Planning Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

Pages 2375 to 2473 of today's Order Paper contain the amendments and new clauses that the Government are proposing. The Government are yet again trying to push through a measure that is controversial. They are determined, at every opportunity, to restrict debate on controversial matters. The Government do not get it. They should want to debate controversial measures rather than push them through. That is why they are failing and not communicating with the public. In the last week that the House sat, we debated the Second Reading of what we might call the ““Yes Minister”” Bill. The debate lasted two hours and 44 minutes. There were three Conservative Back-Bench speakers, none from the Govt and none from the Liberal Democrats. That left unused more than three hours that could have been used for debate. It seems that whenever something is not controversial, there is plenty of time to debate it, but there is no time to debate controversial things. The Lisbon treaty is another example. The Government brought in a measure to restrict the amount of time that we could debate an issue in Committee. I urge the Government to think again. If they really want to communicate with the British public and put their ideas forward—if they really have a vision for Britain—let us debate that and not hide behind programming motions.