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Business of the House (Lisbon Treaty) (No. 8)

The Minister referred to the previous business of the House motion, so I shall do so too, if I may. I wish to begin by explaining with what part of today's Government business of the House motion we agree. The motion in effect divides up the time for the three remaining days of Committee, and protects the business. The Minister will recall—in fact, he mentioned the matter in his opening remarks—that when we debated the original business of the House motion on 28 January, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) noticed, in his usual eagle-eyed way, that the time for day 11, allocated to discussion of the referendum, was not protected. He repeatedly pressed the Minister to give an assurance that it would be protected. In fairness, the Minister undertook to consider that, and today's motion does indeed protect the time for the debate; we should acknowledge that. However, there is much that is wrong with the motion. For instance, the House will recall that when we debated the original motion, we objected to the Government's methodology in relation to the debate, and sought more time to debate specific amendments. We also argued for at least six extra days of debate to match the figure of 20 days that the Government have repeatedly floated in the media. We asked for a day on which to debate the defence implications of Lisbon—a point that we subsequently pressed repeatedly at business questions—given that the defence amendments were not touched on at all. Unfortunately, the motion does not allow any extra time for the important topic of defence to be debated in detail, and that is to be deprecated.