Criminal Justice and Police Bill
10:30 am
Mr Charles Clarke (Minister of State, Home Office; Norwich South, Labour)
I beg to move,
That—
(1) during proceedings on the Criminal Justice and Police Bill the Standing Committee do meet on Tuesdays at half-past Ten o'clock and half-past Four o'clock and on Thursdays at five minutes to Ten o'clock and between half-past Two o'clock and Five o'clock;
(2) the Committee shall not meet on Thursday 8th February, Tuesday 20th February or Thursday 22nd February;
(3) 14 sittings in all shall be allotted to the consideration of the Bill by the Committee;
(4) the proceedings on the Bill shall be taken in the following order, namely Clauses 1 to 45, Schedule 1, Clauses 46 to 49, Schedule 2, Clauses 50 to 69, Schedule 3, Clauses 70 to 86, Schedule 4, Clauses 87 to 101, Schedule 5, Clauses 102 to 106, Schedule 6, Clauses 107 to 127, Schedule 7, Clauses 128 to 131, Schedule 8, Clause 132, new Clauses, new Schedules;
(5) the proceedings on the Bill shall be brought to a conclusion at the 14th sitting at Five o'clock.
I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Gale. I am sure that you and Mr. Hood will conduct proceedings in a fair, courteous and expeditious way. Given that the Second Reading debate was good-natured, I expect the outcome of the Committee's scrutiny to be positive.
The Programming Sub-Committee met last week. Its resolution sets out only the days on which the Committee will meet and the order in which the clauses will be considered, so it gives us maximum flexibility in handling the clauses within the overall programme.
The Bill is lengthy and, with collective agreement, we may need to include Government amendments, for example to include measures to deal with animal rights extremists, a topic on which there is broad all-party agreement. However, I believe that the allocated time should be sufficient.
In the debate in the Chamber, I said that there would be 16 meetings of this Committee; that was our intention. We have subsequently timetabled only 14 sittings because of the availability of individual Committee members. I would like to put on record here what I said about that in the meeting of the Programming Sub-Committee. We are prepared to honour the commitment that I gave to have 16 full sittings if necessary, either through extra sittings within the agreed time scale, or by lengthening the proceedings of our sittings, as the hon. Member for Taunton (Jackie Ballard) suggested at the Sub-Committee. Either option would be acceptable to the Government, depending on the view of Opposition Members about the correct way of proceeding.
If we consider that some points have been insufficiently debated, Mr. Gale, we will ask you to consider reconvening the Programming Sub-Committee with a view to re-examining the timing of our sittings. I hope that the Committee will accept the resolution.