TRANSPORT BILL (ALLOCATION OF TIME)

§ Mr. Speaker

Before I call the Leader of the House to move the Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper, I should say that I have given much thought this morning to how we shall transact the business of the day. After the Question on the Motion has been proposed from the Chair, I thought that it would be as well to have a general debate on the allocation of time and the principle of this guillotine.

I thought that it would be helpful if I had my provisional Selection of Amendments posted in the "No" Lobby, as I would have done for an ordinary Bill, and I am grateful to the Table for its help in preparing this at short notice for the "No" Lobby. I do not propose to call any hon. Member to move any of the Amendments until some time has elapsed. I would have thought the House would not wish me to do so for several hours in order to allow adequate discussion on the main proposal. I thought that this might mean that I should call the first Amendment at about 8 o'clock.

In order to obtain freedom of discussion and amendment on this time-table Motion I shall follow the course taken on previous occasions by my predecssors and relax the rule about speaking twice to the extent that Members who may have spoken on the main Question will not thereby be debarred from moving Amendments. This relaxation does not however confer any additional rights to speak. It is limited to that small concession. Finally, when all the Amendments have been disposed of we shall return to discussion of the main Question, as amended, which will be the final Question to be decided by the House.

§ Several Hon. Members

rose—

§ Mr. Speaker

Mr. Walker—

§ Mr. Keith Stainton (Sudbury and Woodbridge)

On a point of Order—

§ Mr. Speaker

No one has a prescriptive right to raise a point of order before other right hon. Gentlemen. I called Mr. Peter Walker.

§ Mr. Peter Walker (Worcester)

Whilst appreciating the careful consideration that you have given to this, Mr. Speaker, and 1648 knowing the difficulties involved when there are a number of Amendments moved, I would ask you to reconsider your suggestions that 8 o'clock is the right time for ending the principal debate, because we have already lost one hour and 10 minutes of what would have been our normal time on other business and had we started the debate at 3.30 most hon. Gentlemen would have thought that to end the discussion at 6.45 would have been giving too short a time for such a major and important debate. We are anxious to see that the debate on the guillotine is not itself guillotined.

§ Mr. Speaker

I have noted what the hon. Gentleman has said and I am thinking about the matter.

§ Mr. Jeremy Thorpe (Devon, North)

Could I reinforce what has been said by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) on this basis. I assume that we are to debate two different matters, first, the general principle of the guillotine being applied to this Bill, and thereafter the details of the actual provisions put forward. It seems to me, in my respectful submission, that those are two separate matters to which the House will wish to address itself. Without going into the merits of the guillotine, it is generally agreed that we are discussing the merits of a Bill of some length and complexity.

§ Mr. Speaker

The right hon. Gentleman must come to his point of order. We have debates ahead in which he may tempt himself to join, but he cannot do so at this stage.

§ Mr. Thorpe

I therefore respectfully urge on the House the view that if the Amendments are called at approximately 8 o'clock this will give something like one hour and 40 minutes for speeches other than those by the two Front Bench spokesmen if, as I apprenhend, they will probably take 40 to 45 minutes each.

§ Sir Harmar Nicholls (Peterborough)

They need not.

§ Mr. Thorpe

If they take less it will mean that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who wish to speak on the main merits of the guillotine will have an opportunity to do so. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I respectfully urge that whilst 8 o'clock may be the hour you have at present in mind, if you should later take the 1649 view that there is pressure for the debate on the Motion as a whole to go on longer, you would perhaps be flexible in reinforcing your Ruling.

§ Mr. Stainton

I would like to submit for your consideration, Mr. Speaker, that this Motion is out of order and should not be proceeded with on the grounds that Amendment 2087 to the Transport Bill which was tabled early this morning in Standing Committee F appeared subsequent to the Motion on the guillotine and that this Amendment 2087 so changes the character of the Transport Bill that this debate becomes highly irrelevant. Further, much of the time spent in Committee in debate on the Bill has been devoted to measures which now largely evaporate in the light of Amendment 2087 and, therefore, the Committee should be allowed to proceed with the Bill in the ordinary course and catch up with its time.

§ Mr. Speaker

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his ingenuity. This is the most ingenious point of order I have heard in a guillotine debate for a long time, but the Motion is in order.

