Part of Leader of the House – in the House of Commons at 10:30 am on 8 May 2008.
Last year, for the first time, instead of merely producing the list of Bills that would comprise the Government's legislative programme in the Queen's Speech, we published our programme in draft in advance, in order to make transparent a process that had hitherto been carried out only behind closed doors. That allowed people to see what we were doing and to have their say. We conceded that we did that late in the day because it was brought in by the new Prime Minister, who had only taken up his office in June. We thus undertook to do it earlier this year in order to allow people more of a say, and that is what we intend to do.