6. Paragraphs (6) and (7) of Sessional Order A (varying and supplementing programme motions) made by the House on 7th November 2000 shall not apply to proceedings on any motion to vary or supplement this order for the purpose of allocating time to proceedings on consideration of any Lords amendments, or on any further messages from the Lords, and the question on any such motion shall be put forthwith.
I may not get off so lightly with this motion. I should point out to the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) that, in relation to his question in the previous debate, the expenditure was just under £100,000.
The Bill has benefited from the close and careful scrutiny of the Select Committee, under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline. West (Ms Squire). The Committee made full use of the two months or so available to it, taking evidence on nine occasions in addition to its deliberations on the Bill. Against that background, the time proposed for the remaining stages of the Bill seems appropriate to the number of amendments tabled—including only one from the Government, I am happy to say; all the more so given that most of the amendments address issues that have had more than their share of exposure in the Select Committee.

This is a thoroughly unsatisfactory situation. Day after day, night after night, the Government move programming motions to attempt to tell Parliament, the legislature, how long the Executive think is appropriate for us to consider their proposed legislation. That is an appalling pretension on the part of the Executive branch of the Government, and it is unprecedented.

We have had provision for programming motions in this House for about 120 years. It was necessary to bring in those rules because of the systematic filibustering by Irish nationalists in the 1880s. However, it was always considered that such motions were exceptional, used only in response to deliberate filibustering. They were a necessary weapon in our armoury to prevent Parliament from coming to a complete standstill.

Even when I got to the House—in 1987, 100 years after the introduction of the provision to "Erskine May" and our Standing Orders—those procedures were used too frequently, in my view, by the then Conservative Government, as I remember arguing on occasion. Nevertheless, the procedures were used sparingly at that time. It was taken for granted that the Government had to have some evidence of abuse and of deliberate time wasting; for example, if a Standing Committee examining a major Bill had only managed to get through four or five clauses in 100 hours. It was only when the Government could make such a case that they came before the House with such a programming motion.

That procedure was adopted by the Labour Governments of the 1970s and the Conservative Governments of the 1980s and 1990s. In my view, even on that basis, the procedures were used too frequently by Conservative and Labour Administrations. I remember my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd)—who, sadly, is not in his place—arguing forcefully against the excessive use of programming motions by the then Conservative Government, and I remember supporting him in the Chamber.

There was a balance between the Executive's desire to get their business through this place and the feeling that they should be able, at least, to enact legislation for which they had an electoral mandate without being held up indefinitely, and the strong feeling of the House that it was an exceptional, dubious and problematic procedure for the Executive to use their Majority to dictate to the legislature the timetable under which they were going to do their job.

I have come to know the Under-Secretary well in the past year, and he is not at all an arrogant human being; that is not his natural stance or character. However, he has been imbued with the atmosphere of the new Labour Administration. Their feeling is that if they have an army of spin doctors and cannon fodder on the Back Benches who are prepared to vote through anything at the beck and call of No. 10, Parliament, does not matter and can be steamrollered whenever required. Increasingly, legislation is simply drafted in Whitehall and enforced on this place by Ministers and the vast voting power that they have at present; I hope it will not be there for much longer.

As a result, we are at real risk of passing legislation that simply has not gone through the proper legislative process. The Under-Secretary said that, given the number of amendments, he thought that two hours was perfectly adequate to consider the Bill. That is a pretentious and arrogant thing to say, even though he is not by temperament a pretentious or arrogant person. It is sad that someone like him should have been pressed into this procrustean mould of new Labour and come out with such a thoughtless remark—it was, contemptuous of the role of this place. It is important that we have proper time to conduct our procedures; it is far more important than the substance of any particular Clause of any Bill.

There are important matters to be discussed in relation to the Bill. On the basis of the record that is before the House, we are concerned that the Secretary of State may have seriously misled this House. I will seek to raise this point later in connection with one of the amendments. It is a serious matter, and if such a serious charge is made, it is important that it be documented Such a charge must not simply be tossed off frivolously in debate; it should be supported. There must be time to read the relevant quotations—subject to the indulgence of the Chair—and the Government must have time to refute the charge, if refute it they can. I sincerely hope that they can, because the charge is an unpleasant and serious one. It is not in the interests of Parliament—or the Government—that such a charge should lie on the table without it being refuted. The Government may be denying themselves the opportunity to do that.