§ Mr. Peter Emery (Honiton)

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Might I, with respect, obtain your guidance, which I feel might be for the assistance of the House. You have made it clear that movers of Amendments would be allowed, with leave of the House, to speak a second time after speaking on the particular Motion? It will be obvious to the House that the provisional selection of five Amendments which you have made are on various and different points. It will obviously be to the inconvenience of the House if each Member, once he has the Floor of the House, was to have to speak on each of these Amendments in his full speech before they had been moved. I would submit to you, therefore, that it might well be for the convenience of the House if, rather than having everybody speak on all the Amendments the moment they happen to catch your eye, you should allow some latitude so that people may speak directly only to the Amendment moved and might have your lenience in speaking a second time.

§ Mr. Speaker

First of all, if the hon. Gentleman is worried that when an Amendment is moved hon. Members will 1650 speak only to that Amendment, and that some might speak more than others, this is a self-denying ordinance that hon. Members must put on themselves if they wish others to speak in debates.

§ Mr. Eric Lubbock (Orpington)

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, did I understand you to say that if an hon. Gentleman has spoken on the main Question he would be called on one of the Amendmently only if he is the mover of the Amendment? If that is correct, could I draw your attention to the position—

§ Mr. Speaker

Once an Amendment is moved any hon. Member can speak to it.

§ Mr. W. F. Deedes (Ashford)

On a different point of order, may I draw attention to the fact that seven of the Amendments which appear on the Order Paper today appear for the first time, and are tabled by the Government themselves to a Motion which appeared on the Order Paper for the first time only yesterday. This is, of course, in order, but it is grossly inconvenient to the House and, I submit, comes rather close to infringement of the rules of the House for the reason that no opportunity now arises to amend any of the seven Amendments which have been tabled; in particular that on page 491 to which it might well be wished to put Amendments. I submit that this is a matter we have to bring to your attention.

§ Mr. Speaker

The right hon. Gentleman has already ruled on his own point of order that what is on the Paper is in order. It is unusual, but there is nothing out of order in the fact that the Government has amended its own Resolution.

§ Mr. Graham Page (Crosby)

Further to that point of order, as my right hon. Friend has said, this Motion only appeared on the Order Paper yesterday and the Government seek substantially to amend it by Amendments which appeared on the Order Paper this morning. When the Motion appeared on the Order Paper yesterday, we endeavoured, after studying it carefully, to place Amendments on the Order Paper. At least two of those Amendments are to lines in the Motion which the Government now seek to leave out and to insert other lines. Nevertheless, those Amendments apply to the Government's amended Clause, and I would ask you 1651 whether, under those circumstances, you would accept manuscript Amendments which would be the same words as are on the Order Paper but would relate, in lines, to the new Clause which the Government seek to insert and, therefore, would be Amendment to the Amendments of the Leader of the House.

§ Mr. Speaker

I cannot undertake at this time to accept manuscript Amendments.

§ Sir John Eden (Bournemouth, West)

rose—

§ Mr. Speaker

Order. The Speaker is on his feet.

§ Mr. Edward Heath (Bexley)

rose—

§ Mr. Speaker

Order. The question of accepting manuscript Amendments is a difficult one which I must decide at the proper time. Mr. Blackburn.

§ Mr. F. Blackburn (Stalybridge and Hyde)

Mr. Speaker, when you—[Interruption.] When you—

§ Mr. Speaker

Order. Debate must proceed in a regular manner. I have called the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Blackburn) on a point of order.

§ Mr. Blackburn

Mr. Speaker, you are considering representations made to you about when we should move on to the Amendments. Will you at the same time take into consideration the views of those hon. Members who consider that long debates on guillotine Motions are a complete waste of time and that the sooner we get on with business the better?

§ Mr. Speaker

Order. I think that we might proceed now.

§ Mr. John Peyton (Yeovil)

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It is not my intention to follow the course of the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Blackburn) and offer you advice. I want to follow what seemed to be the reasonable point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page). I see your difficulty in saying beforehand that you will definitely accept or reject manuscript amendments, but I hope that I can ask you respectfully to bear in mind the embarrassment and confusion into which the House has been put by 1652 the action of the Leader of the House who, having pushed this Motion at us only a couple of days ago, then has second thoughts, because none of his second thoughts is particularly welcome, and we have not even had a chance to put our considered views on paper.

§ Mr. Speaker

The House does not need my assurance that I shall bear in mind all the factors which have been mentioned and all those that have not been mentioned in addressing myself to the problems of today's debate.

§ Sir Harmar Nicholls

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. While you have ruled quite clearly that the position is in order at the moment, it does not alter the fact that we have had a new Clause put to the Standing Committee which alters the character of the Bill, and that seven Amendments have been put on the Order Paper by the Government Front Bench. Would it not be fairer to the occupant of the Chair if the Leader of the House, recognising that fact, undertook to provide another day so that the matter can be examined properly?

