Crime and Courts Bill [Lords] (Programme) ((No. 3)

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

I beg to move,

That the Order of 13 March 2013 (Crime and Courts Bill [Lords] (Programme) (No. 2)) be varied as follows:

1. Paragraphs 2 to 5 of the Order shall be omitted.

2. Remaining proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading shall be taken at today’s sitting.

3. Remaining proceedings on Consideration shall be taken in the order shown in the following Table.

4. Each part of the remaining proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the time specified in relation to it in the second column of the Table.

TABLE

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

It is severely curtailed, because even if there were no Divisions, were the clauses on Leveson to last their full three hours, less than 40 minutes would be left for all the other clauses, dealing with some very important issues, some of which would probably never be reached.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend will note that it is a matter for hon. Members to determine to what extent they want to make progress on the next group of amendments, and the rate at which they make progress depends on the character of the debate. That is often true when we consider Report stages. The extent to which later groups of amendments can be considered depends on the time that Members choose to take in debating earlier groups. It may, of course, be that the time to consider amendments relating to press conduct will not occupy all the time available.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I rise to support the programme motion moved by the Leader of the House in this short debate. Clearly, the House is having to deal with an unusual situation, because the Bill has become a vehicle for implementing the Leveson proposals on press regulation. The fact that it has evolved in this way has certainly made for some unusual processes that would hardly be considered best practice for the routine passage of legislation through the House, but sometimes needs must.

We must all remember that it has been 20 months since MPs from all parties came together to set up the Leveson inquiry after the revelations about industrial-scale phone hacking and indefensible press intrusion into the lives of families such as the Dowlers and the McCanns. It is time the issue was gripped, and today’s programme motion will allow it to be resolved.

Over 100 days have passed since Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry reported and all parties promised that we would work together to find a lasting solution to prevent such scandals from ever happening again, while also protecting press freedom. As cross-party talks took place last Wednesday, the Opposition withdrew an amendment to the programme motion that would have allowed some new clauses relating to the Leveson report to be taken ahead of some other parts of the Bill. We withdrew the amendment following an assurance from the Minister of State, Home Department, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), that changes to the order of consideration would make it impossible to talk out any attempt to deal with the Leveson amendments in the Bill. The Government were as good as their word and produced a programme motion changing the order of consideration for the clauses in the Bill.

However, on Thursday the Prime Minister decided to pull the plug on the cross-party talks and table his own amendments to the Bill, which did not comply with the Leveson principles. Consequently, a raft of new amendments was tabled seeking to implement Leveson with statutory underpinning and other safeguards of independence. Today’s debate was looking as though it would offer a straight choice between a Leveson-compliant and a non-Leveson-compliant approach. However, as we have heard today, overnight a cross-party agreement was reached that will put in place an enduring solution, protected against pressure from the press, or indeed from Ministers in the Privy Council.

As part of that agreement, an amendment will be made—I understand that it has been tabled in the other place—to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill to ensure the statutory underpinning necessary to protect the royal charter vehicle from being arbitrarily changed in the Privy Council without reference to Parliament. Essentially, therefore, the programme motion before us ensures that the Leveson new clauses can be debated and added to the Crime and Courts Bill today. We therefore agree that the new clauses on press conduct should be taken ahead of the consideration of other parts of the Bill and that this debate should last for the requisite time.

[Mr Hollobone]

There is no disagreement between the Leader of the House’s programme motion and the amendment that will be moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone); all agree that the clauses relating to Leveson should be debated and decided upon today. However, the hon. Lady’s support for the Government’s programme motion means that all the other clauses will probably not be reached, including new clause 12, which relates to the provision on intermediaries for very vulnerable witnesses and has been signed by 57 colleagues on the Opposition side of the House.

[Ms Eagle]

There are important debates that need to take place on the clauses that come after those relating to Leveson. If everybody co-operates and speaks succinctly—I am about to demonstrate this by sitting down—we ought to have time to consider them all. I note, in passing, that some of the amendments to be considered are manuscript amendments and that the House will have had only a short time to examine them before they are debated. It is undesirable in principle to have manuscript amendments, but it is inevitable in the context of the fast-moving cross-party talks on Leveson, which continued into the early hours of this morning. The House has to be flexible and its procedures have to enable agreements to be enacted if the circumstances are exceptional, as I believe they are in this case.

I know that many Members are disappointed that debate on other parts of the Bill will be curtailed or truncated by the programme motion, but I am sure that if we work together we can ensure that we can debate all the parts of the Bill. I hope that Members on both sides will accept the programme motion, which will enable us to implement the findings of the Leveson report on regulation of the press, ensuring that any future victims can have redress, while maintaining press freedom. I also hope that we will be able to debate in an appropriate manner all the other parts of the Bill before finishing those stages at midnight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I do not think that defending the right of this Chamber to scrutinise the Executive is a waste of time and I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) will press his amendment to a vote. To be frank, this is an abuse by the Government of their privilege in setting the timetable of this House and it is a huge shame that Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition are joining in that exercise.

There is no disagreement at all that we should debate the Leveson clauses until 10.21 pm. Whether the amendment or the Government’s programme motion is passed, that will be the effect. We have already had a very interesting three-hour debate and by the time the vote on the amendment to the programme motion is finished we will probably have time for another two-hour debate on the relevant clauses. There is no disagreement about that.

The disagreement lies with all the other clauses, schedules and amendments that will be lost as a result of the Government’s programme motion. For example, new clause 12 has been signed by 57 Members, mainly Opposition Members, and relates to the provision of intermediaries for very vulnerable witnesses. New clause 14 has been signed by 110 Members, mainly Government Members and also relates to very vulnerable witnesses. New clause 13 will probably never be reached, but it relates to exceptions to automatic deportation and has 104 signatories from both sides of the House. Those are important new clauses, which we will either not debate at all or to which we will give very little and totally inadequate attention. This is not the way that this great House of Commons ought to behave. Of course, it would not behave in this way if we had the business of the House committee that Her Majesty’s Government promised they would deliver by 2013.

Some Members present may think that the effect of the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough would be to extend tonight’s sitting, but, unusually for my hon. Friend, that is not the case. If the manuscript amendments are passed, tonight’s main debate would finish at 10.21 pm. If the Government’s programme motion is passed, we will be here until midnight. Members should not turn around and blame my hon. Friend or me when they are moaning about being here at midnight. What the two of us want to see is another day given for discussion of the Bill’s important extra clauses. What is unreasonable about that? All we want is for this Chamber to scrutinise those clauses and come to a decision on them. It will not be able to do that in the 40 minutes that the Government feel are adequate.

It is a great shame that the Leader of the House did not go into any detail about possible alternative days to discuss these issues. We finish our main business on a Tuesday at 7 o’clock. We have had exceptional circumstances today and everybody understands that. I think that most Members would be supportive, given the circumstances, of staying longer tomorrow night. Were the Government to extend tomorrow’s sitting to 10 o’clock, we could probably deal with the extra new clauses and amendments, but the Leader of the House has not made any such suggestion. Next Tuesday, we have a Back-Bench afternoon. The Government could have replaced that with the remaining stages of the Crime and Courts Bill. We could therefore wrap it all up before the Easter recess in a perfectly satisfactory way, with proper scrutiny of all the new clauses and amendments.

However, that kind of imaginative thinking does not seem to come from the Government, which is a great shame. The Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Prime Minister have been innovative today in knocking their heads together and agreeing on this Chamber’s response to the Leveson report. Most Members would agree that that is a good thing. But now, we are being let down by Her Majesty’s Government, who refuse to extend that innovative thinking into ensuring that this House scrutinises legislation properly. That is a great shame.