Far be it for me to suggest that the hon. Gentleman is a mendicant in these matters, but he certainly sought this many times. If that is not the definition of begging, I am not sure what is.
Then, of course, we had the bizarre event last Thursday afternoon, which was the classic kick-bollock scramble school of parliamentary drafting that this coalition has made standard practice when the Home Secretary first tabled a motion, then the Chairs of the Select Committees kicked up and tabled an amendment, but then at the very last minute the Home Secretary withdrew her motion and tabled another one, whereupon the Select Committee Chairs tabled another amendment. Now the Home Secretary has backed down on the amendment, which is her third position in a week—no Thatcher she, I would suggest, as we are certainly not going to get a “This Lady is not for turning” speech at the Tory party conference.
The end result of all that is a list cobbled together in a deal within the Government; the House given three days and no more to decide; and a motion tabled just one sitting day before the debate. Yet the Justice Secretary himself—he has been opting in and opting out of this debate; more opting out than opting in, I note—said on 19 March this year to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith):
“I can give my right hon. Friend, and indeed the House, a clear assurance that this Government will go further than any Government in ensuring that the House is involved in the decisions that are taken, and that as we reach agreement within the coalition on the way forward, we will need fully to engage Parliament, his Committee and, indeed, all the Committees with a vested interest in the matter”.—[Official Report, 19 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 782.]
[Interruption.] I hear some rumblings over there, but the honest truth is that none of the Select Committees have been impressed by the way in which the Government
have conducted themselves. Indeed, to be precise, the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) said that this was a classic case of “scrutiny gone wrong”.
Let us be clear: these are complex matters that need to be addressed. The Command Paper is one of the most impenetrable set of explanatory memorandums that I have ever encountered—[Interruption.] I have read it and understood it, but I am not sure that the Justice Secretary has either read it or understood it. Some of what he says in his own explanatory memorandum is self-contradictory.