HC Deb 24 June 2002 vol 387 cc705-11

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That, notwithstanding the practice of the House as to the intervals between stages of Bills brought in upon Ways and Means Resolutions, more than one stage of the Finance Bill may be taken at any sitting of the House.—[Joan Ryan.]

9.35 pm
Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst)

It is all very well for the motion to he moved formally. However, this important motion starts with a phrase with which we have become all too familiar— notwithstanding the practice of the House"— so we might have been entitled to an explanation from either the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Leader of the House. Neither of them is present and that practice has become all too frequent. It well illustrates the Government's attitude to the House of Commons. The motion seeks to change our normal practice on something as important as the Finance Bill of all things, but we have not even had the courtesy of an explanation as to why that is happening.

Perhaps the Chancellor of the Exchequer does not understand his motion, but I do not expect that of the Leader of the House. I would have thought that he understands it all too well. However, neither of them are here to explain to the House what is going on.

Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall)

We should draw the House's attention to the fact that, although the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Leader of the House are not here, no one from their Departments is either.

Mr. Forth

Sadly, that is the case. Many Government Whips are present, and that suggests that the Government expect their Members to vote the motion through willy-nilly without the courtesy of an explanation from anyone on the Government Front Bench. [Interruption.] In fairness to the Leader of the House—he knows that I am always fair to him—he has just turned up.

Mr. Patrick McLoughlin (West Derbyshire)

Does my right hon. Friend think that he should start his comments again so that the Leader of the House can hear them?

Mr. Forth

I am grateful to my hon. Friend.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst)

Order. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would not want to find himself guilty of breaching Standing Order No. 42 by obeying the advice of the hon. Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin).

Mr. Forth

Indeed, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was just about to explain that I have not even got into my preamble yet. The Leader of the House has not missed anything of substance and neither have you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

The Leader of the House has not seen fit to provide us with an explanation despite the fact that the game is given away by the phrase "notwithstanding the practice". The details of the motion entitle us to a measure of alarm. Normally—you know this almost better than anyone in the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker—the Finance Bill is very much regarded as a special case by the House of Commons. That is as it should be, because the provision of finance and the raising and spending of moneys are among the things about which we in the House are extremely jealous, and rightly so. Therefore, we have always given the Finance Bill a very special place and we have always treated it with very great care. For example, we deal with many aspects of it on the Floor of the House and then other more detailed provisions upstairs in Committee. The motion suggests that more than one stage of the Finance Bill may be taken at any sitting".

Dr. Brian Iddon (Bolton, South-East)

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, when his Government were in power, they cut the grant for all gypsy site refurbishments? Will he tell us why?

Mr. Forth

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that very important point. When my party had the privilege of being in government, we allowed a proper amount of time to deal with such matters. The House would have given those subjects more than adequate time—both on the Floor and upstairs in Committee. I do not know whether he knows, but we almost certainly did not try to deal with more than stage of the Finance Bill—even the one containing the measure about which he has reminded us—in any one sitting.

I suspect that, given the importance of that measure, it would have been properly considered in Committee, on Report and on Third Reading. Even if the hon. Gentleman was not happy with the outcome, in the good old days when my party had the privilege of being in government, proper time would have been allowed by the House to consider a matter even as detailed as that, never mind the great issues about the raising of revenue and the concomitant expenditure that confront the House in a Finance Bill.

A mysterious proposition is before the House and we are left wondering why the Government would want to give such special treatment to the Finance Bill. I am forced to speculate on that because no explanation has been given. It is just possible that one of the arguments might have been that we do not have enough time to treat the Finance Bill in the traditional way, but that argument does not stand up.

Hon. Members will be aware not only of the fact that a number of make-weight measures are on the Order Paper for this week and next week, but of the proposed date of our rising. The Leader of the House was kind enough to say to us last Thursday that the House would rise on 24 July subject to the passage of business. Does he want to rush the Finance Bill through with unseemly haste so that the House can adjourn early? I hope not. I like to think that he would not dare to come to us with such a proposition.

If we dismiss that speculation as outrageous even by the standards of this Government and Chancellor of the Exchequer, we are forced to consider other possibilities. One of them might be that the Government are so ashamed of what is in the Finance Bill that they do not want it to be properly scrutinised. I incline to the view that that is probably a more credible explanation than the Leader of the House wanting us to go off on our hols early. Again, however, I can only speculate because we have not been told.

The right hon. Gentleman came rushing back into the Chamber having been told that the House was impertinent enough to want to query the measure, which he assumed would go through on the nod. I hope that he has a thorough briefing from his assiduous officials so that he can give us at least one credible reason why the motion has been tabled. [HON. MEMBERS: "Where are they?"] I assume that hon. Members are referring to a certain box at the end of the Chamber where officials are wont to sit. That comment is probably out of order, however, and I would not want to be caught out in such a way. Some of us have been around long enough to avoid that trap.

We have a parliamentary conundrum. We have before us an important, possibly ground-breaking measure that may well set a precedent. If the House agrees exceptionally to the measure after hearing a proper explanation of it, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman gives an undertaking that it will not be regarded as a precedent. I want to be reassured that the Government or the Leader of the House will not quote it as a precedent if we agree to it. We slip all too easily into bad practices in which something is brought before the House and slipped through on the QT at an early stage of the evening, and the night is still young in parliamentary terms.

The right hon. Gentleman should give a full explanation of why he wants the measure. Is it to do with an early recess? Is it to do with his shame at the Bill's content? When he explains his reason for the motion and if we accept it, I hope that it will be explicitly stated that it is not a precedent and will not be quoted as such by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, should he ever deign to come to the House. We need to be assured that we will treat each future Finance Bill on its merits. Only if we get that explanation will we be satisfied and allow the measure to proceed.

9.44 pm
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall)

I thought there was some levity in the approach to the subject. That disturbed me because it is a serious matter, and I strongly agree with the concerns raised by the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth).

In recent years, Finance Bills have got longer and longer and have become increasingly complex. This year's Bill is no exception. The articulation of the debate—quite apart from its length—is important if the House is to have a proper opportunity to assess all the complex issues that arise from it.

In recent weeks, some major, serious Bills have not received proper attention in Committee or in the House as a result of the programming and guillotining of those measures. The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill is an obvious example. We must ask those on the Government Front Bench on precisely what grounds the usual practice is being broken on this occasion, as it would appear. No attempt so far has been made to explain the precedents for this practice. Before we even reach the question whether it should be a precedent for the future, as the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst said, we should surely at least he told whether there have been precedents ill the recent past for approaching the Finance Bill in this way.

We should never forget that the Finance Bill is unusual. That is because it is the House alone that considers the measure. There is no second chance. There is no second guessing at the other end of the building. The Lords cannot consider the mistakes that are made in this place. Only we can do that, and only during consideration of remaining stages. If those stages are hurried in any way—if they are managed in such a way to achieve a rapid result rather than a comprehensive result—that would be entirely wrong.

Mr. Forth

I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman has just said. He might want briefly to explore the implications of consideration of all stages in one day. It strikes me that if, for example, an error were to be found during one stage of our deliberations, it might procedurally be difficult, or even impossible, to deal with that error in the immediate subsequent stage. By conflating consideration in that way, we would have less chance of picking up what could potentially be a serious error in the Finance Bill, of all things, in our usual procedures.

Mr. Tyler

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He has more than adequately made the point to which I was coming. A manuscript amendment may be appropriate in some circumstances, but not on a Finance Bill. I served in Committee on a Finance Bill. At 3 am the Minister responsible explained that we were trying to correct an error that had been made the previous year. I asked whether he could recall, or perhaps his officials could, at what stage in the night in the previous year the mistake had been made. It had been made in the middle of the night. That is what is unusual about the Finance Bill. Not only is it extremely—

Mr. Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove)

Will my hon. Friend bear in mind the high proportion of the contents of each Finance Bill that consists of correcting mistakes that were left over from previous Finance Bills? Does he agree that to accelerate that process is to worsen it?

Mr. Tyler

If I did not know my hon. Friend so well, I would think that to be a planted question. As he is such an independently minded Member, I know that not to be the case.

I was about to say that during consideration of the Finance Bill on the occasion to which I was referring, part of the previous year had been spent correcting another part of a previous Finance Bill, passed two years previous to that. That is what is so significant about a Finance Bill. There are some members of the Treasury team on the Government Front Bench, and I am sure that they will be the first to concur that every year the Chancellor has to bring forward some proposals to correct mistakes made not necessarily by a previous regime but in a previous year.

The Finance Bill is significant in that respect. It must be extremely precise. That is why it is exceptionally important in this instance that we have proper management of the time given to the Bill.

Mrs. Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham)

I ask the hon. Gentleman, for the information of the House, whether he received any indication that this matter would appear on the Order Paper today. I understand that we, the official Opposition, received no such indication. Despite the abbreviation of the way in which we scrutinise Bills now, at least there is some consultation on them between both sides of the House. It is a heinous crime that on something as important as the Finance Bill, no discussion has taken place across or through the usual channels.

Mr. Tyler

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I shall cut short my remarks to enable an occupant of the Government Front Bench to respond to that. However, it is not only a matter of indication; the convention in the House on a matter of this sort is that there is consultation, not merely a unilateral statement of what the Government intend to put on the Order Paper. There should be consultation with the Opposition parties for the good order of business in the House. Surely that is what we should all be interested in.

