Hunting Bill
2:00 pm

Mr Mike O'Brien (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; North Warwickshire, Labour)

I beg to move,

That—

(1) the Standing Committee shall meet on Thursday 18th January at Two o'clock;

(2) after that date the Standing Committee shall meet on Tuesdays at half-past Ten o'clock and at half-past Four o'clock and on Thursdays at quarter-past Ten o'clock and at Two o'clock;

(3) proceedings shall be taken in the order shown in the Table below;

(4) proceedings shall be concluded at the time shown in the second column of the Table (unless concluded earlier).

It is a pleasure, Mr. O'Hara, to meet under your wise chairmanship. I have served under your chairmanship before and under that of Mrs. Roe. I know that both of you will keep us in order with your customary mix of authority and good humour and I hope that I, at least, will not try your patience too much in the weeks ahead. I cannot speak for other Committee members, but I trust that they will also stay in order throughout.

The resolution emerged from the Programming Sub-Committee, which met earlier today. It is straightforward and simple, so I hope that I can be brief. It requires us to meet twice a day on Tuesdays, following normal Committee hours. For the convenience of several members, including me, it proposes that we do not convene early on Thursday mornings, but at 10.15 am and for just over an hour. However, that will be followed by a long sitting on Thursday afternoons to ensure that we meet for at least five hours every Thursday, which is the length of two normal sittings.

The Committee will therefore have more than the 12 sittings that I promised in moving the programme motion before the 8 February deadline. Indeed, we should be able to have 13 sittings. The programme motion, which the House passed immediately after Second Reading, set the deadline.

The Committee has been mandated to consider a single schedule. The House as a whole decided which of the three options in the Bill should be retained. I appreciate that there are currently three schedules in the Bill; I will address that matter shortly.

Of course, not all members of the Committee agree with the choice that the House made yesterday, but our job is to give detailed consideration to schedule 3, and no more or less that. That is reflected in the resolution that the Programming Sub-Committee has produced, which allows us 15 minutes to consider clauses 5 and 6; although some members might consider that a generous allocation. A further 15 minutes are allowed to consider schedules 1 and 2; these are the schedules that the House as a whole has rejected, and we should not waste time by re-debating an issue on which the House has already given its view. The rest of our time is to be devoted to a full and proper consideration of schedule 3, apart from a few minutes at the end to consider new schedules—although it is hard to see what new schedules could sensibly be proposed.

The resolution does not seek to impose deadlines for reaching certain points in our deliberations. That will give the Committee substantial flexibility in making progress, but progress we hope to see. I hope that the Committee will use its time wisely, and I therefore invite the Committee to agree the resolution.

I also want to set out the stance that will be adopted during the Committee's proceedings by me and the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Jane Kennedy), who I am delighted to say will be assisting me on the Bill. The Government are neutral on hunting with dogs and, as far as possible, we intend to preserve our neutrality by not taking sides on issues about which we do not take a view. However, we have a responsibility to ensure that any Act of Parliament is both workable and properly drafted and we shall, if necessary, oppose amendments that would be contrary to those requirements. We shall consider purely technical amendments in that light, consulting parliamentary counsel as appropriate.

We believe that we have a duty to safeguard the integrity of the option that the whole House has selected, and shall resist any attempt to undermine it or alter it fundamentally. I am grateful for your indulgence to make that point, Mr. O'Hara. I shall write to each of the three interest groups, setting out how the Government intend to proceed during the Committee so that they are properly and directly briefed by me about how we shall deal with each amendment.

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