Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

The Conservative party must speak for itself, although it is having great difficulty on this matter, but I must say, for the Government, that the hon. Gentleman parodies all the work that has been done, including by the hon. Members for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) and for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes). We laboured long and hard in the cross-party group to reach a position, 96 years after the 1911 commitment, where at long last clear agreement was reached by the House. Such agreement had eluded us for all that period; we did not get it before the war, in the '60s or in 2003. We got that agreement, and we produced the details in the 2008 White Paper and then what amounts to the guts of a draft Bill—that is real progress.