We have a lot of amendments tabled for discussion this afternoon and the Under-Secretary does not know how long we need to discuss them, because they are not Government amendments. The Government said that they had about four amendments and told the House of Commons that we needed two hours to deliberate. I object to that. They do not know how long we need and it is absolutely wrong to try to tell us how to do our job. We would not be doing our job, by definition, if the legislature simply did what the Executive told it.

How much more outrageous and offensive it is—to logic, as well as to the constitutional principle—of the Government to tell us how long we need to present our amendments. They do not even know what lies behind them, or the arguments that we will adduce in their support. They pretentiously and arrogantly assume that, just because they have a majority we cannot have an argument. Democracy is not based on the principle that because one side has a majority, the other side does not have an argument. Democracy is based on the principle that everybody has the right to say something, even if they are, from time to time, in the minority. They should be heard and considered.

Frankly, that fundamental principle—on which the procedures of this House have been based, which has been around for centuries, and under which we have been the wonder of the world and an inspiration to many nascent democracies around the globe—is being steadily but surely subverted.

My party will continue, in principle, to oppose this form of Executive tyranny. We must: not out of any narrow party political interest, but because it is vital that new Labour's four or five years with a crushing majority do not do permanent damage to the way in which this place does its job. That would be precisely the situation if the Conservative Opposition lay back and let the Government go ahead. We will not do that. We will use whatever means we can to make sure that the public realise what is going on. What is going on is that we have the most arrogant of Governments and they are the most contemptuous of Parliament in historical memory.

Many parties had substantial majorities in the past; we remember the great majorities that Baroness Thatcher, Mr. Baldwin, Mr. Attlee, and Asquith and Gladstone had in their day.

Hear, hear.

I am delighted to mention the names of two very fine parliamentarians and statesmen who did this country great service in their day. They would not have dreamed of using their Majority in this fashion; it would not have occurred to them for one moment. They would have stood at the Dispatch Box and defended their legislative proposals and expected their colleagues in government to do the same. They would not have tolerated for a moment the suggestion from a minion that, because they had a large majority, they need not bother with this place very much and could table a programme motion to foreclose debate in two hours, or an afternoon. That is the situation we have been brought to at the dawn of the 21st century by new Labour and nothing but new Labour. It should be thoroughly ashamed of itself.

The uncharacteristic silence of Government Members suggests that they probably are thoroughly ashamed of themselves. I hope that they continue to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves until they discover the consequence that must inevitably flow from exhibiting such a degree of arrogance in our ancient democracy and from treating the public and Parliament with so little respect.

I am speaking in the temporary absence of my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler). He has made many speeches in similar debates over the past few weeks, so he thought it appropriate to allow me to step in and perhaps mouth his words for him. I say in plain terms that we shall not support the programme motion, and my hon. Friend has put our view of such motions on the record time and again.

The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) said that democracy meant providing the occasion for all points of view to be fairly represented. That suggests a conversion to proportional representation that I was pleased to hear. However, I wondered in all seriousness whether he could justify the view that this Government came quite where he claimed they did on the index of supreme arrogance. I refer to the previous Government, who abolished the Greater London council, introduced the poll tax and did a string of things that many people at the time thought represented the height of arrogance and indifference to democratic dissent and lawful authority.

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman has completely missed the point. It is perfectly true that previous Conservative Administrations put through controversial legislation. In retrospect, some of us are not entirely happy with some of it, but we are very proud of parts of it. Some of the legislation was extremely controversial; other Governments in the past have put through controversial legislation, too. The hon. Gentleman's party certainly did, and I mentioned the names of the statesmen who introduced it. Indeed, the Attlee Administration put through some momentous and extremely controversial legislation, but it never occurred to any of those Governments to foreclose parliamentary debate artificially by systematically introducing programme motions in the House. Programme motions were an exception—

Order. The hon. Gentleman must sit down when I am on my feet. The hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) are both missing the point. The debate is about the programme motion for the Armed Forces Bill, so I should be obliged if arguments are adduced to that point.

