Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

The hon. and learned Gentleman says that we all are. That is not the problem; it is the bureaucratic process that is the problem. Let me return to summarising the Bill. Following the publication of the Green Paper, we established a programme of work to look at limiting Executive powers, to examine how the workings of Government could be made more transparent and accountable, and to consider what we might do to reinvigorate our democracy. I have already said that we made significant changes, including to respective arrangements for appointing bishops and the granting of honours, and to further rules on the pre-release of statistics. Gone are the days—the terrible days—of the previous Conservative Administration, when the Secretary of State for Employment, now Lord Tebbit, was able peremptorily to change the definitions of unemployment, for example, 18 times to suit the Government—[Interruption.] Well, it is true. Let me provide a further example for the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie)—that of sitting on major recommendations for major changes in the crime statistics, which would have had the effect of increasing the number of crimes counted. I accepted those changes in 1998, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) accepted further ones in 2001, but the Opposition subsequently used them, quite preposterously, to suggest that violent crime had increased, when it was obviously the counting of violent crime that had increased. In any case, we have done that, just as we have established a Youth Citizenship Commission and published a national security strategy and the draft legislative programme—all those things in the Prime Minister's statement of 3 July 2007. I deal now with the detail of the Bill. Ever since the Northcote-Trevelyan report of 1854 and the appointment of the first Civil Service Commission in 1855, the British civil service has been one of the best in the world, renowned for its professionalism, integrity and impartiality, and for its ability to serve successive Administrations of different parties with their confidence—but never before has the service been placed on a proper statutory basis, with protection for its values and its staff. The Bill does that.