Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I rise briefly to support my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg). As the years have gone by, I have wondered more and more what the real duties of a Member of Parliament are. Today, they seem to be to attend to e-mails every five seconds and to respond on diverse subjects to constituents on matters about which I know very little. Our real duty, which is to scrutinise legislation—to look at it line by line—seems no longer to be important or the part of our lives that it should be. I remember, in the days when I was in Committees upstairs, time after time the habit crept in of putting in the knives and the guillotine motions, which meant that whole chunks of Bills that I was taking through Standing Committees were never debated, neither in Committee nor in this House. That is a tragedy. We all need to ask ourselves what is the role of a Member of Parliament now and what it will be over the next 10 years. Will it simply be instantly to react to a news story or can we please get back to the days when we examined legislation line by line and made our own arguments and amendments? The truth of the matter is that if I have an amendment or argument I want to make it, and I want the views of all hon. Members to be heard. If I lose the argument by a vote or because I have made it badly, that is that, but at least I have made it. Day after day, the trend continues that the opportunities for Members of this House properly to do the job for which they were elected, in my judgment, are gradually disappearing.