Health and Social Care Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

If the Deputy Leader of the House had allowed more than an hour for debate today, I would give way to him, but I am not going to give way now. We have already heard from a Minister for 15 minutes. It is a bizarre selection of clauses that the Committee will be allowed to discuss. For instance, it will not be allowed to discuss clause 239 on NICE's charter, nor clause 240 on its functions, but it will be allowed to consider clause 242, on the failure of NICE to discharge its functions. There is absolutely no logic to what is being presented to us. In addition, the programme motion does not allow enough time. The Prime Minister is profoundly confused about all this, because he said many times this morning that 10 days would be allowed. Indeed, he said:"““Ten days… I don't want to sort of misquote the Monty Python sketch but when we were in opposition we used to dream of tens days to debate a government bill””." Well, yes, we are dreaming of 10 days now. We would love to have 10 days, but there will not be 10 days; there will be 10 sittings.