Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

Peter Bone Excerpts

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

I look forward to a rigorous debate on the issues in the Bill during its Committee stage. I am grateful to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee—whose Chairman, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) is in his place—for the report that it published yesterday and for the considerable amount of work that it put into taking evidence from, among others, the Deputy Prime Minister and myself. Concerns were expressed about the amount of time available to the Committee, but that was clearly not a barrier to its producing a comprehensive report, and I thank all the members of the Committee for their diligence.

The motion before us allows for five days of debate on the Floor of the House. I know that some Members have expressed concern that there will not be enough time to debate the provisions in the Bill, and we have tried to keep rigid programming to a minimum. As I said on Second Reading, however, we want to ensure—we have taken steps to do so in the programme motion—that the House will be able to debate and vote on the key issues raised by the Bill. In our view, the programme motion will allow that.

For this 17-clause Bill, we have proposed five full days of Committee on the Floor of the House and two days for Report, which we think adequately recognises the importance of the issues. We have had discussions through the usual channels with the Opposition, who have not presented any objections to the timetable.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the progress he is making with this Bill, but will he explain why there is closure at 11 o’clock this evening? This is a constitutional Bill of vital importance, so why should we not be able to talk for as long as we want on the issues today?

[Mr Harper]

Given the previous Government’s record on this matter, I would have thought that my hon. Friend would recognise that we are allowing extra time today to take account of the fact that we have just had a rightly lengthy and well attended statement. We granted extra time so that that statement did not unduly eat into the time available for debating this Bill. As I said, I would have thought that my hon. Friend, given his concern for Parliament, would have welcomed the progress made. We may not have gone as far as he would have wished, but I think that even he would recognise that we have gone some way further than the previous Administration did. I see him nodding his assent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

If the House divides tonight, I shall not support the programme motion. A constitutional issue of this kind should be scrutinised in full; Members of Parliament are elected to the House to do exactly that. Whether we are on the Opposition or the Government Benches, our job is to scrutinise the Government’s Bills, and constitutional Bills need the greatest scrutiny.

I have no objection to the Government allowing five days for debate; if they had not put a limit on the time until which we could debate on those days, that would have been fine. The Government say that there is plenty of time to discuss the Bill. If that is so, they do not need to close the business at 9 o’clock or 11 o’clock in the evening. If I am right, and the House wants to carry on a bit beyond that, let it talk on. That is what this House—this mother of democracy—is about. Forget the Labour years when the House was a rubber stamp. Let us turn the House back into what it should be: it should scrutinise the Government.

This is the start of the new democracy. In Committee, Government Members will be able to vote against the party line on matters that are not in the manifesto. That is a great improvement, and it is a great enabling power that the Prime Minister has given us. However, limiting debate so that we never reach clauses, and so cannot discuss and vote on them, is pointless.

We have at the Dispatch Box a Minister of great courage and ability. If he were to say at the end of this debate, “We will remove the time limit for the last four days,” his career would blossom, and I urge him to do that.