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Business of the House (Lisbon Treaty)

We certainly do not agree with the motion, and we will vote against it. We will, of course, vote for our amendment, not because we agree with any of the procedures involved but because we wish to propose an amendment that ought to be acceptable to the Government and that would address many of Members’ concerns about the time available for consideration of amendments. We are no fans of the procedure employed in the motion or of the constraints that it sets on debate. We will vote to lift some of those constraints, and we will vote against the motion. I hope that that makes things clear to the hon. Lady. In his speech, the Minister achieved a remarkable feat, for which I envy him: in a debate on European matters, he achieved complete unanimity between my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke). I have striven for years to bring that about, and it has taken only one and a half hours of procedural shambles from the Government finally to achieve it. For a Minister who said that he was going to use these debates to create divisions in the Conservative party, it is not exactly an auspicious beginning. The Minister also performed a number of interesting U-turns in the course of his speech. On the motion to which the Government ought to have given so much thought, and to which they were so attached that they put it on the Order Paper for approval, he now says that they will revisit the time allocated on a daily basis. However, the debates on the treaty start tomorrow. The debate on the charter of fundamental rights, which his hon. Friends rightly asked him about—the motion calls them debates on human rights—are next Tuesday. He said that he would be flexible and perhaps place new motions on the Order Paper about the matter, but he does not have very long to do so, given the timetable that the Government have adopted. The Minister conceded to my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) that on day 11 the time for debate will be protected. Day 11 may of course include the important debate on a referendum, and given the Government’s flagrant breach of their election promise on that subject, that is a welcome concession. However, his biggest U-turn of all was on a policy matter. He completed the Government’s 180° turn of the past seven months by saying that the Government had neither sought nor claimed to have achieved an opt-out from the charter of fundamental rights. Many of us remember Mr. Tony Blair, in his last week as Prime Minister, standing at the Dispatch Box and saying:"““It is absolutely clear that we have an opt-out from both the charter and judicial and home affairs.””—[Official Report, 25 June 2007; Vol. 462, c. 37.]"