Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

This is the sixth programme motion that we have had for this Bill, which is being taken on the Floor of the House because it is a constitutional Bill. When I was first elected to this place, I understood that the reason why such Bills were taken on the Floor of the House was to enable all MPs who wished to participate to do so and to enable the Bill to be exposed to the fullest possible scrutiny. That simply has not happened with this Bill. Anyone who looks at the record of the Committee proceedings will see that on each day of our considerations we were unable to consider some parts of the Bill at all because of the knives that were imposed. In many cases, important proposals that were tabled by hon. Members simply were not reached. Now the Bill has reached Report, but that is in itself unusual with a Bill that has been taken on the Floor of the House. It is, of course, a reflection of the number of amendments that the Government have tabled. If they had not tabled those amendments, we would not be having a Report stage on the Floor of the House for a constitutional measure. One has only to look at the Order Paper to see that we have not the slightest prospect of getting through the different groupings. Indeed, some of the groupings, particularly those containing Government amendments relating to Ministers and the civil service, undoubtedly will not be considered at all. For those reasons, therefore, it is not surprising that there are hon. Members around the House who object to the programme motion. My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) suggested to the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor that we should have two days on Report to reflect both the insufficiency of time that we had had to consider amendments properly in Committee on the Floor of the House, and the fact that we are also now exposing ourselves to a further raft of Government amendments—[Interruption.] I detect that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) wishes to intervene.