Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I am very glad to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath); and I agree with them. To follow up my right hon. Friend's reference to the Green Paper, in a nutshell, we are now faced not with democracy, but with hypocrisy. The Government have made a series of statements, and I am amazed that the Minister can sit on the Front Bench, scribbling on his bits of paper, when he is responsible for the situation. It is a wanton act of hypocrisy to say something in a Green Paper and, subsequently, to demonstrate, in a constitutional Bill that should be taken on the Floor of the House in proper time, a denial of the very propositions that led to the Bill in the first place. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) also made some very important points. I recall his father saying, many years ago, that we were moving towards an elective dictatorship. We are not: now we actually have an elected disgrace. That is the problem with which we are faced. In an intervention I referred to the Wright Committee and the fact that nothing has been done about it, despite the fact that action is well overdue. If the business committee that the Wright Committee proposed were to be implemented, this situation could not occur, because the House would insist on proper consideration of the matters that we are about to discuss. I very much agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills—he should be right honourable—regarding Standing Orders, on which I have spoken many times. In the early part of the last century, and before then, there was a great deal of discussion about whether Standing Orders should have been taken over by the Executive. That happened in the difficult days of the Irish troubles of the 1880s, when the Speaker's rules were taken over by the Executive with the agreement of those on the two Front Benches, and they have remained with them ever since. I conclude by reference to a very important essay written by a former Clerk of this House—Sir Edward Fellowes—which was mentioned in Crick's analysis of the constitution. Crick said that at that moment, when the Executive took over the Standing Orders, this House went into decline, and that not until they are returned to the House of Commons will it be possible for it to regain its former sovereignty—a matter that no doubt we shall be discussing very shortly.