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Adjournment (Whitsun)

My hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) made a powerful contribution to the debate, and I hope that his campaign is successful. We have had a wide-ranging debate. It has been a debate of two halves. In the first half, we heard a series of maiden speeches from new Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members, and indeed from a new Scottish National party Member, which were of the highest quality. We will all take away from the debate the view that the House will be all the richer for the people who have arrived to serve in it during this Parliament.In the second half of the debate, the contributions from Government Members have been sparse, with a hint of filler in the afternoon’s proceedings. One interesting feature of proceedings since our return after the election is that, day after day and in debate after debate, the Government Benches have been empty. The Government have not had enough speakers to keep the debate going. The hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Love) said at the start of his speech that he had hoped to make a contribution during the debate on the Queen’s Speech, but had been unable to do so. He clearly missed the two days when the debate finished early and collapsed because of a lack of Government Members who wished to speak. If he had been here, he would have had more than enough time to contribute to the debate.