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Industry and the Environment

Does my hon. and learned Friend recall that, in the last Parliament and the one that preceded it, it was commonplace for the Government to table large numbers of amendments and new clauses to their own legislation on Report? When Conservatives and other Members complained that there was not enough time to debate them, it was common for Ministers—not a Minister of the experience and celebrity of the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but a number of her colleagues—to say that the matters involved had been debated at considerable length in Committee. That is all very well, but for those of us who did not have the great privilege to be chosen by the Whips to serve on those Standing Committees, it was a very unsatisfactory explanation.