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Business of the House (Lisbon Treaty)

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way a second time, and I shall try to exercise restraint, because I am waiting to hear his arguments. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) has touched on the main point: the Government propose that a great deal of time should be spent on general debates and that one and a half hours should be spent on specific amendments, which is a radical change to the way in which we normally conduct a Committee of the whole House. We have lots of general debate on Europe, and if one allows four hours in which any comment on Europe or climate change is in order, the debate will go all over the place. We will then consider specific amendments, when we can address the detail. Just one and a half hours will be devoted to all the amendments on a subject, and most amendments will not be debated or voted on—I suspect that that will simply set off the upper House, which will debate them all over again. The Minister is having difficulty in moving on to his main argument, because he is finding it difficult to persuade us why we cannot have debates on amendments and why general topics chosen by the Government must take up the lion’s share of the time.