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Industry and the Environment

I am happy to be criticised when that criticism is justified and based on fact. For the right hon. Lady’s information, I got into the House in 1992. I accept that the history of this Parliament is not a history of perfection. It does not matter whether we are talking about a Conservative Government or a Labour Government; both can be criticised for curtailing debate, because they sit in the Chamber and want their business to get through,. However, the way in which the guillotine process has been extended during recent years is wholly unforgivable and represents the destruction of our parliamentary processes and the undermining of our democratic system. The right hon. Lady, as a member of the Government since 1997, has no doubt had plenty to do, in her various Departments, throughout the country and on the world stage. I, on the other hand, have had the opportunity since I left the Front Bench four years ago to spend more time in the Chamber, more time studying the Order Paper, and more time in Standing Committees than perhaps she has. I can tell her that it is not just my experience but that of people across the Chamber in all parties that we are dissatisfied with the way in which legislation is pushed through the House. Of course, she has a mandate to get her business through. Fair enough. But she ought to have the self-confidence—when I say ““she””, I mean the Government as a whole—to allow Parliament to do its job, and to listen to people such as the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead and me. She might not like what I have to say, and she might disagree with my arguments, but the House is not and should not be a sausage machine. It should be a place in which legislation is considered, and in the last part of the last Parliament, it manifestly was not. It became an embarrassment, and if she does not know that, she should do.