Protection of Freedoms Bill (Programme) (No. 3)
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
Read Full debate19:01 - The House divided: - Ayes: 62 / Noes: 243 - Question accordingly negatived.
19:15 - The House divided: - Ayes: 275 / Noes: 233 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
The debate may continue for 45 minutes. I should inform the House that Mr Speaker has selected the amendment on the Order Paper in the name of Mr Edward Leigh.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)
I beg to move,
That the Order of 1 March 2011 (Protection of Freedoms Bill (Programme)) be varied as follows—
1. Paragraphs 4 and 5 shall be omitted.
2. Proceedings on consideration and Third Reading shall be concluded in two days.
3. Proceedings on consideration shall be taken on each of those days as shown in the following Table and in the order so shown.
4. Each part of the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the time specified in relation to it in the second column of the Table.
First day | |
Proceedings | Time for conclusion of proceedings |
New Clauses and New Schedules relating to, and amendments to, Chapter 1 of Part 1. | 8.30 pm |
New Clauses and New Schedules relating to, and amendments to, Chapter 2 of Part 3. | 10 pm |
Second day | |
Proceedings | Time for conclusion of proceedings |
New Clauses and New Schedules relating to, and amendments to, Chapter 1 of Part 2. | 5.30 pm |
New Clauses and New Schedules relating to, and amendments to, Part 5. | 7.30 pm |
New Clauses and New Schedules relating to, and amendments to, Part 4, Chapter 2 of Part 1, Chapter 2 of Part 2, Chapter 1 of Part 3, and Part 6; remaining New Clauses; remaining New Schedules; amendments to Part 7 and remaining proceedings on consideration. | 9 pm |
5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 10.00 pm on the second day.
The programme motion provides two days for Report and Third Reading, and it follows more than 44 hours of consideration, over 10 days, in Public Bill Committee. During that time, the Committee was able to scrutinise carefully all aspects of the Bill.
In Committee, much of the focus of the debate was on the provisions in respect of the retention of DNA, the further regulation of CCTV, the prohibition on wheel clamping without lawful authority, the changes to counter-terrorism powers and the reform of the vetting and barring scheme and criminal records regime. It is right that those provisions should also be the focus of our deliberations on Report. The programme motion has accordingly been structured to achieve that.
The motion provides for the provisions on the retention of DNA and in respect of parking enforcement to be considered until 10 o’clock this evening. When we resume tomorrow, we will first consider the CCTV clauses, followed by the amendments to the safeguarding and criminal records provisions in part 5. That will allow some time to consider the counter-terrorism and other provisions in the Bill before we move on to Third Reading at 9 o’clock tomorrow evening.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
My hon. Friend said that the Government have generously given the House two days at this stage of the proceedings. We have already lost three hours because the Government decided to make three statements to the House; with one hand they provide time generously, but with the other they take that time away.
James Brokenshire
As my hon. Friend will appreciate, there is a balance to be struck in all these proceedings. We maintain that the programme motion strikes that right and appropriate balance in respect of consideration of the Bill.
Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The Minister listed a number of items that the Committee rightly dealt with in great detail. However, it did not cover in any detail the issues raised in new clause 17, which is enormously important to the whole research community. Can the Minister guarantee that time will be available for a debate on that new clause?
James Brokenshire
We have sought to structure the programme motion to enable consideration of the Bill, and that is right and proper for Report. A priority appropriately has to be given to enable scrutiny of the Bill as drafted. Obviously, it is for the House to decide within the programme motion the extent to which it will debate particular clauses, but we have had to strike as fair a balance as we can on the provisions of the Bill to ensure that appropriate scrutiny is applied.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I appreciate that my hon. Friend is a coalition Minister and not a Conservative one; before we got into power, the Conservative party was against having programme motions.
Given that we have lost three hours or so to statements, would not a fair balance have been to have allowed us to go for three hours extra tonight? We have been away from this place for a long time; surely an extra three hours this evening would have been fair. That is what democracy is about—we are not trying to force things through. Let us have three hours extra tonight.
James Brokenshire
My hon. Friend takes the issues of the House extremely seriously, and I respect him for that. The Government have made important changes to how legislation is scrutinised. We are having two days on Report for the Bill, and that is markedly different from what we would have seen from the previous Government; we would have had a day for consideration of a Bill of this kind.
