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Housing Corporation (Delegation) etc. Bill

I am not sure that I do accept that. However, if the hon. Gentleman is saying that the Government often introduce legislation that is badly drafted and wrong, I agree. If the problem were due to bad draftsmanship over several years, I would accept that it should be corrected. However, the wider problem is that we do not have enough time to scrutinise legislation properly. So many times we face guillotines or programme motions that stop us considering legislation. I often sit here with an amendment list, but we discuss only the first few groups before the guillotine falls. If we had more time to discuss Bills, drafting errors would not occur. I suggest that the Bill proves that we should have fewer programme motions and guillotines and more time to scrutinise Bills properly, clause by clause. As an aside to those remarks, it is interesting to note that if the Bill were European Union legislation, we would have no power to correct it. We have laws in this country that are badly drafted and inconsistent, but this House cannot correct them.