On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Before the Prime Minister stretches every sinew to escape, has he or the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food asked to make a statement on the policy of transporting carcases that might be infected from an area such as Herefordshire to a clean area such as Tern Hill in my constituency?

No.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You may recall that every day this week I have had to raise as a point of order my complete inability to persuade the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to write to me outlining the circumstances in which a landfill site is being used in my constituency for the burial of carcases. It is difficult to say the same thing in a different way every time, but if Ministers will not answer letters from hon. Members and simply reply to every question that might cause them difficulty with the formula "I will write to the hon. Member", it makes it impossible for us to discharge our function. Do you know of any precedent that sets out when the occupant of the Chair has to intervene in such matters, or do you have to listen to me saying the same thing in a different way every day until Parliament is dissolved?

The hon. Gentleman raises an issue that is not a matter for Chair.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. My understanding is that a decision has been taken that the national census will go ahead on 27 April. Have you received a request from any Minister to tell the House what precautions will be taken to ensure that those taking the census do not spread foot and mouth disease?

I have received nothing from Ministers on that matter.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Will it be in order for me to table amendments to the Elections Bill to ask for all by-elections to be cancelled up to 3 May, including the Carlisle by-election which is due to take place on 19 April and is being fought by the agent of the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean)?

We have to see the amendment before we can make a decision. It is as simple as that.

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the law in relation to cable companies and other undertakers of street works.

The Bill sets out to ensure that there is better co-ordination of the work that is carried out by cable companies and utilities. My constituents tell me that it is needed. They find it incredible that one company can dig up a road one week, disrupting an entire area, only to find that two weeks later a different company digs up the road all over again.

Legislation has put in place a number of measures to minimise the disruption caused by such street works. The New Roads and Street Works Act 1991 provides that operators have to notify highway authorities with a minimum of one month's notice in advance of any major work or work to he carried out on sensitive streets, as defined by the local authority. The problem with the 1991 Act is that although it gives local authorities the duty to co-ordinate excavations of the public highway, they do not have sufficient powers to do so.

Correspondence on the issue with Ministers shows that they are aware of the problems and know that certain communities in the west and south-west have been particularly badly affected by new telecommunications installations. The Labour Government have recently introduced fines of up to £2,000 a day for companies if their road works are overdue, which is welcome, but the Bill seeks to minimise disruption further by ensuring there is proper co-ordination of street works. We expect new regulations later this year, and I hope that they will take on board the proposals in my Bill.

Currently, all local authorities hold quarterly meetings and invite operators to them to discuss a schedule of works. Too often, however, operators do not attend; if they do, they often do not provide accurate information. One authority told me that many companies send it nil returns for meetings, then proceed to send notices for large schemes that should have been on the co-ordination schedule. That has led to understandable frustration among road users in many parts of South Swindon, including parts of the town centre, Freshbrook, Liddington, Wanborough and Wroughton. Those frustrations have been expressed clearly to me by constituents and parish councils covering those and other areas. A classic case occurred last summer, when our local paper, the Evening Advertiser, reported that Manchester road, which houses our bus station and so has significant traffic flow, was dug up by one cable company; when it finished, another company started 10 days later. That cannot be a sensible way of proceeding.

There have been so many companies on the nearby stretch of road between Whale bridge and Fleming way that there is no room left, and there is now an embargo on the road. That raises the question of whether the number of companies, of which there are more than 300 nationally—so far, we have seen only about 20 of them locally— is ultimately sustainable.

There are some examples of good practice. Last July, Swindon borough council held talks with Cable and Wireless and Colt Telecom and an agreement was made that the two companies would share roadworks for their cable laying. But that good example is not common.

My Bill would make that good example more of the norm. It would make it a requirement for any company wishing to undertake major roadworks or any work on a sensitive street to attend the quarterly meeting of the authority. The local authority would then have a right to delay roadworks by up to a month or to bring them forward by up to two months to co-ordinate works. The authority could insist that companies share ducts and working arrangements. Colleagues may be concerned that that will delay consumers getting services and I recognise that telecoms companies have to respond quickly to consumer demand. However, with proper planning, there should be no significant delay and consumer demands have to be weighed against the inconvenience, misery to road users and business and social time that are lost as a result of disruption. Recent research by the Transport Research Laboratory has put the cost of roadworks to Britain's economy at more than £2 billion a year, including traffic delays, damage to road surfaces and accidents; the lack of co-ordination is costing the nation huge sums.

I do not want to leave this opportunity without recognising that co-ordination is not the only problem with roadworks; my constituents raise questions with me about the quality of the some roadworks and the safety precautions taken for the staff and public at the works. Better regulations are needed to ensure that local authorities are properly reimbursed for the work that they undertake. At the moment, some council taxpayers subsidise cable companies for their work and that should be corrected.

I hope that all those issues will be addressed in Government guidance and existing regulation, but the greatest frustration of unnecessary misery on the roads could be put right through the measures in my Bill. I want to stress that it is not about increasing regulation, but about changing it. I therefore propose that there should be new sections 60 and 64 in the 1991 Act, and that sections 54, 55 and 56 should be deleted. So five existing clauses would become two and, more importantly, we would achieve a much better result for the public.

Finally, in a bid to stop anyone saying that the Bill should not have a Second Reading because ten-minute Bills rarely reach the statute book, may I note and thank the many hon. Members of all parties who have expressed support for it, and tell the House that my first ten-minute Bill achieved success when its recommendation was adopted by the Government in the Homes Bill. I hope that the sensible improvement for road users proposed in this Bill will, in the same fashion, be adopted by the Government so that road users will not be unnecessarily disrupted in the future.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Ms Julia Drown, Valerie Davey, Mr. David Drew, Dr. Jenny Tonge, Mr. Andrew George, Ms Candy Atherton, Mr. Martin Salter, Ms Tess Kingham, Mr. Simon Thomas, Jane Griffiths, Mr. Jonathan Shaw and Mc. Tom Brake

I should inform the House that I have selected amendment (a), which stands in the name of the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg), in paragraph 1(1), after "on Second Reading," to leave out

"in Committee and on consideration and Third Reading".

I beg to move,

That the following provisions shall apply to the proceedings on the Elections Bill and the Election Publications Bill [Lords]—

Fewer than three.

