International Development Bill
10:30 am
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham, Conservative)
I associate myself with the Minister's remarks, Mr. Butterfill. I am sure that it will be a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, and I shall try not to give you and your co-Chairman too much trouble.
The Minister rightly said that the Opposition support the general thrust of the Bill. It is surprising, therefore, that the Government should have chosen to act as they did over the Bill's progress. The Bill was not included in the Queen's Speech; it was not considered sufficiently important. I am bitterly disappointed about that. The Bill is very much an afterthought because it was printed, a few months after the Queen's Speech, on 15 February 2001, and it received its Second Reading on Tuesday 6 March. That is indecent haste by any standards. I hope that the Minister will enlighten us about why it was left out of the Queen's Speech, why it was printed in such indecent haste and introduced so quickly.
In the good old days, even when there was an enormous Conservative majority in the House, there was a convention that two weekends would pass between Second Reading and Committee stage. I believe that all members of the Committee would recognise the advantages in that, except perhaps those who became Members of Parliament at the last general election. The pattern of scrutiny has changed dramatically under this Government. Those two weekends gave both Government and Opposition the opportunity to muster their forces and do their homework, something which is even more essential when a Bill is printed so late. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) pointed out that the International Development Committee is currently sitting but has become inquorate because some of its members are required to serve on this Standing Committee. That is alarming because I believe that the Select Committee was supposed to be scrutinising its major report on AIDS, which I mentioned in the House on Second Reading.