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Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

I want to add briefly to the intervention that I made earlier. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has been quite honest about the fact that all Governments get into this kind of situation, including the one of which he was a member, when he exercised responsibility for the conduct of the business of the House. He has made some sound points about the lack of an adequate amending procedure for material introduced at this stage. I can see that there has been extensive public discussion on all three of the issues, but the Government ought to find a way of ensuring that the House has a proper legislative process. There are a number of ways in which that could have been achieved in this case. The Government could have put down their initial plans in the content of the Bill or by amendment in Committee, making it clear that, if the consultation led them to believe that the proposals should not be proceeded with in that way, they would accept that at a later stage. Alternatively, parts of the Bill could have been recommitted by a recommittal motion, to allow a couple of Committee sittings to deal with those matters. We ought to be very cautious about a motion that contains the word ““notwithstanding””, because that means that the procedures that the House has set in place to ensure proper consideration are not being observed in this case. That is why I pressed the Lord Chancellor to provide a strong defence of what he was doing. Question put and agreed to.