Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I do not wish to speak for too long, although I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. This issue has been drawn to our attention by some former heads of the civil service who have been before the Select Committee. They reminded us that back in the days of the Wilson Governments, and perhaps those of the Callaghan Governments, there was a remarkable range of views within Cabinet. It stretched from Tony Benn and Barbara Castle, on one side, to Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams, on the other, with several others in between. Within such Cabinets a real debate on policy took place, representing a spectrum of opinion. I am sure that the same was true of the Conservative party in times gone by, but our party certainly had genuine debate in Cabinet. It has also been pointed out that in times past the Cabinet would, typically, see some 200 policy papers a year—that is four a week, on average. Cabinet would debate those papers and reach some kind of consensus on them. I understand that in one of the more recent years, two policy papers went to the Cabinet. Considering two papers compared with 200 represents a change. I like to think that we should have a genuine debate in Cabinet, with strands of opinion, whichever party is in power—that should certainly happen when my party is in power. Those strands should represent the broad range of opinion within the large parties in our, essentially, two-party system—I apologise to the Liberal Democrats. That form of government was better than what we have had in more recent years—we might have avoided some mistakes, on all sides, had we had it. Special advisers should be replaced by ministerial advisers; we should have advisers giving advice to Ministers, not giving orders to civil servants.