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Business of the House

As we are in the business of breaking conventions, perhaps the Chief Whip would like to participate in this debate and account for the behaviour of his predecessor, the right hon. Member for North-West Durham, to which the hon. Member for Cannock Chase referred. The Sustainable Communities Act 2007 (Amendment) Bill has not been through the other House and has not completed its Report stage. If the Government wanted the Bill to have more time, they could have given time for consideration: on many days in the 10 days before the short Easter recess, the House rose three or four hours before the appointed hour. In that time, we could have discussed that and other private Members' Bills, but the Government were against that. Going further back, I recall that the Government and Opposition Front Benchers voted down an amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) that would have allowed an extra Friday for debating private Members' Bills. Now, we are faced with the Government saying that the Bill is so important that it has to be passed with indecent haste. They are putting tremendous pressure on the other place, which will have to consider Second Reading and all remaining stages of two Bills within 24 hours, even though, I submit, there is nothing especially important about either of them. I conclude with a point about the speciousness of the argument advanced by the Leader of the House. She said that because there were amendments tabled to the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 (Amendment) Bill, that can be debated, but although, similarly, there are amendments tabled to the Standing Orders motion, they cannot go through. We cannot have that sort of inconsistency in the argument. It is perfectly sustainable to argue that the fact that amendments have been tabled to a measure means that the measure is blocked and should not go into the wash-up, but that does not fit in with the arguments made in relation to the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 (Amendment) Bill.