Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

With the leave of the House, Madam Deputy Speaker, let me deal with the concerns that have been raised by hon. Members on both sides. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) made a point about the amendment's availability. It was tabled on Friday and—obviously, processes of the House are a matter for the House—it was certainly on the parliamentary website for the world to see by Monday. So there were three, clear parliamentary days for Members on both sides of the House to look at the amendment and consider their views. The hon. Gentleman's comments about the usual channels will obviously have been heard by them, and I hesitate to trespass on those matters. I shall leave that point there. The hon. Gentleman says that the Bill has not had proper consideration, but it absolutely has. It is true that it did not have pre-legislative scrutiny—and we have explained on a number of occasions that it was a first-Session Bill and that we wanted to make progress on it—but it has had extensive legislative consideration in this House and in the other place. He pointed out that it was introduced to the other place more than a year ago, so the idea that this important Bill has not had proper scrutiny simply is not correct. The hon. Gentleman said that post-legislative scrutiny already takes place and he is quite right to say that that is done not by the Government but by Parliament. The Government produce a memorandum on Bills that they submit to Parliament, but they do not, of course, scrutinise themselves. This simply adds to the existing scrutiny that will already take place—because of the concerns that people had, we wanted to make it explicit that the Prime Minister would set up a Committee that would look at the operation of the Act and would then have to report and would give the House the opportunity for a full debate. Picking up the points that the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) raised about the detail—the number of members on the Committee and the end point—this goes back to the point that the hon. Member for Rhondda made about operating by consensus. The Prime Minister would set up the Committee, but details about the number of members and the out-date would be addressed later. The terms of reference would clearly be very wide—the amendment mentions"““a committee to carry out a review of the operation of this Act””" but does not narrow the terms. Those issues would clearly be agreed through the usual channels so there would be some sort of consensus for parties to appoint their Members to the Committee. It seems to me sensible to allow that process to take place rather than to set down every detail in the Bill.