No, there were not fewer than three guillotine motions in the 1980s. The number of guillotine motions is principally a function of the way in which an Opposition behave. There were a large number of guillotine motions in the 1980s, because the then Opposition, of whom I was a Front-Bench member, decided that they were not willing to co-operate in sensible informal understandings about the timetabling of motions. For reasons that I fully understood, although I sometimes vociferously disagreed with them at the time, the Government therefore decided, rightly, that they were entitled to get their business through, and tabled guillotine motions accordingly.

There were far fewer guillotine motions in the latter part of the 1992 to 1997 Parliament, because by that stage, after 15, 16 or 17 years in opposition, the Labour party had learned a lesson—that it made a great deal more sense to spend time debating the heart of a Bill, agreeing sensible timetables, ensuring that they could be delivered by effective internal party discipline, and then getting out to campaign.

rose—

I shall give way in a moment.

That strategy was far more impressive. The hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) shakes his head, but if he studies the facts, he will see that to have been the case. He will also see that, at greater length than I propose to do so today, I have offered gratuitous but, I hope, welcome advice to the Opposition in their current predicament. It would be against my interests for them to accept that advice, but it is available to them.

rose—

I shall give way to the right hon. Gentleman in a moment. I always do.

Two of the guillotine motions during our time in opposition were ones with which we agreed. Those included the Prevention of Terrorism (Additional Powers) Act 1996, which passed through all its stages during Easter 1996.

Does the Home Secretary's research tell him how many guillotines were introduced during the glorious period of Conservative Government to ensure that Bills passed through all their stages within one hour? Does he not recognise that the Government's introduction of such a requirement is not only extraordinary and exceptional, but is an insult to our parliamentary process? What is the precedent for their actions?

I could while away the time, but I draw the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the precedent that was set only a few days ago in the other place, where, without timetabling, every single stage of the Bill's consideration was completed in 24 minutes. That was achieved because the Bill was agreed in terms by the three main parties and because the Government had introduced it at their request. If the Opposition in this House were capable of even a modicum of the discipline that is possible in the other place, a guillotine motion would not be needed. The right hon. Gentleman wears a badge of honour. His party is so deeply divided that it is absolutely impossible for its leader or Whips ever to gain the agreement of their Back Benchers, and he knows it, as he is one of the rebels. Indeed, he is one of the many Opposition Back Benchers who hold their Front-Bench colleagues in almost utter and undisguised contempt, and who will lose almost no opportunity to embarrass them.

After that long diatribe, will the Home Secretary please answer the question that was asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth)? When have any Government taken a Bill through Second Reading, Committee, Report and Third Reading in 60 minutes flat?

I have just answered the right hon. Lady's question by referring to the other place, which recognised that the Bill was agreed on. It is widely known that the other place usually takes rather longer to complete such deliberations, as it has no guillotine arrangements. However, as it was understood that the Bill had been agreed on because it sought to remedy—

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Will you confirm that, in your wisdom, you have selected two amendments for discussion in relation to this Bill whose consideration will be limited to one hour? As the Home Secretary is seeking to misinform us, it would be helpful to know that that is the case and that the amendments are relevant.

The amendments to which the right hon. Gentleman refers will be considered in Committee. I did not select them for consideration; they were selected by the Chairman of Ways and Means.

Let me deal with the reasons for introducing the Bill, after which—[Interruption.]

Order. The right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) is bad tempered today—very bad tempered indeed.

The right hon. Lady is bad tempered every day, Mr. Speaker, but we all get used to it. It is a bit like the weather. Life would not be the same without her sedentary mutterings, for which we have come to show so much affection.

The Home Secretary said that the Bill was passed in the other place by agreement, but I understand that there was opposition. The speeches made by the former leader of the Ulster Unionist party could not in any way be said to have commended the Bill. In this House, can smaller parties from Northern Ireland now take it that we are not considered at all? We did not receive the Elections Bill in good time, and we have received apologies for that, which we have accepted. How is three-way agreement achieved when the main part of that Bill, which we will discuss today, is to do with Northern Ireland? Surely representatives from Northern Ireland should have been properly consulted and given time for proper debate.

With respect, I was talking about the second Bill, the Election Publications Bill, because I had been led on to that subject. I shall return later to the main Bill before the House, to which more time has been allocated, although I accept that the time is limited. In that Bill, by far the greatest number of words is related to Northern Ireland, and of course I will take any interventions from the hon. Gentleman in respect of that.

Will the Home Secretary give way?

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to proceed on the Election Publications Bill, I will take an intervention later.

The publications Bill is a short, three-clause Bill that has been introduced following representations from all three main parties. All parties have many thousands of prospective candidates throughout the country and are likely to be in the same difficulty regarding the new imprint requirements, and we need to regularise the position as soon as possible. The fact that local elections are to be postponed for five weeks does not alter the need to proceed expeditiously. I have already explained that last week the other place took 23 minutes to give the Bill a Second Reading, and the remaining stages were taken in two minutes flat.

I want to deal with the suggestion made last week by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning), the shadow Leader of the House, and now by the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald, that the need for the Bill has arisen because of flawed drafting in the original Bill. That is not the case. The original Bill was the subject of considerable discussion by the parties. There was then further consultation with the parties about the commencement order, which could have made effectively the same provisions as this Bill: a phased introduction of the new sections and the continuation for a period of the existing section 110 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. I consulted all the parties, and none of them noticed—neither did I, but I am in good company—that the consequence of the commencement order was to place every potential candidate in a situation where any material that had been printed but not formally published in advance of the new sections coming into force could technically have put them, their agents and, possibly, their printers at risk of criminal proceedings. Obviously, that was unacceptable.

Discussions rapidly took place between the parties in a different atmosphere from the one that the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton has tried to generate. We agreed not that the new Bill would repeal those words but that it would provide for them to be phased in in a different way and that the original section 110 would be deemed to have taken effect. [Interruption.] It has to be deemed so to be enforced. It is not the first time that such words have been used in amending the law and it will not be the last. We reinstated section 110 and suspended the operation of the new Act and there will be further consultation about bringing the provisions into force after the forthcoming elections.

Before the beginning of the Second Reading of the publications Bill, will the Home Secretary place in the Library the documentation appertaining to the consultation that lie says he carried out? I am aware that on 4 November 1999, a senior Home Office official consulted about matters to do with the hiring of hackney carriages, committee rooms and planned changes to election law petitions, but there was no mention of the imprint in that consultation. On 17 January 2000, the same official wrote to 100 registered parties to say that the Home Office

aim to issue regular bulletins to registered parties on the Bill's progress."

No such progress has been the subject of consultation with any political party.

