Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

We have had, as usual, a very lively—and in part noisy—debate about these issues. I shall explain to the House why I hope that the amendments will not be pressed to a Division. The hon. Members for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) and for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) have made their case about the noise, which is, on occasion, disturbing to individual Members and members of staff. When I was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the former Prime Minister between 2001 and 2005, I was frequently in an office facing Parliament square and on the receiving end of amplified noise about the performance of the Prime Minister and the Government throughout some very difficult debates on Iraq, student fees and a range of other issues. The purpose of the amendments is to remove such amplified noise from Parliament square, but I do not believe that they would represent a practical or workable solution. My first point to both the hon. Lady and the hon. Gentleman, and in support of the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth), has to be about what makes Parliament so different from any other place of operation in London and from somewhere in any other city in the UK. We have a responsibility to undertake work and our other activities in a positive way, but unless that protest noise is so disruptive that it prevents us from exercising our functions on the Floor of the House, the suggested action would be excessive and we could not support it.