Business of the House (Lisbon Treaty) (No. 8)

We will continue the discussion in the Tea Room, but my hon. Friend is entirely right. On day seven in Committee, we debated four groups of amendments relating to EU institutions and remaining matters in clause 2. That day, there were four quite large groups of amendments, but we touched only on the first. How can the Government be confident about their business motion given that so far in Committee the Chair has selected 20 groups of amendments, only eight of which have ever been debated—one of them for only five minutes? The subjects of borders, visas, asylum, immigration, defence, social policy and free movement of workers have never been debated in detail at all. The Government had hoped that they would be able to get away with the whole process, of which today's motion forms a further part, without anyone outside the House noticing and with no media attention. However, I am pleased to say that they have been unsuccessful. For instance, I doubt whether their motion today will redeem them in the eyes of Simon Carr, who, following the debate on the original business motion, wrote a piece about all this in The Independent, entitled ““Gordon's trickery backfires on him””. He noted the Government's methodology for the Committee stage as follows:"““The Government's promises for unparalleled opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny were, frankly, demolished by both sides…Why was so much time being given to these nebulous themes and so little to amendments?””"