I certainly accept your reprimand, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if I have strayed, but I thought it appropriate to comment on some of the points that were made earlier.

I return to the central issue. Programme motions and guillotines involve work in progress. Liberal Democrats are willing and eager for an attempt to be made to have legislation introduced and considered systematically and for it to become done-and-dusted law after being satisfactorily scrutinised with a full degree of accountability. We openly say that a system of programming is essential to that. However, there has been a breakdown in the system that was originally approved by a Majority of the House. Pending the outcome of the work in progress—it is no secret that the Modernisation Committee is currently debating a draft report to address some of these issues—we will certainly continue to oppose programme motions.

By my calculation, the motion allows us 200 minutes to deal with the 20 discrete matters that represent your wise selection of amendments, Mr. Deputy Speaker. That does not strike me as an inspiring start to our proceedings, because that simple calculation tells us that we have about 10 minutes to discuss each group. If the Government seriously suggest that we should give a Committee of the Whole House on such an important Bill 10 minutes to consider each separate item that you, Mr. Speaker, have identified, that sums up as well as anything the contempt in which they now hold the House.

It is curious but significant that, on the very day a generous Prime Minister has given us more parliamentary time than most of us might have expected before the weekend, or at least until the formal statement made earlier today, the Government should now seek to compress our business in such an arrogant fashion. We now know that more parliamentary time stretches ahead of us than we might have dreamed of. Surely, in those circumstances, any reasonable Government would have been prepared to say that they would not press the programme motion because they acknowledged that a Committee of the whole House on a Bill of such importance should be given a proper amount of time for deliberation? Even if we thought that we would not have time to do justice to the Bill, the Government might have been prepared, in the light of circumstances, to allow the Committee more time to deliberate on the Bill. That would have been a reasonable response.

Speculation in the press over the past 24 or 48 hours has suggested that Parliament will be embarrassed by the amount of time that we have on our hands. What are we going to do with it? I suggest straight away that the Government could withdraw this outrageous programme motion and say, "We the Government are now prepared to give the Committee a proper amount of time to consider the matters before us."

The Bill has 41 clauses and eight schedules and my hon. Friends have tabled new clauses and amendments which cover important issues. For example, Amendment No. 8 deals with the functions of inspectors of constabulary, and that amendment alone would require a considerable amount of time to be properly considered by the Committee. Amendment No. 7 deals with protocols between the Ministry of Defence and the domestic police forces; even to a layman like me, who has not been involved in the detailed scrutiny of the Bill, that is patently an important issue.

In a Committee of the whole House, 500 or so Members may be present and they may all be eager to participate in the debate. If we did the arithmetic properly, we would consider not only the 20 discrete items that must be considered in 200 minutes-10 minutes for each item—but the fact that up to 500 Members may all be eager to speak. The House will readily be able to work out that 10 minutes divided by 500 does not give much time for individual Members to contribute.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) so eloquently said, we have been reduced to hearing the Government tell us that parliamentary scrutiny does not matter any more, that they can rush Bills through in a peremptory fashion, that time is no longer of any relevance, and that they can compress consideration of Bills to such an extent that proper scrutiny cannot possibly be given to matters as important as those with which the Bill deals. Even if we were to devote all the time left—the three hours from 6.30 to 9.30, when the guillotine falls on the Bill yet again—to considering the functions of inspectors of constabulary, it would not be sufficient time to enable many of my hon. Friends who have great expertise and knowledge to make significant and substantial contributions.

All in all, we have here the logical outcome of the process that even the Liberal Democrat spokesman was moved to describe as unsatisfactory. He stated, with all the vehemence that Liberal Democrats can muster, that his party would not be supporting the motion. Those are strong words from a Liberal Democrat—we had better all beware, because when the Liberal Democrats threaten not to support something, it is pretty serious. Of course, we Conservatives will actually oppose the motion.

