Protection of Freedoms Bill (Programme) (No. 3)

Peter Bone Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

We have sought to structure the programme motion to enable consideration of the Bill, and that is right and proper for Report. A priority appropriately has to be given to enable scrutiny of the Bill as drafted. Obviously, it is for the House to decide within the programme motion the extent to which it will debate particular clauses, but we have had to strike as fair a balance as we can on the provisions of the Bill to ensure that appropriate scrutiny is applied.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I appreciate that my hon. Friend is a coalition Minister and not a Conservative one; before we got into power, the Conservative party was against having programme motions.

Given that we have lost three hours or so to statements, would not a fair balance have been to have allowed us to go for three hours extra tonight? We have been away from this place for a long time; surely an extra three hours this evening would have been fair. That is what democracy is about—we are not trying to force things through. Let us have three hours extra tonight.

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend takes the issues of the House extremely seriously, and I respect him for that. The Government have made important changes to how legislation is scrutinised. We are having two days on Report for the Bill, and that is markedly different from what we would have seen from the previous Government; we would have had a day for consideration of a Bill of this kind.

The terms of the programme motion will come as a disappointment to my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) and the other right hon. and hon. Members who have put their name to new clause 1. Despite the two days that we have set aside for Report, twice the normal allocation that we were accustomed to seeing in the last Parliament, regrettably it is unlikely that the House will be able to consider all the new clauses tabled for debate.

As I said, the programme motion has been constructed to ensure that there is adequate time to consider the key provisions already in the Bill. I believe that that is the right approach. Although this is not the occasion to consider the substance of new clause 1, which seeks to amend section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, I fully recognise that the matter is of considerable interest to a number of Members on both sides of the House. That much is clear from the number of right hon. and hon. Members who have added their names to the new clause.

We agree that the issue should be examined further. That is why, in the next few days, we will publish a consultation seeking views on whether section 5 should be amended along the lines proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough. I will be happy to meet him to hear his views on this important issue. Once the consultation has concluded—it will run to early in the new year—the Government will set out their conclusions as quickly as possible, so that they can inform the debate on the issue while the Bill is in another place. I have no doubt that there will be other opportunities for the House to consider section 5, either when we next examine the Bill on its return from the other place or on some other suitable occasion. I can assure my hon. Friend that through the consultation we want to promote debate on this issue, not seek to curtail it, by widening and broadening it outside this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huppert]

So the hon. Gentleman says, from a sedentary position. I tend to agree with him, but that is a topic for another debate.

I entirely support the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for Gainsborough. However, I have concerns about his amendment to the programme motion. I would like the issue debated, but I am concerned because we need to discuss issues such as DNA and fingerprinting. DNA is a topic of particular interest to me, as someone who used to work on it, and we are at risk of reducing our debate on it to something like an hour. I am concerned about that, and for that reason I shall not be supporting his amendment to the programme motion, although I support his proposed amendment to the Bill. I very much welcome what the Minister said about how the Government are going to get on with it, and I hope that we will have an opportunity to discuss that in this House.

[Mr Bone]

The hon. Gentleman is making a fair point. Given what the Opposition spokesman said, does that mean that he will be voting against the programme motion in toto, so that we can have proper debate?

[Dr Huppert]

It might be tempting to vote against all these things. I would love to see a reform of our entire process, so that time is not taken up on things that the public simply do not understand. However, I will not vote against the programme motion. I have seen what happens in the other place when there are no programme motions, which is filibusters. I do not think that many right hon. or hon. Members in this Chamber could claim that they have not been aware of any filibusters in this House or any efforts to waste time simply to put things off—not necessarily on this occasion, but on a number of others. I would like to see better self-government by this House and the other place, and then we could move away from programme motions.