We are going beyond the business of the House motion, but of course it is not an emergency. We have had two years and nine months to prepare for it, and the Government have assured us that they are
ready to leave without an agreement, if necessary. More than half the public now think it is the right thing to do, but that is a matter of substance and not a matter of the business of the House motion.
I will briefly mention three elements that give the Government an advantage so that they can claim to be the Government and behave as the Government, if they have the wit and the votes to do so�of course, they need to keep enough votes enough of the time to fulfil their role.
The first element is control of the Order Paper. Of course the Government should not have complete control of the Order Paper and, by convention, they agree with the Opposition on providing Opposition days, which they must do, and allow the Opposition to debate the things they wish to debate, either in their own time or in Government time. If the Government do not do that, things can break down and become a matter of controversy, and the public may side with the Opposition, so the Government have to behave in a sensible way through the usual channels on business.
By tradition, for many years now, the Government set a Queen�s Speech programme of legislation, which is meant to be a coherent and consistent programme�and under a good Government it is�that reflects what they have persuaded the electors to vote for, because they have more seats than anyone else in the House. The programme is presented by Her Majesty, usually annually�we are in a strange Parliament because we only do Brexit, so there was no need for a new annual speech because this Parliament has been on groundhog day for two years and nine months.
As someone who used to be interested in this subject, I actually want to go on and talk about some of the other subjects in which I am interested. I would like this done. By convention, we have an annual Queen�s Speech in which the Government present what they think is a coherent programme of legislation that fits into how they are trying to govern the country, and then it is up to Parliament to rip it apart, amend it, improve it, say that bits of it are not acceptable and try to influence the future programme.