Business of the House (Lisbon Treaty)

If the hon. Gentleman had been in the Chamber for long enough to hear the rest of the debate rather than coming in at the end, he would have heard the beginning of my speech, in which I said that I was very content to support the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, which would provide the six extra days. I consider it an improvement on the Government’s motion. I want to make two more points, relatively briefly. The first—which we raised earlier, but without receiving a satisfactory response—is that it is not clear how long the business will run on days nine, 10 and 11. There appears to be no time limit for day nine; the motion does not even say that the business will run until the moment of interruption, although I assume that that is the case. Day 11 is the critical day, the day on which the Minister himself said we were likely to be given a vote on a referendum, but as things stand the business could be compressed heavily by Government statements. There might be statements on important matters that should rightly be put before the House, but it would be helpful if the Minister committed himself tonight to allowing business on that day to run for at least six hours, but preferably as long as necessary, given that we shall be talking about not just clause 8 and amendments providing for a referendum, but all the new clauses and new schedules tabled by Members. My hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) elegantly referred to my final point: how the programme motion was created in the first place. Unfortunately, I agree with him that it is the basis for the Government’s media grid for the next couple of weeks, which will provide Ministers with an opportunity to be at the Dispatch Box each day at a time of their choosing, and to talk about subjects of their choosing—and at the beginning of each day when we turn on the radio and listen to the ““Today”” programme there will no doubt be discussions about what is going on in the House that day, completely under the Government’s control. I suspect that the Minister alluded to that when he talked about the motion being for the convenience of those outside the House. I would like to think that he was referring to our constituents, but I fear he was talking about our friends in the media. The motion is designed to support a Government news agenda, as my hon. Friend ably suggested. Understandably, the Government wish to be in control of events, but they are putting their desire to be in control ahead of the rights of Members to table amendments about matters of concern to them and their constituents. The House should support the amendment of my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) and vote against the Government motion.