I shall do my best to comply with the hon. Lady's—

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Allow me to finish my answer to the shadow Leader of the House. I shall do my best to comply—

rose—

No, I shall not give way to the right hon. and learned Gentleman until I have dealt with his hon. Friend's question. He should show more manners than he usually does in debates.

I shall do my best to comply with the hon. Lady's request, and if we cannot get the documents, I shall ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to give her a more detailed response. My clear recollection is that the parties were consulted about the bringing into force of parts of that Act, and we consulted about the orders. In any case, I shall get back to the hon. Lady about that.

Will the Home Secretary tell the House how the new wording "promoting of a candidate" helps to enhance the electorate's understanding of the documents? What was wrong with the old wording "printed and published by"?

Some people may say that there was nothing particularly wrong with the old wording. It was put to the House that we should make it clearer on whose behalf—[Interruption.] I shall give the hon. Gentleman an explanation if he wants one, otherwise I shall not bother to take interventions and we shall just plough on. It is quite straightforward.

The formula "printed and published" has been used for locally produced publicity for decades, and works satisfactorily. In material printed and published on behalf of a candidate, it is obvious who the candidate is. The new provisions aim to deal with two problems. First, in material published on behalf of third parties, it is not always obvious on whose behalf it is published. The material may attack a candidate, or it may ask people to vote for candidates who support one proposition rather than another. The second matter, which was not dealt with under the Representation of the People Act 1983, concerns nationally produced material.

Order. We are now going into the detail of the Bill rather than the allocation of time.

The timetable motion is necessary because we have had to amend the original provisions in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. Furthermore, in the past there have been no requirements in respect of material produced nationally. Now that we have a regime for expenditure, it is important that we know on what that expenditure has been based.

rose—

rose—

In view of your strictures, Mr. Speaker, I shall make some progress, and then accept a few more interventions. As ever, I have taken a large number of interventions.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on this point?

No, I shall not give way. I shall come back to that matter later.

As Conservative Members are concerned about precedents, I have been told that in 1989 the Gaming (Amendment) Bill went through Second Reading and remaining stages without debate.

Was there a guillotine?

There was almost certainly not a guillotine, because there were not people like the right hon. Gentleman.

What about Bob Cryer?

Bob Cryer was an infinitely better parliamentarian than the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth). As I remember, at the time the right hon. Gentleman had taken the Queen's shilling and with that a Trappist vow of silence to obey the Whips, so we did not have anarchist interventions from him.

rose—

rose—

I shall now make some progress, because other hon. Members want to speak.

I took representations on the new provisions that have been brought into force. I can tell the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton that letters were sent to a variety of people consulting them on the orders. A letter dated 12 December 2000 was sent to Mr. Stephen Gilbert in the Conservative party and to equivalent people in other parties. [Interruption.] I gather from the hon. Member for Buckingham Mr. Bercow that he is a great man, so at least we know he exists and that some people have a high opinion of him. That makes it even more odd that he was not able to impart that information to the shadow Leader of the House. Anyway, I had representations about the effects of the proposals.

At this point, I must declare an interest. At about the time when representations were being made by the national parties, I was going through my cellar and my attic in Blackburn, and came across a large stock of posters, some dating back to the 1980s.

We shall be looking at your election expenses!

No, that will all be taken into account.

The posters bore messages such as "We back Jack", "Get Jack back" and "Let's back Jack". They have always worked in the past, and I look forward to their working in the future. We have been careful never to put a time or a date on the out-slips. We have not gone quite so far as going to collect them back—[Interruption.] They do in other parts of Lancashire, according to my Parliamentary Private Secretary, who I am pleased to see is with us again. I thought it ridiculous, however, for us to be prevented from using such messages by a technicality. I am sorry that the arrangements were introduced in the way that they were; I did not spot the error and neither did my officials, but nor, it must be said, did the other parties.

rose—

rose—

I shall give way to the hon. Member for Buckingham, as he has been straining at the leash.

The Home Secretary's tutorial on succinct slogans for deployment in Blackburn is doubtless very illuminating, but I am rather more concerned about the deplorable way in which he has rewritten history. Is he unaware that—to name but one example—my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) has emphasised several times that when he was a Minister in the last Government, he did not even consider talking to either the Leader of the House or the Government Chief Whip about the possibility of a guillotine motion until debate on the Bill for which he was responsible had lasted for at least 100 hours?

I think it was 80 hours, but we can argue about that. There was a convention, but it was sometimes left in abeyance when the Conservatives were in power. Moreover—I have a list here—it was extremely rare, certainly after my right hon. Friend the current Prime Minister had become Leader of the Opposition, for any Bill to be guillotined. That was because the Opposition changed the way in which they behaved.

There was no necessity for the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border to consult the Leader of the House or anyone else about a guillotine when I was shadow Home Secretary, because, with two exceptions, the welter of Home Office legislation contained no Bills that we forced to a guillotine. We sensibly agreed a timetable, in a much shorter time than 80 hours.

Yes, we had our disagreements about Bills. Some were very strong disagreements; in other cases we may have agreed with the overall purpose of the Bill, but disagreed with parts of it. We got on with things and did the business, however, and we represented our constituents better than we would have done by keeping ourselves here until the small hours and making life incomprehensible to the voters. The two exceptions that I mentioned were the guillotine on the Bill that became the Prevention of Terrorism (Additional Powers) Act 1996, which I agreed to because I was supporting the then Home Secretary—others may have thought that those powers were not necessary—and the guillotine on what became the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997, which was introduced in the wake of the massacre at Dunblane. We supported that Bill, although we did not think that it went far enough. My recollection is that the guillotine was introduced very quickly, well in advance of the 80-hours rule. The concern was that the Bill would be disrupted by people who did not want firearms controls.

I confess that I am now totally bewildered. We are discussing a timetable on the Elections Bill. May I enter a little caveat? I disagree with everything that the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) says, but in this instance he has a point. It is terribly important that the House of Commons should not rush through legislation without being clear what it is doing. Does my right hon. Friend accept that some of the Bills that he has mentioned, particularly that on prevention of terrorism, are clear examples of what happens when this House accepts legislation in one day? It then has to spend considerable time amending it.

I accept that it will be far better—it makes for much better debate, too—if there can be agreements between the parties. It is sometimes necessary—on this occasion, it is palpably necessary—for there to be a timetable motion. Sometimes, timetable motions are short, but agreement between the parties requires that the parties themselves are able to maintain some discipline. We were not in that position in the 1980s. We were in that position in the 1990s. I regret to say—although, in the end, it is their problem, not ours—that the current Opposition are not in that position.

