Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill [Lords] (Programme) (No. 3)

Mark Spencer Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

Thereby hangs a subject for a separate debate. The coalition agreement contained a commitment to have a House business Committee by the third year of this Parliament. We now know that that is being interpreted as meaning the end of December 2013, which is rather an extension of the use of the English language. However, that may be the subject of another debate on another occasion. As my hon. Friend suggests, this shows, in essence, that Front Benchers are not to be trusted on these issues, and until they prove their point and we are satisfied, we will be suspicious.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

As a member of the Committee that my hon. Friend criticises, it is difficult not to take offence. Surely he must recognise that the debate that he is forcing now will reduce the amount of time that we have to scrutinise the Bill, and surely the quicker we can get on to that debate the better off we will be.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend scores a bit of an own goal. If we had had the original programme motion, we would have been able to continue the debate until 7 pm. If, as I imagine, he will support this programme motion, he will be supporting a curtailment of the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope).

I want to query a couple of things that the Minister said. She is a first-class Minister, and I think that had she been a shadow Minister, she would have been arguing for more scrutiny. I notice that she has now been left alone on the Front Bench with just one Whip, which seems to indicate that nobody in Government wants to be associated with this programme motion. When the Deputy Leader of the House sat on the Opposition Benches, he was a fine proponent of opposing programme motions, and it must be very sad for him to have to take this line today.

There is an intellectual flaw in the Minister’s argument. If she is saying that this is not controversial and that three hours gives us plenty of time for debate, why bring in another programme motion, because the debate will automatically finish within three hours anyway? The centralist, Stalinist approach of this Executive is such that they want to be wedded to programme motions.

I know that that is not the Prime Minister’s view, because in his excellent speech “Fixing Broken Politics”, which he made in May 2009—I am sure that every Member has read it—he roundly criticised programme motions and said that they reduced scrutiny. Basically, a Bill is thought up in Downing street, pushed through its Second Reading and then goes to a Committee that is stuffed full of Members who support it. There is no way of getting on a Committee unless the Whips support the decision. Then, when the Bill comes back to the Chamber to be considered, Back-Bench Members who are interested in it but who could not get on the Committee do not have enough time to make amendments or discuss it. I guarantee that that is exactly what will happen today if the programme motion goes through. Amendments will not be reached and they will not be discussed, and that, of course, is fundamentally what the Government want. They do not want scrutiny of this Bill. Such a situation occurs when Members on both Front Benches are in league together. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), has let slip that he is happy with the programme motion and that the usual channels have agreed to it.

[Mr Spencer]

How does my hon. Friend square that argument with the fact that every single Government member of the Committee criticised the Bill on Second Reading?

[Mr Bone]

I hate to criticise the Whips Office, but it was clearly not doing its job properly when it let hon. Members such as my hon. Friend—serious parliamentarians who want to scrutinise the Bill—slip through.