§ Mr. Speaker

The mere repetition of a point of order does not establish it as a legitimate point of order. I have dealt with that point.

§ Mr. Nicholas Ridley (Cirencester and Tewkesbury)

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. If I may, I want to pursue with you a little further the general implications of what has happened. There is nothing now to stop a Government who find that their Motion on the Order Paper has been threatened by Amendments tabled by hon. Members, taking away the whole Motion on the morning of the debate and putting down another, thereby avoiding any debate on the Amendments which have been tabled. It would seem to me that this situation will arise again on other occasions when Motions are put down, and that it should be considered by the House and, with the greatest respect, by you whether it would not be a wise rule of the House to say that no Amendments can be accepted to a Government Motion, as has happened here. In the light of that possibility, would you not consider ruling that this debate should not take place until the matter has been considered?

§ Mr. Speaker

I think that the hon. Gentleman knows the answer to his last question. I am not prepared to rule that this debate should not take place. We have already dealt with the point about the unusualness of Amendments to a Government Motion appearing on the Order Paper on the day when the Motion

§ The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Richard Crossman)

I beg to move,

§ Mr. Peter Walker

rose—

§ Mr. Crossman

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will permit me to conclude this part of my remarks before he criticises. I was explaining why we had put down the Government Amendments. It is a matter which we shall discuss when the Amendments are called. These Amendments are to be discussed at the same time as the Amendment put down by the hon. Gentleman relative to the same topic.

All that we shall do is to put those forward, and it would be convenient to 1658 say that I accept the view that, in this case, more time should be allocated than in the traditional time-table. The original Motion was in the traditional form for a time-table Motion. Without any change, the Report stage is not exempted business. I have now suggested that, instead of having more days for the Report stage, we should take more time and allocate five and a half hours each day—a certain amount after 10 o'clock and a certain amount in the mornings. I calculate that that will provide the Opposition with the equivalent of more than two days in a way which is convenient to the House.

Whether it is right or wrong, I believe that we can discuss these proposals of ours alongside the hon. Gentleman's proposal, and come to a decision on it when we reach the second group of Amendments.

§ Mr. Peter Walker

The House finds itself in this difficulty because, having announced the guillotine Motion last Thursday and having obviously considered it before then the Government were unable to put down their Motion on the Order Paper before Tuesday. That is the reason why the House is in this impossible position of not being able to comment or table Amendments.

§ Mr. Crossman

What we did was done in order to meet objections from right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite. I am sorry if they have been caused inconvenience. When we come to discuss these matters, I hope that they will find 1659 themselves able to commend what we have suggested as a way of proceeding.

§ Sir Derek Walker-Smith (Hertfordshire, East)

I want to draw attention to the Government's reference in later Amendments to five-and-a-half hours. In the form of procedure which the right hon. Gentleman is proposing, that period is not subject to amendment. Mr. Speaker has said that this is unusual. Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether there is any precedent known to him for the course that he is now suggesting?

§ Mr. Crossman

The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows very well that that question should have been directed to the Chair and not to me. [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] We have put this down in this form, and it is in order. I suggest that we should consider what is our main task, and that is to decide whether or not to time-table the Bill and, if so, how.

§ Sir Harmar Nicholls

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. At the invitation of the Leader of the House, could we put to the Chair the question raised by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith)? Is there any precedent for this Amendment?

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Eric Fletcher)

It is not for the Chair to rule whether—[Laughter.]

§ Sir Harmar Nicholls

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Leader of the House said that it is not a point for him. The Chair says it is not a point for the Chair. To whom do we put that point?

§ Mr. Crossman

rose—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker

I imagine that it is open to any hon. Member to search the precedents of this House.

§ Dame Irene Ward (Tynemouth)

Mr. Deputy Speaker, did you hear the right hon. Gentleman say that all this kerfuffle which has gone on the Order Paper had been through the usual channels? Did he not say that? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes."] If he said that, I would like an explanation, because my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter 1660 Walker) did not appear to know about it. I want to know what the usual channels were doing.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker

It is not within the province of the Chair to explain what the usual channels were doing.

§ Dame Irene Ward

Would it not be in order for the usual channels to give their explanation.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker

That is not a point of order.

