Daylight Saving Bill
Debate between Philip Davies and Angus Brendan MacNeil
Philip Davies
That is very helpful. I feared that my hon. Friend was going in that direction, so I would certainly wish to press amendment 30 to a vote as it encapsulates the flavour of the lead amendment and would make that requirement clear in the Bill.
The Bill says that the Secretary of State
“must consult the Scottish Ministers and the Welsh Ministers.”
That is slightly ambiguous, and I hope the Minister will confirm that the Scottish Ministers and Welsh Ministers are the Ministers in the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament and not the Ministers in the Scotland Office and the Wales Office. It would be perverse if the Secretary of State was consulting another Secretary of State to get something through that the Government wanted. I hope that the Government would be consulting a different body—the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly—but that is not entirely clear from the Bill or from the glossary of terms at the back of it.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman’s remark about the European Union reminded me of how things change in politics. I can remember in the last Parliament the Liberal Democrats walking out of the Chamber on the question of an in/out referendum. Now, the people who led that have found themselves in government and things have changed. Things could change again, which is why we need guarantees rather than intentions. We need the goalposts to be fixed so that we know exactly where we all stand.
Philip Davies
I agree and I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman clearly supports my amendment. Our job in this House is to ensure that we have proper safeguards in place, based not on wishy-washy assurances but on provisions on the face of the Bill. We do not want to find that when we have passed something we have been sold a pup on an issue that is too important to the future of the United Kingdom for a decision to be based merely on assurances. I do not want to go on as I do not want to test the patience of the House or of my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point because she has conducted herself so well and I do not want to scupper the chances of our debating the next group of amendments. On that basis, I shall leave my comments there, but I want to make it clear that if the my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute withdraws his amendment I would like to pursue my amendment 30, which is the second amendment in this group.