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Business of the House

Following on from what the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) just said, the treatment of the Digital Economy Bill is symptomatic of what has happened to this House. It is nothing short of outrageous that, the day after its Second Reading, we will have just two hours in which to attempt to debate the remaining stages of such an important and controversial Bill. It is simply not good enough for the Government to say that the Bill has been scrutinised by a bunch of unelected people at the other end of this building. That was what we were told yesterday, when Ministers said that everything was okay because there had been hours of scrutiny in the House of Lords. The last time I looked, it was this House that was elected. We are the ones who are accountable to constituents—despite the vagaries of an electoral system that means that the general election is already over in about 400 seats—yet we will have just two hours for debate. Many amendments will not be reached and many points will not be made, but the Government have the cheek to say that we should tell constituents during the election that we are doing a good job of scrutiny. It is a complete farce, as there are significant concerns—which I share—about measures in the Digital Economy Bill. There has clearly been a carve-up between the Conservative and Labour parties. They are entitled to come to an arrangement like that in the elected House, but they are surely not entitled to prevent those of us who disagree with them from reaching our amendments, making our points against the contents of the Bill, and dividing the House on our arguments. The Government are determined to ram through the Bill on the penultimate day of this Parliament, in the space of two hours. It is a process that should take several weeks in Committee and at least one whole day—it should be more—on Report, when people are able to lobby. How can we look our constituents in the eye and say that this is an accountable House when they do not even time to lobby in favour of amendments? They are not able to do that lobbying because the amendments cannot be tabled until the Bill has been given a Second Reading. There is no doubt that this so-called Leader of the House will go down in history as the destroyer of scrutiny. Under her stewardship, far more Opposition and Back-Bench amendments and new clauses—and indeed Government amendments and new clauses—have not been reached than has been the case with any other Leader of the House in recent history. I suspect that the same would be true for the more distant past. Hardly any major Bill has received adequate scrutiny. The knives have been put in place after the business that needs to be reached, rather than before. The nature of the carve-up by Labour and the Conservatives to undermine scrutiny of the Digital Economy Bill is just a typical example of that. That is why the House decided to do something about the Government's approach. On certain points in the Wright Committee report, and on behalf of the Committee itself, hon. Members disagreed with the both Government and Conservative Front Benches and instead voted for two critical measures to improve scrutiny. The Government keep saying, "Oh, you've got your Select Committee changes." I welcome those changes, but they are not about scrutiny on the Floor of the House. The two measures that have been approved by hon. Members are, first, that a House business committee be set up in the next Parliament to enable us, as a House, to determine how much scrutiny legislation is given. That would take away from the Government the ability to ram through legislation in the way that is happening today and has happened for the past 10 years. The second measure was to set up a Back-Bench business committee. The vote in favour of the detail of that proposal went 2:1 against both of the major party Front Benches. As other Members have said, the Government are clearly defying the will of the House by not introducing those amendments. It is a tragedy that we do not have a chance to deal with them. With the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) and others, I was involved in tabling an amendment to give the House the opportunity to divide on whether time should be provided tomorrow, but the amendment was not selected. I am not able to question the selection, but I think I can say that if there had been any way for the voice of Back Benchers to be heard on these matters, the amendment tabled by the hon. Gentleman, who has just entered the Chamber and is not at all out of breath, would have been selected. I think that in his selection the Speaker has been bound, on a Government day, to let the Government have their business. This is toxic to democracy in the House.