If the right hon. Gentleman refers to the Library, he will find that Liberal Democrats have a better voting record in the House than Conservatives, and that we have a very good record of voting against the Government when necessary.

I presume that they have an even better record of not supporting the Government. When the House divides, we shall see how many Liberal Democrats are present and what they do. Perhaps afterwards the hon. Gentleman and I can compare voting records to see whose is bigger.

The motion is an extreme example of a process to which the Government hope we shall quietly become accustomed and which we shall come to accept as routine—to the extent that we eventually give up our Opposition. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford said, we shall not give up our opposition as long as the Government handle such matters in such a fashion and tell the House that consideration by a Committee of the Whole House of a Bill of such size, complexity and importance will be allowed only a ridiculously limited time. That is not what the people of this country expect of their Parliament in its discharge of its role of scrutinising legislation and holding the Government to account. When the General Election takes place, whether it be on 7 June or at some later date, we shall draw these matters to the attention of the electorate and invite them to pass judgment.

I hope that the Minister felt some sense of shame when moving the programme motion. It was an unpleasant thing to have to do and we know that temperamentally he is not that sort of hon. Gentleman. A programme motion is intended to railroad through a measure by taking away from the Opposition the only weapon they have: time. The ability to extend debate in the hope of persuading the Government to change their course is the only weapon available to us. That is why it is crucial that every programme motion be opposed, unless there are exceptional reasons that justify the Government's belief that the Opposition are wasting time.

Let me describe how a Select Committee on an Armed Forces Bill operates. I speak as one who chaired the relevant Select Committees in 1986 and 1996. Eleven Members of Parliament are selected to serve on the Committee. On this occasion, for the first time, no one with any service experience was put on the Committee, which was packed with Ministers and Parliamentary Private Secretaries. The Committee tends to work in an harmonious fashion—I am sure it did so on this occasion, under the excellent chairmanship of the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Ms Squire), whose interest in defence matters is long standing. The members of the Committee work together closely on their task, which is to consider, scrutinise and perhaps amend the pattern of discipline and the structure of the armed forces. As they do that, they take evidence from armed forces personnel. In my experience, they always develop great respect for those who work in the armed forces and the Committee tends to develop an extremely harmonious working relationship.

Does my hon. Friend believe that a consensual, harmonious, cosy Committee is necessarily the best way to produce sharp-edged scrutiny of legislation; or does he share my suspicion that, every now and then, cosy consensuality gives rise to sloppy, poor legislation?

My right hon. Friend makes a good debating point, but in the case that I describe it is good that the members of the Committee tend to be harmonious in their desire to do their best for the armed forces and to respect the highly taxing circumstances in which forces personnel serve. In this case, harmony promotes good legislation.

That harmony usually extends to agreeing the manner in which the programme of the Committee is to be handled. I am not aware of any previous occasion on which it has been necessary in any way to curtail discussion by a Committee of an Armed Forces Bill. Today therefore marks a first. The Government have stood on its head the practice developed over the years of harmony and agreement between the sides.

In that respect, I mean the two sides of the Committee, but on occasions it can be extremely helpful for the whole Committee to have available to it the weapon of time. I recall that, during the passage of the Armed Forces Act 1996, the Select Committee achieved consensus and harmony in its wish to prevent the then Government from implementing their proposals to change the basis on which Greenwich hospital was dealt with by the Government. The Committee wanted to express to the Government its discontent with the manner in which the Government proposed to deal with the future of that institution. I, as its Chairman, expressed the Committee's view that we were not prepared to accept the proposed legislation. The Government had to change their approach, and what emerged was a better relationship between the Government and the management of Greenwich hospital—one that has ensured both that the fabric and architecture of Greenwich hospital are retained in their present form, and that its traditions are respected by its owners. The weapon of time can be extremely valuable, whether it enables the Opposition to make representations to Government members of the Committee, or enables the Committee as a whole to make representations to the Government.

