Scotland Bill

While the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has been talking, and now that he is talking about aggregates tax, I have been aggregating the time that we have taken to deal with half a dozen or so groups of amendments. I see that we have about twice as many groups still to deal with before we reach the target that the Government have set themselves. We have taken six and three-quarter hours to deal with these half a dozen or so groups of amendments, and at the rate we are going it will take until about 7 o'clock tomorrow morning to deal with the rest. Although I am prepared to stay here, I think that it really is unfair on the staff—on Hansard, on the catering staff, the doorkeepers, the civil servants and the clerks of course; on all the staff—who do such a wonderful job on our behalf. It is incumbent on the Minister and the noble Baroness the Whip to start thinking about how the Government will deal with this. We lost one whole day of our Committee stage because the Welfare Reform Bill took it up. We all sat round for a whole day but eventually the Government said, ““We are not having it today. You can all go home””. That was a wasted day for many people. We are having a detailed debate on this Bill. I have not participated in much of it but I have been listening to all of it—and yes, as a noble Baroness says, I nodded off on one occasion as well. It is incumbent on the Government to give an indication to the staff—to everyone around the House—of what will happen. How late will we go tonight and what is the target? They should also give us more time to deal properly with this very important constitutional Bill. It was not dealt with properly in the other place, but it is our responsibility to deal with it properly. There is plenty of time after Easter for Report. We could continue the Committee stage in the two days that are allocated for Report and deal with it properly then. I hope that the Government will give that serious consideration. Otherwise, we will not be treating dedicated staff as we should if we are to be a good employer.