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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I strongly support what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has just said. The fact that he felt it necessary at this hour to take eight minutes to make a very important point demonstrates how we have lost so much in this House by not having had the time to have a proper debate on the Bill. I feel strongly that he made a very good point. It is awful that this House has to get through the Bill, arriving at 2.30 in the morning, when we should have had at least the chance to have a proper debate on it. As I said earlier, the whole Bill should have been held over until the next Parliament. It would have been so much better if we had had the chance to have a proper debate during the next Parliament. I have a feeling that whoever was in charge of the wash-up has put fast-forward on to spin-dry because we have not had a chance. This is typical of what we said earlier, but there are good points in the Bill. There are 42 pages of amendments, yet we have got through them in a very short time because we have not had a chance to debate them. They have been withdrawn one after the other. Many of them were making very good points. I re-emphasise that I hope that this will not happen again. It is a sad day for this House that we arrive at the end of our discussion of a constitutional reform Bill at this hour and have had to take so little time to debate the important issues that have just been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham.