INDUSTRY BILL (ALLOCATION OF TIME) (Hansard, 22 October 1975)

§ The Under-Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. Gerald Kaufman)
I beg to move, That the Order [12th May] allocating time to the Industry Bill be supplemented as follows:—

1. The proceedings on Consideration of the Lords Amendments to the Industry Bill shall be brought to a conclusion at Midnight this day and the provisions of paragraph 7 of the Order of 12th May shall apply to the said proceedings with the substitution of two hours after Ten o'clock for one hour after Ten o'clock.

2. If, at the expiration of the period for which the proceedings on Consideration of the Lords Amendments may continue by virtue of paragraph 1 of this Order and the Order of 12th May, those proceedings have not been completed, then for the purpose of bringing those proceedings to a conclusion—

(a)Mr. Speaker shall first put forthwith any Question which has been already proposed from the Chair and not yet decided, and, if that Question is for the amendment of a Lords Amendment, shall then put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown, That this House doth agree or disagree with the Lords in the said Lords Amendment or, as the case may be, in the said Lords Amendment as amended;

(b)Mr. Speaker shall designate such of the remaining Lords Amendments as appear to him to involve questions of Privilege and shall—

(i) put forthwith the Question on any Amendment moved by a Minister of the Crown to a Lords Amendment and then put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown, That this House doth agree or disagree with the Lords in their Amendment or, as the case may be, in their Amendment as amended,

(ii) put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown That this House doth disagree with the Lords in a Lords Amendment,

(iii) put forthwith, with respect to each remaining Lords Amendment designated by Mr. Speaker, the Question That this House doth agree with the Lords in their Amendment, and

(iv) put forthwith the Question, That this House doth agree with the Lords in all the remaining Lords Amendments; and

(c) so soon as the House shall have agreed or disagreed with the Lords in any of their Amendments Mr. Speaker shall put forthwith a separate Question on any other Amendment moved by a Minister of the Crown relevant to such Lords Amendment.

487 I hope that the House will be spared from the Tory Opposition even the most mechanical, ritualistic noises about the motion. Parliament has debated the Bill exhaustively, not to say exhaustingly, with 142 hours of debate in this House and 50 hours in another place.
I must confess that there is a breach of precedent in having a timetable on Lords amendments. This is the first time ever that it has been done—by a Labour Government. The Conservatives have done it frequently, habitually, even addictively. Four times in their last period of office between 1970 and 1974 they had timetable motions on Lords amendments. They had them twice in one week in 1972, one of the Bills concerned being the Housing Finance Bill. Therefore, in making this precedent we are following the trail that the Tory Opposition have blazed. We are gradually learning from them how to conduct Government business in an orderly fashion.
If hon. Members point to the number of amendments before the House, I would point out that they are very few more than came from another place on the Housing Finance Bill and that we are allotting considerably more time than was allowed on the Lords amendments to that Bill. In any case, most of these amendments are uncontroversial, drafting amendments—technical amendments, consequential amendments, even corrections of printing errors.
There are only nine substantial areas of disagreement. These are areas where a non-elected Chamber has arrogated to itself not its traditional revising role but the rejection of basic principles on which the Government have a specific mandate from the electorate. Those principles have pretty well all been debated in this House ad nauseam. Today we have eight further hours if the House agrees to the motion, as I invite it to do.

§ Mr. Michael Heseltine (Henley)
I have no intention of detaining the House for long, although I thought that the Under-Secretary—in the, I take it, temporary absence of the Secretary of State—made a curiously defensive speech about the Government's behaviour. We all know that the Labour Party in opposition is prepared to disrupt the business of the House without any sense of responsibility. It was as a response to 488 that that the then Conservative Government took the necessary measures to secure the Government's business, which is a time-honoured precedent, practised by all parties.
Perhaps the House will have been mildly surprised by what the hon. Gentleman said, because every hon. Member will have read the very different explanation given by Lord Beswick from the Government Front Bench in another place of the way in which the industry Bill came to the Lords and the role of the Lords in dealing with it. I should like to read from the Hansard of another place so that the words of the Undersecretary may be set in context against the words of the Minister of State in the same Department. The noble Lord said on 16th October: I should like to make the point that of those 180 Amendments up to Report stage only 51 were tabled by noble Lords opposite."— that is, by the Opposition. If there are criticisms—as I believe there have been from some of my friends in another place—about the way this Bill has been savaged by noble Lords, and I shall say a little about that, the fact is that the majority of the Amendments have arisen because the Bill was inadequate when it reached us. It shows credit to noble Lords on all sides that they have contrived to put right so many of the shortcomings that arose, I believe, because the Bill was not properly considered in another place."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 16th October 1975; Vol. 364, c. 1077.] Perhaps the House will want to balance the advice from the Minister of State and the advice it has now received from the Under-Secretary.
The reality of the situation is that under the machinery of the guillotine this House is passing legislation which is ill-considered. The Bill was subjected to a totally unwarranted guillotine in the first place, and it is not surprising that the Government spokesman in another place had to concede the work that it was necessary for their Lordships to do in order to rectify the failings of the Commons.
Because we are now subject to a guillotine, however, I have no intention of doing other than to recommend to my hon. Friends that we should make the best of a bad job, that we should use what time the Government have condescended to give us by accepting this totally inadequate proposal, and give the 489 maximum possible time to debating the issues before us.

§ Mr. J. Grimond (Orkney and Shetland)
I have no desire to delay the House, but two points should be made before we pass the motion.
First, a Government with only 38 per cent. of the votes cannot have a mandate for anything, and they must realise that they are a minority Government. If the Opposition were better co-ordinated, the Government would have a much rougher life in this place.
Secondly, there have been complaints from all parts of the House, including members of the Minister's own party, about the present handling of business—the number of Bills and the number of Government amendments to them that have to be tabled, the general confusion which has resulted and the fact that we and the Lords have been sitting by night and day. I ask the Minister to ask the Leader of the House once again to hurry on with his consideration of how the handling of business can be improved.

§ Mr. Douglas Crawford (Perth and East Perthshire)
My party was not represented in the Commons Standing Committee which discussed this Bill, in spite of urgent and sustained representations in the appropriate quarters. We have many reservations about the Bill. We have had only one opportunity to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, and that was on Second Reading. We believe that the Bill confirms our worst fears that the National Enterprise Board will have powers to operate in Scotland. It is shocking that the party which is now the second party in Scotland has not had an opportunity to make its views known on this issue, and I view the motion with grave seriousness.