Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [Lords]

I find this programme motion particularly cynical. It marks another rather important change in the way that Parliament is handled. The Government have decided to stop parliamentary debate on various important issues altogether and to ensure that no votes take place at all on key issues that they find it politically embarrassing to have raised at the present time. If that becomes an established practice, we will see another serious step back in the way the House can discuss matters. This is the first time that the House has had the opportunity to discuss embryology or abortion in Government time since 1990. We have private Members' Bills on the subject of abortion from time to time, but they do not have the faintest prospect of changing the law because there is always, on one side or the other, a sufficient blocking minority to stop progress. I would be very surprised if more Government time were made available in the next 20 years or so for those subjects to be returned to, but they are very important to many of our constituents and they arouse profound emotions. The general public, whom we represent, have every view and none on the subject, but there is an enormous range of opinion, about which people on both sides feel very passionately. It cuts completely across political party, both for the public and for us, and there is no way in which a particular Member of Parliament can possibly hold himself up as representing the strong feelings that some sections of the population hold. We must have legislation, and this is the legislative Chamber for the country. As it happens, the House is representative, because, again crossing party lines, Members of the House of Commons represent, in my experience, just about every range of opinion one could possibly have on the subject. Many Members have strong feelings on moral, political, practical and social grounds that ought to be expressed. Every now and again, a chance comes to address those issues. The 1990 Act has been referred to, and I spent far too much time on Second Reading reminding the House of how that went through. A free vote was permitted to every Member of the House, including Ministers in the then Government. That Bill was deliberately drafted to ensure that abortion came within its scope. I pay credit to Geoffrey Howe, now Lord Howe, who was then the Leader of the House of Commons. He made it quite plain that he wanted me, as Secretary of State, to ensure that the Bill was drafted in such a way that Mr. Speaker would allow abortion amendments, because there was such a demand from the House that they should be considered. A great deal of time was allowed for the discussion and the law was settled for the next 18 years. It needs to be revisited and debated again. A motion such as this programme motion merely serves to outrage the range of opinion in the House, on both sides of the argument, as people find that they are not allowed to open up the subjects again. There is no practical reason for it. It is some political embarrassment—political with a small p or a large P—that causes the problem. I suspect that Scottish by-elections are determining the progress of the Bill all the way through. The House has lots of time in which it could consider the issues. I cannot remember a period in which the House of Commons has had less serious business to transact brought before it by the Government. There is no earthly reason why we should not have the powers extended today to go on into this evening. There is no earthly reason why we should not have two days' debate, at least at this stage. A Christmas recess of quite unprecedented length has just been announced, because the Government cannot think of anything to occupy the time of the House. As we have, in practice, a free vote on both sides, I make the usual hopeless plea that I have found myself making in recent debates on programme motions. I trust that Members on all sides will regard themselves as having a free vote. If we allow this motion to be whipped through, it will be applied to other sensitive and political Bills. In future, by reordering clauses and putting knives in the guillotine and so on, the Government will be able to determine that any subject that they regard as inappropriate or unsuitable will not even be debated, let alone voted on, by the House of Commons. Such cynicism would take my breath away if I were not becoming ever more accustomed to such a process on the part of a control-freak Government who regard the House of Commons as an embarrassing nuisance to be silenced on all suitable occasions.