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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

That is complete rubbish. The hon. Gentleman should be wary about listening to all the copy churned out by propaganda departments—in his own party, I suspect. His suggestion is ludicrous. In view of my earlier answer about the politicisation of the civil service, I hope that our proposals for the civil service will include ensuring its impartiality. Putting it under political direction or outside control clearly cannot achieve that. On transparency, the Bill proposes only to reform supply estimates. We think that there needs to be a fundamental shift in the transparency of Government, and at our party conference we outlined a number of proposals to increase openness, including publishing online the salaries of the 35,000 most senior civil servants, job descriptions for quangos, and all central Government expenditure over £25,000. We would like the Bill to include such measures, and will return to them in Committee. We support measures to require the consent of Parliament before the ratification of treaties, but I am concerned about provisions in the Bill that would allow the Government to avoid the new scrutiny requirements in undefined, exceptional circumstances. We will need some clarification of what those exceptional circumstances, which are so neatly tucked into the Bill, amount to. It is troubling that the Bill does not cover treaties that do not require formal ratification, other forms of international agreements such as memorandums of understanding, or even such things as prisoner transfer agreements. Although there might be arguments for that, I hope that in Committee we have an opportunity to consider carefully where the boundaries are drawn. Otherwise there might be much disappointment that many things that this House ought to be considering are not being considered. The Government were elected on a false prospectus: they promised to put the Lisbon treaty to the British people.