My Lords, clearly, I listened very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said. My role as government Chief Whip is very clear. In scheduling Private Members’ Bills, it has always been the practice of all government Chief Whips in all parties to consult the sponsor of the relevant Bill in that scheduling. My role in the proceedings has been to facilitate the scrutiny of this Bill by this House. As ever, progress is in the hands of the House. We are a self-regulating House. Therefore, the Motion moved by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, is, indeed, a legitimate Motion. As he says, it is unusual for a Back-Bencher to move it, but it is by no means not available to him. That is a double negative, but I mean that his action in moving the Motion is legitimate.
The noble Lord referred to the House’s use of time and predicts that it will progress so slowly that it will not rise, at this rate, until the early hours of the morning. I do not like to predict; I like to go on what is and what has been. That is what I sought to do last week when I gave advice to the House. Last week, we got through 14 groups of amendments in reasonable time. Several of those debates involved big, important subjects. Indeed, the Committee amended the referendum question itself. This week, there are 15 groups of amendments, after about another 14 were tabled between
the two stages. They are largely on second-order matters —some are important—but we have made rather less progress.