§ Mr. Peter Bessell (Bodmin)

On a point of order. I understood the Leader of the House to say that there had been agreement that there should not be a new Motion put down, but that there should be Amendments tabled by the right hon. Gentleman and that this had been agreed through the usual channels. Nothing has reached me through the usual channels on this matter. Is it in order for this to happen?

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker

That is not a point of order. That is a point which can emerge during the debate.

§ Mr. Crossman

I would like to relieve the anxieties of the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward), who I know would not like that kind of thing to happen. It did not happen. I said that I had, through the usual channels, asked whether it would be acceptable to put down a complete redraft of the Motion. When I had a clear indication that it would not, I took my own decision. [Interruption.] We put down our Amendments so that they could be discussed side by side. If the right hon. and hon. Gentlemen wish to have a well-organised time-table, or to improve it, as they are seeking by their Amendments—[Interruption.] The Opposition, in a long series of Amendments, are not opposing in principle the guillotine, but seeking to improve the timetable. All I suggested was that it was reasonable to consider these two alternative methods of dealing with the Report stage when we come—[Interruption.] It does not seem that we shall have much time for discussion of principles if we cannot get over this discussion on how to conduct our business on the time-table.

With the consent of the House, I should like to come to what I was asked, namely, 1661 to explain why we are being compelled to introduce a compulsory time-table for the Transport Bill.

§ Mr. Ridley

rose—

§ Mr. Crossman

It will take longer if I have to say everything twice. I have been asked to explain why we have decided that the Bill should be reported back to the House on 15th May.

Before coming to my positive case on the time-tabling of the Bill, I will deal with the arguments of the hon. Member for Worcester. They come down to three main points. First, he contends that this is not a single Bill. He does not regard it as a single Bill but as a—[Interruption.] I am trying to summarise in my simple language what he says in more complicated language. He regards this as a portmanteau Measure. He argues that instead of being presented to the House as one Bill this Session it should have come Session by Session as a long series of Bills. The Leader of the Opposition, who is an expert, having once been the Patronage Secretary, in guillotines, said that it should not have come to the House. We are not discussing that. We are discussing, it having come, in what form it should be reported back to the House. I am surprised that the Leader of the Opposition takes us back to that fractious background.

The first point is: is this a Measure which should have been brought forward as a lone series of independent Bills, or is it a closely integrated single Bill? This is the first issue which we have to decide in the first Session of our debate.

We all know that the hon. Member for Worcester does his homework. Both in public and private discussion he has presented to the Minister and the Minister of State a whole series of proposals for excising those sections from the Transport Bill which, in his view, could be postponed to a later Session. Therefore, we are able to judge objectively between his view of what the Bill is or should be and our Bill, and decide which we want. If we want ours, I can tell him that we have to have a time-table, whereas if he were to get what he wanted, not to my great surprise, he would not need a time-table if he had a majority. His case is that we only have to accept 1662 these excisions, and then the truncated body of the Bill could be shoved through the legislative processing machine without further trimming of members from it by the guillotine. What shape the body would be in at the end of this process, and how many limbs would survive is another question.

I have taken a lot of trouble to study his proposals for excisions. There is a whole series. To put the matter rather indelicately, I contend that they would not only dismember the Bill, they would emasculate it, to use only a mild physical analogy. They would destroy its organic unity and defeat the objective for which the Minister has fought so hard—the provision of a complete legislative framework within which the Government can construct a fully integrated transport system.

The Bill contains—and I think the Minister concedes—a few genuinely miscellaneous items whose removal would not significantly alter the time-table. But with these small exceptions it is the closely integrated product of the most thorough review of the whole range of transport policy ever presented to Parliament. Except for the docks reorganisation, on which the Minister hopes to legislate next Session, the Bill gives effect to the whole of the new integrated transport policy as reported to Parliament in her five notable White Papers.

What about the truncations, the excisions? I gather that the hon. Member for Worcester proposes, for example, that the sections of the Bill relating to quantity licencing and waterways can be removed and so improve the quality of the Bill. But he knows—

§ Mr. Peter Walker

The right hon. Gentleman is monstrously misquoting my whole case. He knows full well, first, concerning the inland waterways section, which is seemingly so important to this policy, that that could have gone to another Committee this Session perfectly reasonably and sensibly and had its own Second Reading.

Concerning quantity licensing, the right hon. Gentleman knows full well that my case was that the Minister herself is on record as saying—[Interruption.] If the Leader of the House is going monstrously to misquote me he 1663 must expect interruptions. On quantity licensing—

§ Mr. Michael Foot (Ebbw Vale)

Mr. Deputy Speaker, how long is the hon. Gentleman to be permitted to go on without exhausting his right to speak altogether? [HON. MEMBERS: "Quiet."] Is it not necessary—[Interruption.] Is it not necessary that Front Bench speakers opposite must learn to abide by the rules of the House?

