Points of Order
Debate between Maria Eagle and Chris Bryant
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. In addition, it is notable that a large chunk of the Bill has been added. It is an important chunk of the Bill, which I know that the Minister for Security, the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), supported because he was on the Foreign Affairs Committee when we called for the registration of foreign agents. That has now been put in the Bill, but it was added only in Committee and not given much time to be debated there. We have not had a full opportunity to analyse the clauses that have been added. We have significant numbers of Government amendments today and we are not even going to have two hours in which to debate them. Surely it would be possible for the Minister to stand up now and say, “This is national security and it is a matter that we need to get right. We cannot just expect another place to consider these matters. We are going to do our job of scrutiny properly and we will allow additional time to debate them on another day.”
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am not making any comment about the current Minister, but during the Committee stage, we had four separate Ministers handling the Bill. This made scrutiny very difficult because Ministers were coming and going so fast that they could not have even read the Bill between when they arrived and when they left. That has been a cause of significant frustration for members of the Committee, and now to have only two hours makes a mockery of the idea that we are scrutinising this important legislation.