Enterprise Bill
10:30 am
Mr Nigel Waterson (Eastbourne, Conservative)
I welcome the Minister to the Committee. I am not sure that the Under-Secretary agreed that all our debates were focused and constructive, but we think that they were.
I am grateful to the Government for reconvening the Programming Sub-Committee this morning. It was a helpful initiative, but they brought that situation on themselves. We have been saying from the outset that the Bill needed a longer Committee stage than it had been given, and even a further day's sittings do not do it justice. We tried to press our views on the Government on how much time we should spend on each part of the Bill, but the usual channels and the Government were not remotely interested, so we have got into this mess.
In part, the position is remediable by the motion: we will be able to do more justice to the clauses under
debate. However, nothing can bring back the clauses on consumer protection, which were simply not debated because of the knife in the programme resolution, so considerable damage has already been done. Many consumers and consumer organisations will be puzzled and distressed that we were not able to debate those provisions and others in the detail that they would have liked.
We readily agreed to the proposal at the Programming Sub-Committee because it seemed the sensible thing to do at this moment of the Committee's history. However, we put down a marker on the subject of insolvency, which is in the final part of the Bill. No massively important party political issues relate to insolvency, but there is a mass of technical, legal detail on which we have received a large number of proposed amendments and a great deal of briefing from a range of organisations, which were apparently consulted before the Bill was published. I am not trying to put the fear of God into the Minister, I am just saying that we have a lot to get through. I put down the marker that problems may arise again when we reach the subject of insolvency. I hope that the Government will be ready to remedy them should they arise. Only on that basis are we happy to agree to the motion.