The handling of the Bill may have justification, but as far as I and my Chief Whip have been involved, and I understand that it is a similar case with those on the Conservative Front Bench, there has been no consultation or explanation whatever. That is a break with the conventions of the House. Yes, there are elements of the Order Paper that can be issued as a Government diktat or fiat, but usually the business of the House involving a major Bill, let alone a Finance Bill, would he a subject for consultation.

Now that the Leader of the House and senior members of the Treasury team are with us, I very much hope that they intend to speak on the matter. It would be quite outrageous if they simply pushed it through by the force of numbers, without any explanation, given that the proper way to do business in the House is that we, the House, decide how we handle our business—not the Government, but all Members of the House.

I am sure that hon. Members on the Government side will agree, as will the Father of the House, who is present and who is always a great protector of the interests of the House, that it would be against all precedent and all convention for the motion to be carried forward without proper discussion and consultation between the parties. I hope that we will now get an explanation and that there will be a proper discussion before we come to a conclusion.

9.51 pm
The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Robin Cook)

I thank the shadow Leader of the House for this unexpected pleasure—unexpected, in part, because I announced the business for the next week last Thursday, and unexpected also because, contrary to what the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) said, the order was laid on Thursday and has been on the Order Paper since last Friday. [HON. MEMBERS: "Ah!"]

The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) asked me for an assurance that the order would be no precedent. I can tell him that tonight's order will form no precedent because the Order Paper and the history of the Journal of the House of Commons are littered with precedents to the same effect. I refer the right hon. Gentleman to page 739 of "Erskine May", which states that the third reading of the Finance Bill has frequently been taken immediately after consideration"— that is, consideration on Report— when such an order has been made. The right hon. Gentleman will be particularly interested to know that there is a footnote, No. 5. When I refer to footnote 5 for the precedent for taking the Third Reading after consideration on Report, I find that it quotes 1995–96. [Laughter.] I hope my hon. Friends will allow me to continue. I think that the look on the right hon. Gentleman's face is the nearest that he is capable of getting to being sheepish. I managed to get through school without studying modern studies, but as I recall 1995–96, it was the right hon. Gentleman's party that was in power at the time, and he was a member of the Government of the time who created that precedent.

As to the reason for the order, I remind the right hon. Gentleman—who is present every week for the business statement and hears the business announced every time—that virtually every Bill whose remaining stages we have considered in this Session has been taken on Report, with the Third Reading immediately afterwards. Most of those Bills have been the subject of a programme motion which set that out from the start.

There is no programme motion covering this Finance Bill. The reason is that the right hon. Gentleman's own party requested that it should not be the subject of a programme motion, which meant that we would require such an order to handle the remaining stages. I make no complaint of the fact that the right hon. Gentleman's party requested that there be no programme motion. My understanding is that the proceedings in Committee have been perfectly amicable, carried out by agreement, with both sides fully delivering on the agreements that they achieved in Committee. The right hon. Gentleman now looks rather more than sheepish.

At no stage during the proceedings in Committee has the right hon. Gentleman's party asked for more time. At no stage has it disputed the allocation of time in Committee. Indeed, last week's Committee sitting rose early because members ran out of things to say about the Finance Bill. I understand that it is expected that the Committee proceedings will finish at tomorrow's sitting. In those circumstances, I think that two full days in total to consider the remaining stages is perfectly adequate provision. It is adequate partly because this Finance Bill has already been through more consultation with the industry, outside bodies and financial services than any previous one. Many of the clauses were seen in draft form by the industry, which may partly explain why the Opposition ran out of things to say in Committee.

Mr. Forth

I am, as ever, grateful to the Leader of the House for his history lesson and analysis of the Bill to date, but will he give me the undertaking that I requested? Notwithstanding the explanation that he has just given, which is just about adequate for the purposes of the motion, will he go that step further and give us an undertaking that, if we agree to it for the reasons that he has kindly given us in respect of this Bill, it will not be quoted as a precedent for doing the same thing again for future Bills without similarly valid reasons?

Mr. Cook

I understand that the right hon. Gentleman is now scrabbling for firmer ground and I do not wish to discourage him. I am very happy to give him the assurance that, for all future times, should we be minded to introduce similar provision for future Finance Bills, we will always quote as our precedent that which was set in 1995 to 1996. He can therefore rest assured that no new precedent is being created.

I sense that we are winning the argument, so I am happy without further ado to commend the motion to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That, notwithstanding the practice of the House as to the intervals between stages of Bills brought in upon Ways and Means Resolutions, more than one stage of the Finance Bill may be taken at any sitting of the House.