, and we are putting the region at the centre of our community testing plans, with 300,000 in Liverpool being among the very first to benefit. Looking ahead, we will be building on the £13 billion for transport across the region and £5 billion for the northern powerhouse, with High Speed 2; Northern Powerhouse Rail, our multi-billion pound rail investment; a £4 billion levelling-up fund, building on billions of pounds of towns fund investment; £4.2 billion for the local public transport fund; and four hospitals in construction, or about to start, as part of our 40 hospitals plan. This Government’s record in the north is second to none. We are building back better, and we are building back better in the north first.

Members’ Paid Directorships and Consultancies

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I am discussing the motion and what it means or does not mean. It is difficult to speculate about what would happen or not happen in the future if we pass a motion, the meaning of which is not clear. In any case, the burden of the motion is one with which we disagree. It was not a joke about books. I was making, through a bit of humour, admittedly, a serious point: the Opposition do not know how they would apply a cap to somebody who writes a book, including a member of the shadow Cabinet, or to a farm.

One of my hon. Friends mentioned a farm. A distinguished Labour Prime Minister, Lord Callaghan, owned a farm. How is someone with a farm meant to restrict their income to a fixed percentage of their salary? Would Lord Callaghan have had to resign from the House every time there was a good harvest and then try to return to it when the crops failed?

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Is the Leader of the House not aware that that precise system, though much more rigorous, is already applied in Washington, the home of free enterprise?

[Mr Hague]

I am also aware that we make our own rules in the United Kingdom. The United States is no longer our colony and we are not theirs, and we are entitled to make our own rules.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

This has been an interesting debate, although it has not always been of the highest quality. A number of contributions stay in my mind, but I will not have a chance to deal with them all.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) pointed out that £67,000 is a full-time salary and that this is a full-time job. That was a recurring theme. I remind those who say it is not that much that we are in the top decile. Nine out of 10 people earn less than us. My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) reminded the House that almost four out of 10 people in her constituency earn less than the living wage.

My hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris), who I am sure is on his way back to the Chamber, reminded the House that there are Members of Parliament who are earning £1,000 an hour in addition to their salary. These are staggering amounts of money. The hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) used extravagant but accurate language to describe the horror that many people will feel when they discover how much money is earned by some Members of Parliament.

There were a number of interesting speeches by Government Members, which all boiled down to three arguments. I will deal with those quickly before getting to the point of our motion. There were the loud-and-prouders or topper-uppers, who were in favour of earning more because they felt that, as a result of what they did, they were entitled to a larger salary. They felt that £67,000 was not enough. I will come to that argument in a moment or two.

The Leader of the House said that our proposal was just too complicated and difficult to achieve. I reminded him that it has been done in Washington. In fact, Washington has gone much further than this relatively modest proposal. I am not saying that we should model everything we do on Washington, but it is interesting that the home of free enterprise and buccaneer capitalism has been able to regulate its elected members when the Government suggest that we cannot.

The third argument was that it helps the House to have the experience of people who do things outside. Of course it does. We all do things outside. The issue is remuneration. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) reminded us that he previously had two businesses, and he did the right thing—he closed one down and put the other into hibernation, so that there could be no conflict of interest. The central question is one of remuneration.

[Mr Spencer]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jon Trickett]

No, I do not have time.

The central issue that our motion is intended to address is the crisis of legitimacy that the British governing elite is experiencing. We encounter cynicism wherever we go, and in the end it will imperil the very foundations of our democracy unless we somehow regain the trust and respect of the British people. The question is, can we respond to a new zeitgeist that is everywhere in our country—one that is more democratic, egalitarian, non-deferential and occasionally even unruly? It is right that it should have all those attributes in the second decade of a democratic century.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jon Trickett]

No, I am not going to take any interventions.

If we do not respond to the current mood in the country, we will be lost as a House of Commons. I do not for one minute think that most voters imagine that their elected representatives are somehow superhuman and never make mistakes, and the Leader of the House rightly paid tribute to the two Members who have got themselves into trouble this week. I echo much of what he said. However, voters will judge us on how we respond to our mistakes. We need to show that we have reflected on any errors that we have made and learned the lessons, and that if necessary we will change the rules.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

On that point, will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jon Trickett]

No, I am not going to take any interventions, because I do not have time.

