Orders of the Day — Business of the House

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 11:02 pm on 14 April 1986.

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Photo of Mr Alfred Dubs Mr Alfred Dubs , Battersea 11:02, 14 April 1986

I beg to move, to leave out from "That" to the end of the Question and to acid instead thereof:

this House declines to give a Second Reading to a Bill which fails to have regard to the principles and conscience of those who wish to preserve the special character of Sunday, and which fails to protect adequately the interests of those workers who will be detrimentally affected by it. It has been a good debate, with differences of opinion on both sides of the House. Before I turn to the main issues to which the Bill gives rise I should like to speak about the Government's approach to the Bill

The way in which the Government have handled the matter is, at the very least, novel, and, at the most, in one or two respects, breaking parliamentary precedents. The Home Secretary developed a new doctrine of what the Second Reading of a Bill is about. He said that the purpose of Second Reading is just to clear away the old legislation, that in effect we are not really voting on anything at all except to clear the ground, and then the Committee can get down to the work.

I know that the Home Secretary has been here much longer than I have, but I question whether he has the doctrine right. "Erskine May" says on page 528: The second reading is the most important stage through which the Bill is required to pass; for its whole principle is then at issue". The "whole principle" of total deregulation is before us today. I do not think that any fudge by the Home Secretary as to what Second Reading has traditionally been about will convince many hon. Members—in fact, I doubt whether it will convince any—that we should somehow ignore the fact that we are debating and voting on the key point of principle.

The second rather original approach is that there is to be a three-line Whip for Conservative Members, followed by a free vote on the later stages, up to, but probably not including, the Third Reading debate. As far as I can discover, there are no precedents for that approach. Of course, a great deal depends upon the composition of the Committee. We all know that if the Committee is to reflect fairly the speeches that have been made tonight it wall be balanced evenly, or perhaps slightly against the Bill. Therefore, it depends very much on how Conservative Members decide to vote. If tonight's votes are a reflection of the speeches, we shall genuinely have a Committee that will be able to act independently of the Government.

The third interesting and somewhat novel point is that the Home Secretary gave the House an absolute assurance that there would be no guillotine on the Bill. I welcome that, but I do not know whether there are any precedents for a Minister announcing at the beginning of a Second Reading debate that there will be no guillotine later. We certainly welcome that, and we look forward to free and full debate at all stages.