Anti-social Behaviour Bill
10:30 am
Mr Bob Ainsworth (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Coventry North East, Labour)
I beg to move,
That—
(1) during proceedings on the Anti-social Behaviour Bill the Standing Committee, in addition to its first sitting on Tuesday 6th May at 10.30 am, shall meet on that day at 4.30 pm and thereafter on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9.10 am and 2.30 pm;
(2) 12 sittings shall be allotted to the consideration of the Bill in Committee;
(3) the proceedings shall be taken in the order specified in the Table below;
(4) the proceedings specified in the first column of the Table shall be brought to a conclusion (unless already concluded) at the time specified in the second column of the Table.
TABLE
Proceedings
Time for conclusion of proceedings
Part 1, New Clauses relating to Part 1, New Schedules relating to Part 1
9.55 pm at the 2nd sitting
Part 3, New Clauses relating to Part 3, New Schedules relating to Part 3, Part 4, New Clauses relating to Part 4, New Schedules relating to Part 4, Clauses 12 to 14, Schedule 1, Clauses 15 to 17, New Clauses relating to Part 2, New Schedules relating to Part 2
6.55 pm at the 6th sitting
Clauses 36 to 39, Schedule 2, Clauses 40 and 41, New Clauses relating to Part 5, New Schedules relating to Part 5, Part 6, New Clauses relating to Part 6, New Schedules relating to Part 6, Clauses 45 to 47
6.55 pm at the 10th sitting
Clauses 48 to 55, New Clauses relating to Part 7, New Schedules relating to Part 7, Clause 56, Schedule 3, Clauses 57 to 61, remaining New Clauses, remaining New Schedules, remaining proceedings on the Bill
5.15 pm at the 12th sitting
Good morning, Mr. O'Brien, and welcome to the Chair. I am sure that you are as pleased as every other hon. Member to be in Committee Room 11 on this bright and sunny morning as we get down to dealing with the detail of the proposals in the Bill.
I ask the Committee to agree to the programme motion recommended by the Programming Sub-Committee, which met briefly on Tuesday 29 April. The motion provides for a further 11 sittings, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 9.10 until 11.25 am, and 2.30 until 6.55 pm, except for today, which, as anyone who has been a Whip knows, is not really a Tuesday but a Monday—[Interruption.] At least one member of the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Heppell), gets the joke. As a Whip, he is familiar with the deliberations about when a Monday is a Monday and a Tuesday is a Tuesday. Today, we shall meet from 4.30 until 9.55 pm.
More important, the programme motion determines which parts of the Bill will be considered
during which sittings. It allocates the first two sittings to part 1; four sittings to parts 3, 4 and 2; four sittings to parts 5 and 6; and two sittings to parts 7 and 8. We have tried to allocate time to ensure that the Committee has an opportunity to scrutinise the Bill fully. The timetable is potentially challenging, but my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, East has had discussions with his counterparts in the Opposition parties and has indicated to them that if there is a desire to make sensible changes to the proposals, he will be prepared to listen to the arguments.
Given the high level of interest in the issues raised by the Bill, as demonstrated by the number of speakers on Second Reading, I am sure that we shall have some interesting and, I hope, constructive debates. We will reflect on the Committee's arguments.