We need to show that we have learned the lessons and changed the rules, to prevent any repetition of those errors in the future. The Opposition contend that it is a mistake for the House to continue with a set of rules on second jobs that were designed for another era. There simply is not time to spell out all the arguments for our proposition, but I will make two.

First, in an era when Victorian deference and hypocrisy have long ended, and rightly so, it is no longer acceptable for one set of rules to apply to the governing class and another to the rest of the country. That is how it will seem to millions of people if we continue to have a permissive policy on second jobs. After all, there are millions of people—thousands in every one of our constituencies—who work hard and play by the rules, yet are living in poverty. There are millions more who find it hard to pay their bills at the end of the month. After all, the average working person has lost £1,600 a year in salary since this Government were elected. When the people we represent hear the argument, which we have heard today, that an MP cannot live on £67,000 a year—plus an additional £14,000 for a Chair of a Select Committee, incidentally—they will inevitably ask themselves, “What kind of planet do these people live on?”

What about people who are on exploitative zero-hours contracts, who receive no guarantee that they will have a single hour’s work today, tomorrow, this week, next week or next month? Their contracts also prevent them from taking second jobs. How can we explain to them the idea that we should have second jobs? Then there are 1.9 million people who are out of work. How will the Government parties explain to the people in their constituencies who have no job that some of them have six jobs? It is simply impossible to imagine how they can justify it.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

On that point, will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jon Trickett]

No. The right hon. Gentleman has had his chance and made his speech.

I said that I would develop two arguments. The second relates to who we are here to serve, and it is critical. Every hon. Member, when they first become a Member of the House, swears an oath of loyalty to the country and is required to serve their constituents to the exclusion of all other interests. However, if someone is a remunerated director or a consultant, they have a legal duty to the body corporate that employs them always to act in the financial interests of that corporation. The question that therefore arises in the minds of interested observers is how any hon. Member can reconcile those dual loyalties to the corporation and to the country.

I have previously given the House the example of a paid director of a tobacco company who is also an MP. If a matter of public health concerning restrictions of tobacco sales comes before the House, the perception will arrive in people’s minds that that hon. Member is balancing two interests—those of the person who pays the contract for the directorship, and wider public health. To be blunt, many electors will come to the widely held view that is summarised in a two-word Yorkshire phrase: money talks. The question is not simply about whether an MP has sufficient time to do a second job—although how they find the time is a good question—but about whether there is a conflict between their duty exclusively to serve the public and their employment in the service of a private interest.

The best way to resolve a problem is usually the simplest. We think that the simplest way is to impose restrictions on second jobs, and that is what today’s motion is about. For those reasons, and for many others outlined today, it is time for the House to move on. The Government amendment takes us no further; it is simply an elegant reformulation of the status quo and as such it will not do. Even at this late stage it is possible for Government Members to come through the Lobby, vote with Labour and begin to clean up politics, and I urge them to do so.

Let it be known that if the House rejects the motion today, the Labour party will introduce a new standing order for our MPs to cover these matters in the new Parliament, which is now only a few weeks away. Under those circumstances, let other parties do as they will. The people of the country will judge them.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, we already know what The Daily Telegraph thinks about today’s debate. It describes grisly scenes, referring to the contributions of Members on the Government Benches in today’s debate. It has been a particularly interesting debate and I hope the Government have listened very carefully to it—they have not listened to anyone else. They should at least listen to their own Back Benchers, and I will come to that in a moment.

The Government have achieved something remarkable —they have a Bill which is so dreadful that it has united the lobbying industry and campaigners who are trying to bring more openness and transparency to the lobbying industry. They seem to have united the whole of the so-called big society, but it is unity in opposition to the Government’s proposals. They even managed to ensure that the LabourList and ConservativeHome websites both came out against the Bill. Even the ultra-loyalist political blog Lib Dem Voice whispered its reservations about the Bill.

It has been a fascinating debate. We heard 27 or 28 Back-Bench contributions. I cannot refer to them all but, needless to say, there were powerful contributions from all parts of the House. Eighteen or 19 Opposition Back Benchers made the most powerful speeches in which a wide variety of concerns were articulated—concerns about the voluntary sector, trade unions and the way in which lobbying will effectively be left unregulated if the Bill goes through. Voices were clearly heard from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which will face additional problems if the legislation is adopted.

