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Criminal Evidence (Witness Anonymity) Bill

I shall not do that, Mr. Speaker, save to say that I accept what the hon. Member for East Antrim says. We are, indeed, discussing the timing, and although I accept the need for urgency and—unlike my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham—the need to get the legislation through before the House rises for the summer recess, I do not accept that we have to do it all in one day. Some intricate arguments will need to take place. I am not a lawyer and I shall probably not take part in those, but I am mindful of the fact that when we legislate in haste, we often get it wrong, although, as the hon. Member for East Antrim reminded me from a sedentary position a while ago, sometimes we can take four years over legislation, as we did on hunting, and still get it wrong. Although I accept that the legislation is urgent and necessary, the fact is that we could have had, at the very least, two days. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle) quite correctly put me right when she said that the other place was having two half days rather than two days of debate, but my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) responded from the Front Bench by saying that two half days with a period for reflection in between is better than six hours on the trot. I realise that the legislation will go through. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher) made an impassioned plea for the House to assert its authority, but he knows better than I that the House cannot exert its authority if the Government have a majority and whip the legislation. It is as simple and as depressing as that. On the Liaison Committee last week, I reminded the Prime Minister that if he really wanted to put Parliament back at the centre of the nation's life, he could take away the power of the Executive to impose a timetable on every Bill. I do not know precisely what happened in the usual channels—once famously referred to as the most polluted waterways in Europe—but I do know that it would have been better if the timetabling of this Bill, as of any other Bill, had been in the hands of those who are not entirely the creatures of the Executive or of the shadow Executive. So, we will proceed with the Bill. I do not want to make a long speech and delay the debate about the substantial issues, but it is a great pity that the timetabling did not allow for a period of reflection so that we could have returned to the Bill tomorrow or on Thursday. We could have sat one day longer—on 23 July—without any great inconvenience to people. It is fairly inconvenient to come back for two days, a Monday and a Tuesday, so to have added the Wednesday would, frankly, have made the week more justifiable. I rest my case—but I think it is a pity that we are doing things in this way.