Business of the House

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 11:32 am on 21 February 2008.

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Photo of Helen Goodman Helen Goodman Deputy Leader of the House of Commons 11:32, 21 February 2008

The hon. Gentleman began by raising the consideration of the Bill to enact the Lisbon treaty. He knows very well that we wanted to give the House a proper opportunity for substantial consideration of the Bill. We have set out a process, which the House agreed following a full debate, that enables the House to have a discussion on the substantive issues, as well as giving time to consider amendments. The Opposition, moreover, accepted that approach in their own programme motion. Furthermore, the Government promised to be flexible with respect to the timetabling on individual days, and we have been flexible. We were flexible yesterday, giving three hours for the amendments as well as three hours for the general debate. The suggestion that there has not been proper consideration of this Bill is quite ridiculous. We have allowed 12 days for the Committee of the whole House, which is more than the Committee stages for the Nice and Amsterdam treaties and the Single European Act put together.

The hon. Gentleman went on to raise the issue of waits in ambulances for A and E. I do not know whether he is aware of the fact that, in the past two years, 98 per cent. of patients were seen, diagnosed and treated within four hours. In the last quarter for which we have statistics, 2.7 per cent. of people waited more than four hours, and in the quarter before that it was 1.7 per cent. It is quite wrong for the hon. Gentleman to scaremonger in this way.

The hon. Gentleman then went on to talk about the HM Revenue and Customs bonuses. The bonuses that were paid in— [ Interruption. ]