Part of Clause 50 – in the House of Commons at 5:45 pm on 14 June 1988.
The answer to the last question is perhaps the easiest. It is no. Yet again, the procedures of the House have been used as they are entitled to be. In large measure, Back Benchers have spoken not a fiction but a fact. They have pointed out to the country that we have a Housing Bill that still does not mention the word "homeless". It is a Housing Bill, written in 1988, with 110,000 people having presented themselves as homeless, which does not treat the main issue with which it has to deal.
I do not know whether it was worked out when the Prime Minister came in for her breakfast blessing or whether it was worked out later, but the reality of the motion to adjourn is that the Government have had to concede that they did not allow enough time in the beginning and that they will lose some of their business in any event. There is no way out.
The only way for the Government is to admit that they have been well and truly snookered, caught and knocked off the table. Even if the Leader of the House succeeds, as I suppose he might, with his motion to adjourn—when it can be voted on is a subject for your ruling Mr. Deputy Speaker—he will have to come back to the House either for the continuation of Report stage part three, part four and part five, followed by new clauses which the Government chose to put at the end rather than at the beginning or he will have to come back with a guillotine motion. That would be yet more evidence not only that the Government cannot manage their own business but that they have to bring in a timetable to stifle the debate on housing the homeless when that is a matter which the House has shown that it is willing and able to debate and wants to debate at considerably greater length.