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

I have long believed that, if we are to have timetabling, which apparently now applies to all Bills, it should essentially be for the Opposition parties to decide how best to use the time on the matters that most concern them. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, if the Government had said to his Front Benchers and to my hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) that there were three days in which to cover the clauses that we are considering, and had allocated three generous timetables, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the nationalist parties could have reached agreement about the way in which to divide it so that the most important amendments, in the opinion of critics, would take up our time? Instead, we have the Government's best offer of what seems to them to be most convenient and right in dividing up the available time.