Will the Home Secretary give way?

I promise to give way to the right hon. and learned Gentleman in a few minutes, after I have had made some further progress.

I come to the reason for the timetable on the Elections Bill. The case for the Elections Bill was made at some length, as was, to some extent, the case against it, so far as one could understand it, during the exchanges on my statement on Monday. When I looked at Hansard, I noticed that the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald went on for twice as long as I had in my original statement and it still was not particularly clear what exactly she was saying.

Although there is argument about the date to which the elections should be deferred—the Opposition say that they should be deferred without date and we say, as I believe do the Liberal Democrats, that they should be deferred until 7 June—there is no argument between the main parties that they should be deferred from 3 May. That being the case, they must be deferred very quickly. Otherwise, the electoral process will simply continue. It has to. Money has to continue to be spent unless and until the Bill is passed by the House and by the other place.

On Monday, I went into detail—I will go into further detail on Second Reading—to explain why we believe that it is inappropriate in terms not only of the process of elections, tourism and other factors, but of the conduct of local councils and their ability to represent their electors, to defer the elections for any significant time past 7 June. There is an argument about whether the date should be 7, 14 or 21 June. That is a choice, but it was plain to me when I was explaining the matter in the House on Monday that many Opposition Members simply had not worked out what the consequences would be of an indefinite deferral of local elections. In making the case for the urgent timetable motion, I will briefly spell that out.

If the elections are deferred indefinitely, one of two consequences will follow. One is that all by-elections will be deferred indefinitely. If that happens, with increasing frequency, existing members of councils, who I am sure will be willing to serve for an extra five weeks, but who were to have resigned on 3 May, or were not seeking renomination on 3 May, will resign because they have decided—or their party has decided on their behalf—not to serve for a further term. As I explained to the House, at each election—it is a surprisingly high figure—there is a turnover of about a quarter of councillors. They go. Therefore, over the coming months, we would find that 10, 15 or 20 per cent. of councillors had resigned. Sadly, some vacancies result from deaths.

As vacancies arose, for inevitable reasons, such as illness and death, the control of councils would start to shift as the balance changed randomly between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, or Conservatives and independents, simply because of resignations and deaths and not through the decision of the electorate. That must be wrong and would cause chaos in the administration of councils.

The alternative would be to continue to allow by-elections to take place, but we would then have a stream of by-elections, which have to be called within 35 days of a vacancy arising and to take place within 25 working days of that declaration—there is little of the flexibility that we have in respect of parliamentary by-elections—in the very rural areas where the disruption caused by foot and mouth is at its greatest.

If that course—logically and administratively, the better course—were followed, the weekly or bi-weekly by-elections in Cumbria and Devon would be more disruptive to rural life there and to the focus on foot and mouth than having a single day for the local elections, as we are proposing.

I apologise for taking the Home Secretary back to what he was saying earlier on the Election Publications Bill and why the errors were made. Does that not illustrate why it would be helpful if we resorted more often to Special Standing Committees, allowing evidence to be taken and problems to come to light before a Bill is considered in detail?

As a health warning and caveat to my remarks, let me say that these are matters for my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, but personally I think that there is a lot in what the right hon. and learned Gentleman says. He will forgive me if I remind him that in opposition we used to argue for Special Standing Committees, and one was used for the Children Act 1989—

No, it was—

Order. I remind the right hon. and learned Gentleman that he must be quiet when he is seated.

I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. You are absolutely right. I was trying to correct the Home Secretary, but you are right.

I am always right.

May I say how pleased I am to know that?

I am sometimes wrong, and the right hon. and learned Gentleman may be right that it was not the Children Act but a special education measure on which we had a Special Standing Committee. Leaving that aside, I introduced a Special Standing Committee for the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, and it was the better for it, so I accept that point.

It would be a very useful development if a Cabinet Minister such as my right hon. Friend gave an undertaking to the House that in future all Bills from his Department would be treated under that procedure. Once one Cabinet Minister took that decision in principle, others would follow. It is not only a matter for the Leader of the House.

rose—

Order. How we treat Bills is nothing to do with the allocation of time motion. We must restrict ourselves to that.

In the light of what you have said, Mr. Speaker, I will have to talk to my hon. Friend in the Tea Room.

I am concerned that we will not have time to reach clause 2, which relates to Northern Ireland. Is the Home Secretary confident that we will be able to have a proper debate on Northern Ireland, because some issues need to be discussed that make us nervous about the potential change of date?

I accept the concern of the hon. Gentleman, who is the Liberal Democrat spokesman on Northern Ireland matters. I have also had representations from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on the provisions as they affect Northern Ireland. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will deal with those matters when he replies.

I have explained the case for both Bills—with a bit of luck, to the satisfaction of both sides of the House—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Opposition Members have been shot down in flames by their request for a precedent. The Gaming (Amendment) Act is a great precedent. The fact that it was not guillotined is neither here nor there; it was passed. My guess is that that legislation was far more significant to far more people than the Election Publications Bill will ever be, as it will affect only the small minority of those who are candidates or agents for elections. That is the precedent.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

No, I will not.

I should also add that, in the other place, the official representatives of the other parties were happy to co-operate in the consideration of the Election Publications Bill.

The Elections Bill will defer the date of the elections. As I said, there is widespread agreement on both sides of the House that they have to be deferred. Although there is disagreement on the date to which they should be deferred, that does not affect the need for urgency. What does affect the need for urgency is the fact that, if we do not produce certainty and ensure that everyone is given the legal certainty that 3 May is no longer the date for the elections and that another date has been inserted, we will simply waste a great deal of money and the time of local government staff, candidates, agents and their helpers.

For those reasons—although I understand the concerns about guillotine motions and I do not like introducing them—I hope that the House will accept my arguments.

I have to say that, even for the Home Secretary, that speech was preposterous. The last time he moved a guillotine motion, he concluded his speech by saying:

"I look forward to the embraces and kisses of the Opposition."—[Official Report, 29 November 2000; Vol. 357, c. 994.]

Of you, Ann.

Well, he said the Opposition.

The right hon. Gentleman received neither embraces nor kisses on that occasion, and he will certainly not receive any from Opposition Members today. There is no justification whatsoever for what can be described only as an outrageous and absurd guillotine motion, tabled by the Home Secretary and the Leader of the House. The motion will hinder the interests of democracy and of our constituents, who send us here to hold the Government to account and to ensure that the laws passed by Parliament are in good order, well thought through and properly scrutinised.