Significant contributions were made from the Back Benches by two Members who have been witnesses to lobbying in their own constituencies. One was the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), who described behind-the-scenes influence and the expenditure of £12 million on attempts to reverse a planning consent. Let me tell the hon. Lady and the House that the Bill would not cover that as local government is wholly excluded from it, which seems to me to be remiss. We heard witness evidence from my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who described—whatever one’s view of the third runway at Heathrow—the most profound activities by employees, as I understand it, of BAA, who have passes to enter the Department for Transport. I have news for the House: those people would not be registered, as the register specifically excludes anybody who is a so-called in-house lobbyist.

The most important contributions of all came from three Chairs of Select Committees, speaking for all members of their Committees. The Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights said that he was very concerned that there had been no pre-legislative scrutiny and that the Bill would clearly impact on human rights. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron), the Chair of the Standards Committee, warned the House that paragraph 2 of schedule 1 is likely to imperil the privileges of Members of the House which, we heard, have stood intact since the Bill of Rights in 1688. The hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) was the only Member who made what sounded like a positive contribution in relation to the Bill, but he planted a small hand grenade in his speech: he said that he could not support any attack on the rights and privileges of hon. Members. Yet the legislation appears to do precisely that.

Then we heard from the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), who told us that the Committee was alarmed by the way the Bill has been introduced and pressed through in quite a reckless way. He assured the House that it was possible to reach a consensus on lobbying, even across the parties and across wider society, if only we took the time. A common theme running through all the contributions was this: why did the Government choose these particular time scales, which prevent pre-legislative scrutiny or witness statements being made to the Select Committee? I will return to that point in due course, because it is a disgrace.

There were seven contributions from Government Back Benchers, and each of them in their own way damned with faint praise either the entire Bill or elements of it. Whether or not the Leader of the House listens to contributions from the Opposition, he would be well advised to listen to the warning voices from Members behind him, particularly the story from St Albans. The hon. Members for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland), for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray), for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge) and for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) all warned that powerful vested interests lurk in our society, seeking to influence with the power of money the way we make decisions. They all warned that the legislation is simply inadequate in its present form and needs to be amended. Indeed, the Leader of the House himself said that he thought some amendments would probably have to be brought forward.

The Bill simply fails to live up to the demands of the epoch through which we are living. We live in a time of great flux and of distrust in the ruling political and commercial elites. We live in a democratic century in which—rightly, in my view—the wider public long ago abandoned deferential attitudes to the people at the top. They want to know how decisions are taken and on whose behalf. A quiet revolution is taking place in our country, with the growth of active citizenship, which this House would be foolish to ignore. People are much more active in taking control of their lives, which partly explains the explosion in the number of campaigning organisations, not-for-profit groups and charities. It is not simply that the Government misunderstand the zeitgeist I am describing; in truth, they consistently make the wrong decisions because they are too tightly bound up with the interests of the most rich and powerful in our country, rather than the millions who work hard, play by the rules and struggle hard to get by.

This legislation runs contrary to the spirit of the times in which we live. It permits lobbying by the rich and powerful to continue in an unregulated way and in the shadows, while at the same time it seeks to silence wider civic society. Big tobacco’s voice will still be heard in the seats of power, while the voices of cancer activists will not. The voice of arms manufacturers will be heard, but not that of the Royal British Legion. The voice of private medicine will be heard, but not the unions representing nurses and hospital cleaners. The tax avoidance industry will be heard, but not the tax justice campaign.

The Bill is poorly drafted and needs to be radically amended. We have tabled our reasoned amendment, which I hope Members will vote for. If it is rejected by the House, we should vote against the Bill. We then need to make one further decision tonight, on the allocation of time. I hope that Members who have reservations listen carefully to the point I want to make. The Bill is being stampeded through, and there are strong reasons why more time needs to be given, so we will oppose the programme motion.

Let me give six reasons. First, there has been no pre-legislative scrutiny; secondly, witnesses have not been able to come before the House to react to the Bill; thirdly, the debate on part 1 next Monday will be curtailed because there will be a statement and other business; fourthly, as we have heard, the privileges of MPs will be affected; fifthly, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North has told us that he believes that with time we could get a consensus; and sixthly and most importantly, we are witnessing a Bill that will change the British constitution in quite a fundamental way. There is no precedent for imposing an allocation of time motion under those circumstances. I very much hope that the House votes against this Bill.