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Companies Bill [Lords] (Programme) (No. 3)

That option is definitely available to the House, but I doubt whether I will persuade the Minister to entertain it, because instead the Government insisted on the Committee stage finishing in July and Standing Committee D was not able to examine any of the consolidation measures that were passed without debate at the end of the Committee stage, as the programme motion required. As a consequence, we estimate that, during the next three days, the House is being invited to consider about 200 amendments to amendments that the Committee was not able to consider in July, but which have since turned out to be defective in some way. Those amendments to amendments, together with the hundreds of other new amendments and 88 new clauses, were tabled only last week. That has inevitably placed the Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen in some difficulties, even with the assistance of their advisers, and even with the best will in the world, it is simply beyond the capacity of any Back Bencher to have any sensible appreciation of the scale of what is being attempted.