With your leave, Mr Weir, I will respond briefly to the debate. One beauty of a five-year, fixed-term Parliament is that it has a known final year. We are now in that known final year—a privilege that was not accorded to any of us in our previous political lives. It allows us time to think and to pause ahead of the clash that will take place in the 290-odd days, or whatever it is, before the general election. We can suspend hostilities, and a Parliament and a Government can look back on four years and perhaps think about the next five years. It provides a space where a bit of thinking can go on. I hope that my C ommittee has put into that space some thoughts that may be of interest and help to all those who aspire to government.
I am very grateful to the Minister for what he said about putting the new situation in the Cabinet manual. My Committee was in many ways partly responsible for securing the Cabinet manual being in the public domain. It is something that we can work with, and I am very grateful for what he said.
We should use the space that I referred to because both issues will not go away. When they revisit us, they could do so as crises. They could revisit us in a very different political environment. We have a moment when I hope that, as we are not in the midst of active war as we have been in the recent past, we can consider in a sober and quieter environment what we would do in those circumstances.
The constitutional convention and matters such as separation and devolution are key issues in our democracy. There is a demand from a growing and quite broad alliance, from the Mayor of London to the leaders of the core cities, the Local Government Association and even the RSA with its review of cities under Jim O’Neill, for a push now. People want greater power, a greater say and greater expression in their localities and, indeed, their nations.
In conclusion, I am grateful for what the Minister has said and for what my Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), has contributed. We have a period now when some thought can go into what we might all want to put into our party programmes at the next election. It might even be possible, in my dreams, that the parties could see a consensus when one is jumping up and down and waving its arms in front of their faces and produce something that we could all agree on after the next general election.
I thank you, Mr Weir, for your tolerance over the time we have taken, but these are two very important debates, and we are better for having aired them publicly today.
Question put and agreed to.
3.39 pm
Sitting adjourned.