Daylight Saving Bill (Money)

I wish to speak to the money resolution because I am concerned that we are seeing an abuse of the parliamentary process. It has been the tradition for many years in this place for a money resolution, which can be tabled only by Her Majesty's Treasury, to be tabled within a fortnight or three weeks of a Bill passing Second Reading, particularly a private Member's Bill. What we are talking about is private Members' legislation, which is extremely precious to the individual Members concerned and very precious to the House as a whole. The name of my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) luckily came up in the ballot, she duly tabled her Bill and there was a most interesting debate on Second Reading on 3 December 2010, when despite the opposition of Her Majesty's Government the legislation was passed by 92 votes to 10. The context is that we are sitting through an extended Session of Parliament. Instead of there being an annual Session, we have a two-year Session, so 40 private Members' Bills should have been tabled, but only 20 have been, because the Government have not allowed extra Friday sittings on which to table extra Bills. There has been only one ballot for private Members' Bills, in which my hon. Friend was lucky to be successful, so private Members have had a reduced opportunity to table legislation. I contend that the Government have used the extra time in the Session to delay the passage of my hon. Friend's Bill, because it is now almost a full year since that Second Reading debate. My hon. Friend the Minister's answer to my earlier intervention was not good enough, because the Government should not use this delay in tabling the money resolution to sort out their attitude to any particular Bill; they should table the money resolution to go along with the will of the House as expressed on Second Reading, and then sort out their attitude to the Bill prior to Committee. Members may not appreciate that a private Member's Bill cannot proceed to Committee unless the money resolution is passed, so the Government are using that device to delay the progress of the Bill.