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Coroners and Justice Bill

My hon. and learned Friend makes an important point. Consent for legislation depends on a belief that this House does its duty properly, and the truth is that we are being prevented from doing our duty by this timetable motion. Moreover, on a related point, the Report stage is the only occasion on which right hon. and hon. Members who are not on the Committee have the opportunity to discuss the detail of the Bill. This Bill contains some extraordinarily important clauses. For example, the whole of the first group of amendments and new clauses deals with jury-free inquests. The important thing to keep in mind is that these provisions represent a concession—I concede that it is a concession—announced by the Government last week, on which there has been precious little public discussion and whose details we have a right to discuss. We are not going to be able to do so in sufficient detail, however. On a different point, the draft changes on murder are extremely important. I agree with what has already been said about that. As the Secretary of State for Justice knows, I have often appeared in murder cases. Provocation has been an extremely difficult area of the law, and we have a right to have the opportunity properly to debate it on this occasion, but we are not going to be able to do so. The definition of an inquest in respect of which a jury should be required seems to me to be a matter of very considerable moment, but we are not going to reach that provision; it will go to the other place without our having had proper discussion. That is also true of the matter of assisted suicide, to which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough has referred. There is another vice about this—if the time allowed for Report is constrained, we can be quite sure that Mr. Speaker will be unable to select as many amendments as we would wish him to select. As we know from the Order Paper, I tabled scores of amendments—I make no complaint about the fact that only a few have been selected—but if debate is unnaturally and too tightly constrained, right hon. and hon. Members are shut out and a Bill is not properly discussed at all. I suggest that any feeling of outrage should be compounded by two further considerations. We all know that the business of the House has been extraordinarily light for the last few weeks. We need only look at the Order Paper to know that. It would have been quite easy to provide two, three or more days to allow proper debate of this Bill, but we are not permitted to do so, which is an outrage.