It is only a couple of weeks since three Members of the Conservative Whips Office and I were sufficiently incensed by the lack of true accountability by the Government to try to bring the issue to wider public attention. Today, we have two more justifications for that sit-in.

Later, in one hour flat, we shall put a Bill through all its stages in the House—a Bill that would never have been necessary if the House had been allowed to scrutinise the original Bill properly. The amendment that it seeks to correct was never put to the House for debate and was introduced at a late stage in the other place. Yet, undeterred by having created such a mess that an emergency Bill is now necessary, the Government still push it through without any attempt at serious scrutiny.

I challenge the right hon. Gentleman—I have challenged him before and I challenge him again—to tell me of any other occasion, under any Government, when a Bill on the constitution was taken through Second Reading, Committee, Report and Third Reading in 60 minutes flat at the behest of a Government on an imposed guillotine.

Not only that, but the Bill was published yesterday without any pre-publication discussion or consultation.

My right hon. and learned Friend is right: that only makes the situation vastly worse.

Does the Home Secretary acknowledge that he is insulting this Holm and the British people? They are being governed by tranches of law that have never been debated by the House, much less voted on.

The matter is even worse than my right hon. Friend suggests. As it happens, an amendment that I tabled to the Elections Publications Bill has been selected. It was known to have been selected, yet the Government tabled this vicious guillotine, allocating one hour for all stages, in the knowledge that the Chairman of Ways and Means had selected an amendment. Since then, another amendment tabled in the name of an hon. Member from another party has been selected. Does not that compound the matter beyond all endurance?

It certainly does. Large numbers of amendments to both Bills will not be debated tonight. We have already seen the consequence of such an approach. We would not have had to debate the Election Publications Bill today if there had been proper scrutiny of the original Bill.

I remind the Home Secretary of his words to the House on 4 April last year, of which today's debate may be considered to be the anniversary:

"It is in the nature of Home Office Bills, particularly constitutional ones, that they are subject to amendment. That is an important part of the process.—[Official Report, 4 April 2000; Vol. 347, c.928.]

On 29 November last year, the Home Secretary said:

"I thank individual Opposition Members as much as my right hon. and hon. Friends for the way in which every Bill in which I have been involved has been improved as a result of the parliamentary process."—[Official Report, 29 November 2000; Vol. 357. c. 987.]

Yet it is that important part of the constitutional process, which has resulted in the improvement of every Bill with which the Home Secretary has been involved, that the right hon. Gentleman is dispensing with this evening.

What is the justification for the guillotine motion? It is not as though the Opposition are trying to delay or frustrate the Elections Bill. As I made clear in response to the Home Secretary's statement on Monday afternoon, the Opposition welcome the fact that the Government have decided—albeit belatedly—to provide for a postponement of the local elections, which were due to take place on 3 May. Indeed, it was the Opposition who first called, more than two weeks ago, for such a measure to be introduced.

The Election Publications Bill is also the subject of cross-party consensus, as the Home Secretary has acknowledged, and as he knows full well. There is not a shred of evidence to support the contention that, without a guillotine, the Opposition would attempt to delay or frustrate the Bill, yet these days the House cannot expect much more from a Home Secretary and a Leader of the House who had the audacity only a few weeks ago to deem that the Committee stage of a major Bill had been completed, despite the fact that more than half its text had never been considered.

So what is the real reason for the motion? The House, and especially my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg), will recall the attitude of Labour Members during the Committee stage of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill—and of one Labour Member in particular. During that Committee, which also sat on the Floor of the House, my right hon. and learned Friend, together with my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack), who at the time graced the Opposition Front Bench, made some extremely powerful points about the Government's proposals on referendum rules. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien), refused to respond to the debate. In justification, he said:

"Hon. Members in all parts of the House will understand that some hon. Members want to go home. One can understand that."— [Official Report, 16 February 2001; Vol. 344, c. 1071.]

The Minister made those remarks at midnight. One can therefore understand perfectly well why the guillotine motion will cut short debate this evening at 11 pm: Labour Members will want to go home, rather than stay here and ensure that the legislation being considered by the House, which goes to the very heart of our democracy, is in good order.

The right hon. Gentleman is again moving a guillotine motion on constitutional legislation, which shows exactly what the Government think about both these important constitutional measures and about the need for consensus and agreement on them.

What happened to the right hon. Gentleman? He said in February 1995:

"You can only move for constitutional change by consensus, by consent, and you've got to get these things right."

When the House considers the Elections Publications Bill later tonight, right hon. and hon. Members will see exactly how the right hon. Gentleman failed to get things right in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning) will have more to say on that subject when the time comes.

The guillotine motion means that the House will have very little time, if any, in which to consider the important amendments that have been tabled on a range of crucial electoral issues. Indeed, when the Government amendments are made in Committee and the House proceeds to consideration on Report, the farcical procedure that applied to the Football (Disorder) Bill in the previous Session will apply again. [Interruption.]

Order. The right hon. Member for North-West Durham (Ms Armstrong) must be calm. [Interruption.] Order. The right hon. Lady will withdraw that remark. [Interruption.] Order. The right hon. Lady will get to her feet and withdraw that remark.

I was simply saying—[Interruption.]

Order. I heard the right hon. Lady talk about misleading the House.

I said that I was concerned that the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) was not going to mislead the House. I withdraw everything.

Does the Home Secretary recall the proceedings on the Football (Disorder) Bill, when the House was forced to consider amendments on Report that had not been printed to a Bill that had not been reprinted? Furthermore, although my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Matins) wanted to retable his Committee amendments, which had not been discussed in Committee because of the guillotine, he was not able to do so because in waiting to discuss them in Committee he missed the deadline for Report.

I described the procedure as a farce, and that is exactly what it was. The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) commented:

"The House has been asked to consider amendments on Report to a Bill that was not even before us simply because it had not been printed as amended in Committee. People who had not been here would not have been able to follow debate on the Bill that we were amending, and those of us who were here all day have found it difficult to follow the implications of each and every amendment.— [Official Report, 17 July 2000; Vol. 354, c. 176.]

Even the Minister of State, Home Office, the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), said:

"I am acutely aware of criticisms about the time taken to address the Bill and consider its various aspects."—[Official Report, 17 July 2000; Vol. 354, c. 173.]

Yet, despite that experience and the Minister's comments, the guillotine motion before the House today takes no account of those criticisms and no account of the experience on that Bill.

One of the Bills before us contains a reference to schedule 1 of the Elections (Northern Ireland) Act 2001. There is no such Act. As a good parliamentarian, I asked to see all the Acts, and I was told that there is no such Act. The Bill provides for the amendment of an Act that does not exist.

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his close scrutiny. The point of having a debate is that the House can provide close scrutiny, but it will be denied to us today. Before the Government produce a flawed Bill, perhaps they will very hastily consider the hon. Gentleman's important contribution.

There is not even a provision for a five-minute delay in which to allow right hon. and hon. Members to table amendments for Report or to allow the Bill to be reprinted. In a few hours, the House will be faced with the same unacceptable situation. Indeed, it will be even more unacceptable, because only one hour will be allowed for Report and Third Reading, so there will almost certainly be no Third Reading debate.

It is all the more important for the House to have adequate time to consider the Elections Bill, above all in view of the hasty way in which it has been put together. I believe that it has been even more hastily drafted than the Football (Disorder) Bill, which was considered and consulted on for almost a week, if I remember correctly, yet a large number of improvements were subsequently made to it, several of which resulted from matters first raised in Opposition amendments.

The Elections Bill has been cobbled together in what must have been a matter of hours. Throughout last month, the Government, mostly through the Prime Minister's official spokesman, made it clear not only that they had no proposals to introduce legislation of this nature but that they were not even working on contingency plans—so we all know how much notice the Cabinet, above all the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, had of the reversal of that decision.

Hon. Members from all parties have already identified parts of the Bill that could be improved, and the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) has identified where the Bill is just plain nonsense. It is important that the House has time to consider the points that have been made, but even if the debate on the guillotine motion does not run for three hours, which is what the Government have allowed, the House will not get far past the Second Reading debate and, if it is extremely lucky, a couple of groups of amendments, before the guillotine falls. Important issues such as limiting the compensation scheme to independent candidates, as we have proposed, will not be debated. Nor will we debate the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Ross) on compensation for the expenditure incurred by the chief electoral officer in Northern Ireland.

Other important amendments tabled by hon. Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies will not be discussed, including those on combining polling cards for the local and national elections and those tabled by Ulster Unionist and Democratic Unionist Members on whether counting agents should be allowed to be present when ballot papers placed in the wrong box are sorted out.

The Home Secretary will recall the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Mr. MacKay), who spoke for the Opposition on the guillotine motion that the Home Secretary moved on 29 November. He said:

"We value the Home Secretary's reputation as someone who is serious about this place. He is in such stark contrast to the Prime Minister and others who treat the Chamber in a cavalier way."—[Official Report, 29 November 2000; Vol. 357, c. 994.]

My right hon. Friend then commented that the Home Secretary was tarnishing that reputation by moving the guillotine on that occasion. Today, the Home Secretary has no reputation for taking this place seriously. In the past, his guillotines have produced chaos in the Chamber and, as the House will see later when it considers the Election Publications Bill, botched legislation that need not have been a mess had this arrogant and dictatorial Government had any respect for the usual democratic processes.

The motion is an affront to the House and to the people who sent us here, who expect us to spend more than a few minutes on important proposals: that we will not do so is testament to the arrogance of the Government—an arrogance that will not be forgotten in the coming weeks as the guillotine falls on this contemptuous, arrogant, incompetent, out-of-touch, control-freak Government when the election comes, if it does come, on 7 June.

Like the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats broadly support both the Bills that are the subject of the guillotine motion. The Government, having weighed the matter up carefully, have decided that the local government elections should be deferred from 3 May to 7 June, and my party supports them. Equally, the issue of the imprints and the introduction of the new regulations is an important one for the political parties. The Home Secretary is right to point to the fact that all three political parties were in favour of that change, and indeed urged that it should be made.

As far as I can understand it, all three major political parties in the House agree that the legislation is fit and proper for the House to consider and that it ought to be passed without unreasonable delay.

Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that large sections of the Elections Bill that refer to Northern Ireland have nothing to do with such supervening factors as foot and mouth, which bring the three major parties into agreement to support the principle of the Bill?

I fully understand the hon. and learned Gentleman's views on that matter. I was careful to make it clear that I was speaking on behalf only of the Liberal Democrats—I have made clear my views on that point. Several issues of detail in both Bills attracted the attention of my colleagues and me. Were the debate to be of sufficient length and thoroughness, we would want those matters to be included.

Given the broad consensus in the House and the willingness on both sides that progress be made with reasonable speed, the guillotine is out of place, unnecessary and probably counter-productive. Apart from any other consideration, even if such a guillotine were thought appropriate, the time allocated is ridiculously short for debate on inch serious issues.

The House and one of its Committees—the Select Committee on the Modernisation of the House of Commons, on which I serve—have spent a great deal of time working out how the House could be more effective in the examination and rectification of legislation. In pursuit of that aim, I put questions to the Leader of the House. She assured me that one characteristic of the Labour Government was that they were improving the first drafts of Bills—the quality of measures when they are first put before the House is so much better that she wants to claim some credit for that.

I tabled a parliamentary question to establish the ratio of clauses, as introduced, to subsequent Government amendments in legislation under the previous Conservative Government and under the Labour Government. I thought it appropriate to set up some quality control to judge whether the claim made by the Leader of the House was soundly based. The answer was that the cost of working out the figures would be disproportionate. That is a circumlocutory way of saying that there is no evidence whatever to support the claim that the quality of legislation is better—or, indeed, worse—under the Labour Government than under the Conservative Government.

Is not the truth that the quality of legislation improves only to the extent that there is discussion and consultation before publication? In cases such as these Bills—by definition—there is neither.

I strongly support the right hon. and learned Gentleman's argument—indeed, I am probably ahead of him, because I have deployed such an argument in the Modernisation Committee, although not all his hon. Friends felt as confident of it as me.

That brings us to the question of whether the time allowed under the guillotine is anything like sufficient to accommodate the issues raised by the Bills. I did not hear the Home Secretary suggest that he believes for a moment that the range of amendments submitted—nor those selected by either the Speaker or the Chairman of the Committee—is outrageous, perverse or out of order. A total of 50 amendments to the Elections Bill have been selected for debate. Approximately 50 others were not selected—I have not made an exact count. That is a large number of amendments covering substantial and important issues. Even after the latest list was printed, a further seven manuscript amendments were submitted but, of course, the House will not really have an opportunity to evaluate their importance.

Some of the issues for debate might be dismissed quite quickly by the House. It might decide that they are matters solely for debate, not for serious consideration, but one or two issues are clearly above the threshold of being available merely for debate. Compensation for candidates, which is dealt with in the Bill, is a matter on which my right hon. and hon. Friends have commented very unfavourably. Will there be an opportunity to debate that and to take a decision on it?

The hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney) raised with me the issue of Northern Ireland. In fact, a substantial proportion of the Elections Bill relates to Northern Ireland, and issues have been raised about the difficulties that might be caused by holding the local elections and the general election simultaneously and about the fact that—at least, at present—we can give thanks that there is no foot and mouth in Northern Ireland, and so on. Will there be time for those issues to be discussed?

I understand that the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) has proposed in some amendments that the elections might be deferred to different dates in different areas. Those important issues might be dealt with quickly, but they certainly merit debate.

The Bill contains errors. For example, in deferring the annual meetings of councils as a consequence of deferring the local elections, police and joint fire authorities were overlooked, so we find that the dates of their annual meetings are not in synchronisation with the new timetable. Surely that needs to be discussed and rectified.

I noticed, by the new magic medium of e-mail, that the Home Office has today had to reissue its circular to returning officers, drawing their attention to an error in the timetable that it had included in the circular that it issued yesterday. Yet again, that shows not just the haste and speed—all of which is desirable, as we want all these things to be done—but the fact that there are issues before the House that even the Home Office has not squared and got ready to go.

Surely the right way forward is to allow not only reasonable time to debate those issues, but reasonable time to elapse for people to get their thinking caps on, so that they can anticipate and steer around the difficulties that may be thrown up. To advocate doing that is not to say that the Bill should not be passed, nor that it should be delayed, but simply to say that the Bill should receive proper scrutiny in the first place, so that we get it right first time.

I shall comment for a moment or two on the Election Publications Bill, with which the House will also deal tonight as a result of the guillotine. I served on the Standing Committee that considered the original Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill, and I spoke on behalf of the Liberal Democrats at each stage of the debate. The Committee was unusual. My experience of such matters is that Standing Committees are sometimes blessed with a few experts in the particular topic, but seldom is 100 per cent. of the membership made up of experts—yet every hon. Member on that Standing Committee was an expert. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien), will remember that we crawled over the detail of that Bill perhaps almost to excess, but such matters were not at the forefront of our consideration.

I understand that the Bill is intended to ensure that third-party endorsements of particular candidates—or, more likely, third-party attacks on them—are properly attributed in future. Clearly, all political parties would understand the need for, and the desirability of, that proposal, but they would also understand that is not practical to introduce it now, given the very compressed timetable that is proposed.

I remind the Home Secretary and the Minister that one of the questions that was persistently asked of the Home Office team in Committee was whether they thought that electoral commissioners could be put in place and produce their rulings and guidance in time for a general election that, even then, was widely expected to take place about now. Home Office Ministers were sure that everything would be put in place and that we would be satisfied. However, that has not been possible.

We will have only an hour to debate the Election Publications Bill. That may be sufficient, because only two amendments have been tabled. They cover exactly the same point even though they propose slightly different mechanisms to deal with it. In due course, I hope that we shall have an opportunity to debate them. However, the amendments refer to the Home Secretary's capacity—alone and unaided—to reintroduce the proposals that I mentioned entirely without consultation. Therefore, it is important to the House that we debate that issue, so that either the amendments are accepted or we receive cast-iron assurances from the Government and the Home Secretary about their future behaviour. It is one thing to suspend the provisions almost without notice, but it might be another to introduce them—or perhaps deliberately to fail to introduce them—when it is appropriate to do so entirely on the fiat of the Home Secretary.

Liberal Democrats believe that the Government should lift the guillotine and withdraw the motion. They should let the debate take its course, because they would be pleasantly surprised at the outcome that that would produce. If a vote takes place when expected, we shall have only a little over two hours to debate the Second Reading and Committee stages of the Elections Bill and we shall have one hour to debate the Election Publications Bill.

The first debate is the most serious and we shall have only two minutes to debate each amendment, and that assumes that we have no votes. The guillotine, as imposed out of the blue in an unnecessary and counterproductive fashion, is wrong in principle, but I hope that even the Government can see that it is wholly inadequate in practice. I ask the Minister to make a concession on the issue of time. I hope very much that we can have a comparatively short debate on this motion, so that we can use the maximum amount of time on real scrutiny of the Bills.

We have been jammed into an uncomfortable and wholly unsatisfactory and unnecessary position. The solution lies with Ministers, and we look very much to them to provide us with that solution.

I wish to speak about the Elections Bill, which is particularly significant for Northern Ireland. It is important that procedures that limit the time that the House has to consider any Bill be used sparingly; but when the Bill affects the constitutional rights of electors and may influence their future, such a procedure must be used even more sparingly.

The greater part of the Elections Bill is taken up with matters relating to Northern Ireland. Because of the effects of foot and mouth, it is understandable that there may be a great deal of agreement about the Bill's contents among the parties that are largely concerned with the United Kingdom mainland, but that consideration does not affect Northern Ireland. At present, we are free from foot and mouth, so there is absolutely no objection to local government elections taking place in Northern Ireland in accordance with extant legislation. They could be held on 16 May, with a general election to follow once a date is determined.

We should have a full debate on aspects of the Bill that pertain to Northern Ireland. It should not be time limited. There is a grave suspicion that those provisions are being included for no reason whatsoever. They do not appear to be connected with the general election or foot and mouth. It has been common knowledge for some time that, to further their policies and objectives in relation to the peace process or the Belfast agreement, the Government have made moves to ensure that the Ulster Unionist party and the Social Democratic and Labour party should gain an advantage by a change in electoral arrangements. It was at first suggested that the local government elections in Northern Ireland should be postponed from 16 May 2001 to an indefinite future date, while local government was possibly reorganised. The agreement of the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP could not be obtained for that.

Long before the issue of foot and mouth arose in Great Britain or Northern Ireland, there were rumours in political circles in Northern Ireland that local government elections and the general election would be held on the same day. Fundamental constitutional issues are at stake and should be debated at length, including whether the principles of democracy and electors' rights are best served by having elections which use two systems on the same day. In Northern Ireland, voters will be expected to follow the general election procedure of first past the post, which allows them simply to put an X against the name of the single candidate for whom they want to vote, and the local government election procedure, which is based on proportional representation. Under that system, the voter marks his preference for one, two, three, four, five, six or more candidates on a list. It is not a matter of applying the same electoral principles as obtain for the election on the mainland, which will always use the first past the post system.

The capacity for engendering confusion, difficulty, misunderstanding and protests about the validity of votes is protean in Northern Ireland. Indeed, some of the proposals plainly provide for the boxes that contain the votes to be opened at the discretion of the returning officer, without the scrutiny of party representatives, to allow general election votes to be separated like the wheat and the tares from the votes cast in the local government elections. By making provisions that recognise the substantial mistakes that will be made and the mix-ups and confusion that will occur, on which the returning officer will have to decide, the Bill acknowledges my concern, which I hope I have put with some force. It is absolutely ludicrous, in purely electoral terms, to have two elections on the same day for two different sets of candidates that operate under two fundamentally different voting procedures.

I am amazed that the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland dissents from what the hon. and learned Gentleman has been saying—I hope that the Under-Secretary is listening. The schedule to the Electrons Bill states:

"Nothing in these rules or the local elections rules requires the counting agents to be given facilities for overseeing the proceedings mentioned".

What are those proceedings? Are they that the boxes should be opened, every vote be taken out, the coloured votes separated into one pile and the white votes into another, all with no public scrutiny? Are those votes then to be wrapped up in a parcel and sent out with an outrider—we realise that local government people have employed outriders to go on motorbike to deliver parcels of votes to other places—without scrutiny? The Under-Secretary needs to face up to that.

Order. I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is going wide of the debate.

I return to my general theme. For reasons that have nothing to do with the emergency in the United Kingdom at large, which has made it necessary for us to consider both Bills, the Government have decided to incorporate in one of them provisions that are not required by any exigency in Northern Ireland, and to import a system of voting that guarantees confusion. Indeed, the Bill recognises and provides for the sorting out of anticipated difficulty.

The Government are imposing a guillotine on a Bill that provides for the exercise of fundamental democratic and constitutional rights that any citizen may enjoy—the right to cast his vote in circumstances in which there is no confusion about the validity of its casting, in which there is no mix-up with any other election, and in which, in confidence and certainty, he can cast a vote for those by whom he wishes to be represented in local government or the House. It seems to me—and, I hope, the House—that the essential falseness and weakness of the proposed legislation, so far as it bears on that part of the United Kingdom known as Northern Ireland, is that it incorporates measures that are in no way induced, caused or generated by the fundamental emergency that has led to the introduction of both Bills. I hope and trust that, even at this late stage, Ministers will consider that, in relation to Northern Ireland, that is such a fundamental, democratic and constitutional issue as to require—nay, demand—a full and comprehensive debate.

I beg to move, as an amendment to the motion, in paragraph 1(1), after "on Second Reading," to leave out

"in Committee and on consideration and Third Reading".

I hope that the hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney) will forgive me if I do not respond directly to what he said or follow on directly from his arguments. I hope that you will forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, if I say that he raised issues that disturb people like me, who are not familiar with the background in Northern Ireland. The hon. and learned Gentleman made points that need to be properly addressed by Ministers and which add weight to the general unease that many of us feel about the timetable motion.

My purpose in speaking is, first, to express my opposition to, and deep anxiety about, the timetable motion, and secondly, to speak to the manuscript amendment which Mr. Speaker kindly selected. My manuscript amendment is confined to the Elections Bill, not the Election Publications Bill, and would enable the House to consider all stages of the Elections Bill over two days, rather than one day. We should have Second Reading today, ending at 10 pm, and we should deal with the Committee, Report and Third Reading tomorrow, ending at a fairly late hour—say, 12 midnight. In any event, we should debate the Elections Bill over a two-day period.

The argument that we have heard from all parts of the House is that there is a need for emergency legislation. I make two observations about that. First, the fact that we may need legislation rapidly does not mean that we should pass it without proper scrutiny. Secondly, the phrase "emergency legislation" is probably not properly descriptive of what we are discussing. We are speaking of rapid legislation.

Panic legislation.

I am speaking of rapid legislation. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) and I approach the matter from different points of view. My right hon. Friend is addressing the motives of those on the Government Front Bench when he uses the phrase "panic legislation". My argument is that the legislation must be passed rapidly. We do not disagree, but I do not want to use the phrase that my right hon. Friend used.

The guillotine motion relates to two Bills. I propose to concentrate exclusively on the Elections Bill, save to say in respect of the Election Publications Bill that the fact that we shall have to consider that Bill under a timetable motion, or at all, arises because the principal legislation amended by the Election Publications Bill was itself not properly discussed. That ought to make us very chary of using the mechanism set out in the timetable motion.

I repeat the point that I made to the Home Secretary. I am a serious believer in the procedure whereby a Standing Committee can take evidence. There is a great deal in what the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) said about a Cabinet Minister deciding as a matter of principle that all legislation introduced by that Department should be the subject of evidence taking, either through a Select Committee, which was the procedure adopted in the context of the Adoption and Children Bill, or, as I would suggest—although I do not want to be dogmatic—by the Special Standing Committee procedure, which has been in place for yonks but is rarely used. It should be.

I turn to the Elections Bill and the timetable motion. We need to understand what we are discussing. As I understand the effect of the timetable motion, I think that the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) misspoke himself, if he will forgive my saying so. We must finish the Second Reading and Committee stage by 9 pm. In other words, we have about four hours to go through a process which, in the ordinary course of events, would take very many hours.

That is pretty surprising, and it is not implausible to say that there is a strong presumption that it is thoroughly undesirable, too. It is all the more undesirable when one bears in mind that the Elections Bill was published only yesterday. I did not see it at all until 3.45 pm, and my constituents will not have seen it even now.

As I understand it from the Prime Minister's official spokesman, Mr. Campbell, who often seems to be in the dominant position in No. 10, until very recently, probably Monday, no work was being done on the Bill. That, by definition, means—if he was telling the truth, and I am prepared to give him credit for doing so—that no work was done, and there was no pre-drafting consultation. If he was telling the truth—let us assume that he was—it must necessarily follow that there was a lack of consultation. How could pre-drafting consultation have occurred if no work had been done? Thus the Elections Bill was published yesterday and was not the subject of consultation, but we are being asked to bang it through by 10 o'clock. That strikes me as a pretty remarkable state of affairs.

Does my right hon. and learned Friend consider that, when the Government decided the adequacy of the motion, they may have been influenced by the expectation—or even intention—that no Labour Member would seek to speak during this three-hour debate? Only one of their Back Benchers—the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac)—has eventually had the courtesy even to attend.