Equality Bill

There are a lot of amendments in this group, and I know that many Members wish to speak to them, so I will be as brief as possible, especially as much of the necessary ground has been covered in the previous two speeches. While I do not agree with what the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) has said, I certainly think that he and the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) have a right to have a debate. I also hope that the House will recognise that I have tried on more than 10 occasions to secure adequate debating time for the Report stage of this Bill. I got several assurances from the Leader of the House that there would be proper consideration and scrutiny not only of Government amendments—there are five more groups of Government amendments that we will not get anywhere near scrutinising—but of other important amendments that divide the parties, and that cannot be dealt with on Division in Committee as it is not possible for the breadth of opinion that exists to be expressed in Committee. It is nothing short of disgraceful that we are in this position now. A second day is all that would have been required for us to make sufficient progress. I accept that the Speaker has done what he can by providing large groups that enable us to touch on a number of issues, but the Leader of the House will go down in history as having organised things in such a way that more amendments and new clauses than ever before have fallen without scrutiny in this place. The Government will find it more difficult to get their business through the upper House because of this failure to give us the opportunity to debate these matters, and that is counter-productive for the Government.