The terms of the programme motion will come as a disappointment to my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) and the other right hon. and hon. Members who have put their name to new clause 1. Despite the two days that we have set aside for Report, twice the normal allocation that we were accustomed to seeing in the last Parliament, regrettably it is unlikely that the House will be able to consider all the new clauses tabled for debate.
As I said, the programme motion has been constructed to ensure that there is adequate time to consider the key provisions already in the Bill. I believe that that is the right approach. Although this is not the occasion to consider the substance of new clause 1, which seeks to amend section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, I fully recognise that the matter is of considerable interest to a number of Members on both sides of the House. That much is clear from the number of right hon. and hon. Members who have added their names to the new clause.
We agree that the issue should be examined further. That is why, in the next few days, we will publish a consultation seeking views on whether section 5 should be amended along the lines proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough. I will be happy to meet him to hear his views on this important issue. Once the consultation has concluded—it will run to early in the new year—the Government will set out their conclusions as quickly as possible, so that they can inform the debate on the issue while the Bill is in another place. I have no doubt that there will be other opportunities for the House to consider section 5, either when we next examine the Bill on its return from the other place or on some other suitable occasion. I can assure my hon. Friend that through the consultation we want to promote debate on this issue, not seek to curtail it, by widening and broadening it outside this House.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I am grateful for what my hon. Friend says, which helps to set in a more attractive context the otherwise uncharacteristic step that was taken by moving new clause 1 to the very end of the Bill’s consideration. Is he saying that the Government will facilitate a parliamentary opportunity to legislate if a clear conclusion emerges from these discussions?
James Brokenshire
The timing of the consultation is intended to be such that it can inform proceedings in the other place. There may therefore be time, in the context of the consideration of the Bill as a whole, to be able to address issues that may come through from the consultation. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough will accept the consultation as a mark of our determination to undertake a proper review of section 5 and that on that basis he will agree not to press his new clause.
We believe that the programme motion strikes the right balance. I commend it to the House and ask Members to support it so that we can get on with debating the important issues that lie within the Bill.
James Brokenshire
I am grateful for the contributions of a number of right hon. and hon. Members to our consideration of the programme motion. As I said in my opening remarks, we judge it right that the programme motion should be drafted so as to allow this House to scrutinise the key provisions that are actually in the Bill. I appreciate that a number of hon. Members would have wished to amend the Bill to include various other provisions—in particular, given the level of support for new clause 1, the amendment of section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) sought to characterise that as simple or straightforward. However, I would say to him that there are complexities attached, which is why the Government would prefer to consider and reflect on the matter carefully, and to enable a public consultation to take place so as to ensure that all relevant issues are considered in the round and to inform the debate. It is worth mentioning that section 5 of the 1986 Act covers issues such as swearing at police officers and the case against the poppy burning on Remembrance day. It is therefore appropriate to ensure proper consultation before taking any action.
However, I reiterate that the intent is to move quickly to enable consideration of the results of the consultation in another place. Obviously, the consultation will provide an opportunity for hon. Members, the Christian Institute, the police and many others to set out their views, and I look forward to the debate and to meeting my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough to hear his views at first hand.
The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) mentioned the Digital Economy Act 2010. He will be aware that the Government announced in August that they did not intend to commence sections 17 and 18 of the Act. There might not be time to debate his new clause, but we are now working on a wide-scale review of the communications sector with a view to publishing a Green Paper by the spring of next year, and a draft Bill by mid-2013. Policy on tackling online copyright infringement, including site-blocking, is being considered as part of that review and, given our intention to conduct that wide-ranging review, it would be premature to act now to repeal sections 17 and 18 of the Act in isolation from any other legislative changes that might be needed.
We believe that the programme motion is right to focus on the provisions of the Bill to ensure that this House is able to apply appropriate scrutiny to the legislation before us. We have introduced important changes. I welcome the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) to his new position in the shadow home affairs team—he and I have had a number of debates on these issues, in relation to the Bill and elsewhere—but I think that some of his comments were a bit rich, because I can certainly remember previous occasions on which we have had less time than we have tonight to debate important legislation. This Government have made important changes that will allow us to debate these matters for two days, rather than rushing them through in one day, as would have happened in the past. I therefore commend the programme motion to the House.
Question put, That the amendment be made.