I profoundly regret the way in which the Government have sought to curtail discussion of the Bill. The current Government are arrogant: the Prime Minister rarely attends the House and Cabinet Ministers rarely attend debates. At the start of the debate on the money resolution, I saw the Secretary of State for Defence sitting in his place on the Treasury Bench. That was welcome to me because I believe that, even if they are not personally responsible for piloting it through, Ministers should be present during the passage of legislation that affects their Department. However, the right hon. Gentleman was present for no more than five minutes before disappearing, and he will probably take no further part in the passage of the Bill. That is, to my regret, typical of the Government's behaviour.

The Armed Forces Bill is, of all Bills, the one on which it should be possible for the usual channels—the Whips representing Front Benchers of all parties—to agree a reasonable pattern of debate that is not inflexible and which allows all Members of Parliament to express their point of view. This programme motion is nasty, silly and unnecessary, and I very much regret that it has been moved.

I rise having had a rather unhappy history of trying to take part in affairs on the Bill. I got a chance to speak on Second Reading, but it will not surprise hon. Members to learn that I would have been keen to be on the special Select Committee that considered the Bill, given my experience in the armed forces and as a special adviser to Sir Malcolm Rifkind, then Secretary of State for Defence, from 1993 to 1995. I felt that I would have had a deal to contribute to the Bill.

I want to reinforce the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) that it is unnecessary to have a programme motion at this stage. It was unnecessary to have a programme motion immediately after Second Reading, when I made what I believe to be the shortest speech in the House of about five seconds before the motion ran out of time.

It was a very good speech.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Some people have remarked that it was the best speech that I have made in the House, but I am not entirely sure that they were being kind.

The point at issue is the way in which the Bill has been handled in the House, which is profoundly unsatisfactory for the armed forces. There is no great controversy between the Government and the Opposition about the detail of issues in the Bill. Excepting the major issue of whether the armed forces should be within the remit of the European convention on human rights—and if it is taken as read that they will be—a lot of what follows in the Bill does not give rise to controversy between the parties.

It is a shame that someone with my background, who wanted to serve on the Select Committee considering the Bill, was not able to do so or give details to it. I then find that the Bill, frankly, is almost a subject for experts in the House; looking round the Chamber this evening, I see the usual suspects on defence issues. It was not necessary for the Government to introduce a programme motion. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) has made clear how little scrutiny there would be if we scrutinised the Bill Clause by clause. However, I believe that, on Report, we would have had a chance for proper and detailed debates on issues raised by the Bill, driven by hon. Members on both sides of the House who take a keen and informed interest in those affairs.

That is the duty that we owe the armed forces, not driving through legislation on programme motions—both after Second Reading, to limit consideration in Select Committee and to limit the time on Report, which is a key stage for people like me. Indeed, that will be the only opportunity that I shall have to make known my concerns about the Bill. However, I despair of being listened to by the Government in an area in which I can make a positive contribution. I served on the Committee that considered the Armed Forces Discipline Act 2000 and tabled a number of amendments. It has to be said that not a single Amendment, from whatever party, was accepted by the Under-Secretary of State for Defence who took the measure through Committee. Having heard the Home Secretary make the point that he was not aware of any Bill that could not be improved by its time in Committee, it is instinctive to object to the fact that the Government see fit to deal on a programme motion with the armed forces, of all things.

I hope that my hon. Friend will accept that I am not trying to flatter him. I speak the truth when I say that I served with him on the Committee that considered the Armed Forces Discipline Act and was greatly impressed by his contributions, which were based on his military experience and his consideration of the measure. I very much regret that he has not been able to contribute to consideration of the Bill, and that the period available for him to do so is now limited.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind remarks.

I conclude by expressing distress at the unnecessary procedure of introducing a programme motion on the Bill. It is clear that the House could have come to a perfectly adequate arrangement about the time needed to debate the issues. The programme motion demonstrates contempt, not only for the House but for the armed forces. Outside the House, people may not be too worried about the Executive treating the House with contempt, but there should be serious cause for concern among hon. Members. The matter should be brought to public attention; when it is, the Executive should pay the price.

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 282, Noes 134.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Ordered

That the following provisions shall apply to the Armed Forces Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Order of 9th January: