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Legislative Process

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick). I shall come to his amendment, but may I pick up one point that he made? He said that the term ““recess”” is not used outside the House. It is in common usage in America, where it means playtime. One problem we face is that many of our constituents think that that is what ““recess”” means for us—it is a playtime that is not used effectively to hold the Government to account. The most important commodity in the House is time, which is needed by the Government to ensure the progress of their legislative programme. It matters to people affected by the legislation, as it ensures that there is proper scrutiny. It is important to Opposition Members, who should have the opportunity to raise serious matters on their parties’ behalf. It is important, too—this ingredient is often forgotten—to Back Benchers, who often do not have the opportunities that are afforded to their Front-Bench colleagues, to raise issues that are vital for their constituencies during the passage of legislation and at other times. Any discussion that enables us to use the time available to the House more effectively is therefore valuable. I applaud the Leader of the House for introducing a wide-ranging series of motions. I do not agree with every proposal in that gallimaufry but, nevertheless, the House should have the opportunity to discuss them. He introduced them so promptly that some of them probably surprised some of his senior colleagues, but that is a matter for another day. May I deal with the Modernisation Committee report as a whole? The Leader of the House has urged us to welcome it, telling us in parenthesis that proposals that have not been selected to appear as motions on the Order Paper will receive the implicit approval of the House if we agree the third motion. I applaud the work of the Modernisation Committee, but I wish to raise a number of issues on which it has not done such a good job and which give cause for concern. Addressing the thorny issue of programme motions and their consequences, it helpfully proposed that programme motions should not prejudge the interests of Front-Bench spokesmen on Second Reading or, as I suggested earlier, of Back Benchers with a particular concern that they wish to pursue in Committee. It is absurd that Government business managers affect to understand, before Second Reading, which issues are likely to be important, producing a programme motion on committal proceedings and an end date before assessing interest in the Bill. That is a perverse way of doing business, and I am sorry that the Leader of the House did not agree to the Committee’s proposal. I am even sorrier that we have not received, as the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) said, a proper response to the earlier proposal from the Procedure Committee to establish a proper business Committee for the House. In most modern legislatures, parties meet to programme business effectively, not by edict but by agreement, thus determining the legislature’s opportunities to scrutinise business. We must return to that matter because the programme motion regime is simply not working. Programme motions work as guillotines, but they are introduced in circumstances in which guillotines are not required, as the House can manage its own timetabling business.