Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

With the leave of the House, I shall say a few words in conclusion. This has been a good-spirited Third Reading debate, and I am very grateful for all that has been said. In response, I shall pick up on some of the points that have been made. Much reference has been made to the Bill's protracted gestation, and dictionaries have been pillaged to find the appropriate imagery. It is true that the Bill has taken a considerable time to complete its journey to this stage, and one reason is that we have genuinely tried to move forward consensually. It has been, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) just said, one of the most scrutinised Bills ever, and I know that we could all have done with more time on it. However, there has been a great degree of scrutiny. All Members accept that we have tried to respond to the real concerns of this House and to move forward on that basis, and I think that we have had a great deal of success. Despite all the grudging remarks about the Bill's lack of ambition, somehow everyone has found something good to say about it, and together that means that it is a significant Bill. I must give credit to the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) for the way in which he adapted his previous characterisation of the Bill, and I am extremely grateful for his acknowledgement that it is no longer a mouse—even though my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) seemed to think that a chocolate mouse was a good thing, rather than a pejorative phrase. Anyway, I hope that when we look collectively at the endeavours in which we have all been engaged, we can all feel proud of what we have achieved. I am very grateful not only to all hon. Members present, but to all who have contributed significantly to the legislation on the Joint Committee on Human Rights, in the various Select Committee hearings and in all our protracted debates on the Floor of the House. I have listened very carefully to what Members have said, and I particularly listened to what the hon. and learned Gentleman said about how we need to move forward. Clearly, there are still areas for further discussion and areas about which significant Members still feel strongly, but I undertake on my own behalf and that of my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State to do all that we can to meet those concerns in the remaining weeks of this Parliament. I am confident and have no doubt that we can make some progress. I doubt whether we can do everything that everybody wants, and all of us may have to make some hard decisions in the next two or three weeks, but I hope that we can do so while remembering what gave rise to the Bill in the first place and the subject to which we have turned over and over again in all our discussions: the need to restore trust in our democratic politics. The House has had a tough time during the progress of this Bill, and there have been many problems, but MPs' expenses did not create them; to a large extent it crystallised inherent problems, which all of us in our different ways—in our constituencies and here in this place—have wrestled with for a considerable time, and we have to take away that message. That is what gave rise to the Bill, and in seeing it through to what I hope will be its conclusion during the remaining weeks of this Parliament, I hope that we can all remember why we are doing this: to restore the trust of the people whom we all serve. I think that the Bill goes a considerable way towards doing that, directly through the measures that we have taken to set up the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and everything around it, and indirectly by rewiring our constitutional arrangements in order to make them more transparent, to make all of us more accountable to the people whom we serve, to give power back to Parliament and to fetter the Executive. We have had a lot of discussion about that. I believe that when people look at the Bill, they will see that the Government's instinct is to give power away. It is important that we remember that as we move forward. In conclusion, I pay tribute again to everyone who has contributed so much to the Bill. I am confident that when historians look at it, they will— Debate interrupted (Programme Order, this day). The Speaker put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair (Standing Order No. 83E), That the Bill be now read the Third time. Question agreed to. Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.