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Legislative Process

The hon. Gentleman temps me again. He said earlier that he thought that the amount that people spent depended on their generation in Parliament and that those who were elected relatively recently, such as him, spent more than those who came in a long time ago, such as me. I suspect that the correlation is with the marginality of people’s seats and that it has nothing to do with how long they have been here. I am all in favour of short speeches—I shall try to follow that today, as I always do—but any rule must also apply to Front Benchers if we are to be serious about short speeches. Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesmen are the worst abusers of the system. They always seem to feel that they must speak for as long as the Secretary of State did. We heard a rambling 25-minute speech from the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesman today, although he could have covered the territory in 10 minutes. We heard a 35-minute speech from the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesman yesterday, although he could have covered the territory in 20 minutes. The shadow Foreign Secretary spoke for 20 minutes yesterday, but the Liberal spokesman felt that he had to speak for 35 minutes. I suggest that Front-Bench spokesmen should be limited to 20 minutes, plus interventions.