Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. The advantage of holding the Committee stage on the Floor of the House is that everyone should be able to contribute, but the reality is that hardly anyone will be able to contribute and, as I said, that very large areas of this Bill will probably not be debated at all. We go on with the business of the House by tabling increasingly tough programme motions on very long and complex Bills, to which a large number of amendments are introduced at late stages. That means that they are never examined by the elected Members of the Houses of Parliament. There is something deeply unsatisfactory about such an arrangement in any kind of democratic society. This issue has been raised before and it will doubtless be raised again. One would have hoped that in this era of an examination of the role of Parliament, and of its ability to hold the Executive to account and to introduce good legislation, the least we could do is give ourselves sufficient time to examine the details of a very important and serious piece of legislation properly. I appeal to the Minister to think again about this programme motion and at the very least guarantee sufficient time on each of the four major areas of debate that we are to discuss today.