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker

It is for the Chair to decide in every case whether the length of an interruption is reasonable or unreasonable and to interrupt at the point when it becomes unreasonably long.

§ Mr. Peter Walker

The whole argument on quantity licensing was that the Minister having said she did not want to use the provisions of that section for two years, we could do that rather than guillotine the Bill.

§ Mr. Crossman

If I dare say so, I recommend the hon. Gentleman to make his own speech later. These are all points that he can make to which my right hon. Friend will reply.

Taking his curious argument about the waterways section of the Bill, he said that it would be simple to have that taken before a separate Committee and have a separate Second Reading. One can divide all Bills into five or six sections, each with its own Second Reading, but this would not be the way for any Government to get its business through in a reasonable time. I hope that the House is beginning to appreciate the reasons which have led us to feel that a timetable is necessary to control the exuberance of rhetoric. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman wants to present his views on the portmanteau nature of the Bill, and no doubt the Minister will reply.

In my view, having looked at the Bill, the answer is simple. It is a closely integrated whole. It is the Bill which we announced in the Queen's Speech, which we presented early in December, and which we are determined to obtain this Session. The more the hon. Gentleman says that, in order to get it through, the Bill must be truncated, the more he strengthens the case for our saying that we require a time-table.

1664 On this issue I should like the hon. Gentleman to hear the words of one of my predecessors moving the guillotine Motion on another Transport Bill. The right hon. Gentleman concerned is unable to be here. He has an important domestic arrangement, which I do not begrudge him, but I wish that he were here, because he is an unrivalled expert on the reasons for guillotining transport Bills. I am, of course, referring to the right hon. Member for Enfleld, West (Mr. Ian Macleod).

On the last Transport Bill guillotine Motion the right hon. Gentleman said: The fundamental fact which we, as the House of Commons, have to consider is that with our procedures, which have grown up over so many years, any Bill…will…if it is sufficiently disliked by the Opposition, result in a situation in which the Government must ask for allocation of time powers or drop the Bill…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th March, 1962; Vol. 655, c. 432.] The right hon. Gentleman understood the position. I do not think there was a censure Motion against him that time, but it did not make much difference. He said that there comes a point in any transport Bill when the Government must ask for the allocation of a time-table. The idea of compulsion entered my head only after I read the Motion in the name of the right hon. Gentleman, when he said that one is driven to ask for the allocation of time powers or to drop the Bill.

It is clear what has been happening in Committee. Hon. Gentlemen opposite have been doing their duty by creating a situation in which they hope we will take the alternative of dropping the Bill, but I have a suspicion that they are not unduly surprised to find that when faced with this alternative we decided not to drop the Bill, but were compelled to ask for an allocation of time powers. My first contention to hon. Gentlemen opposite is that this is no new or novel thing. We are doing in this Bill what we have been driven to do by a consistently thorough and efficient Opposition who knew what they were doing, and are not surprised by what we are doing.

§ Sir Harmar Nicholls

Has the right hon. Gentleman ever, in his experience in the House, had a Bill guillotined—which is a proper procedure—when there has been a complete absence of any filibustering? The right hon. Gentleman 1665 is not a member of the Committee, nor am I but I have examined its proceedings. I find that no more than 15 minutes have been spent per Amendment, and there can be no suggestion of being driven to introduce the guillotine on the basis of the Committee's performance.

§ Mr. Crossman

I suggest that the word "filibuster" is a pejorative word. It is a nasty word. I always regard as serious a sustained discussion from this side of the House what I am in danger of dismissing as filibustering when it comes from the other side. This is the difficulty in which we find ourselves when there are long speeches. We tend to treat them in a biased and prejudiced way, so I hope that in this debate I shall not accuse even the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Bessell) of filibustering in his one thousand and one nights of Arabian entertainment which he has done on this Bill so far.

I want to mention a peculiar character of transport legislation. I do not think it is an accident that each of the four major Transport Bills presented to Parliament since the war has aroused such passionate and well-fought opposition, twice from a Labour Opposition, and now for the second time from a Conservative Opposition, that the Government have been compelled to impose a time-table as the only alternative to losing a Measure which formed an essential part of their policy. Indeed, this has been so not only since the war. I go back to Herbert Morrison's Transport Act of 1930. Transport is always a bone of contention between the parties, and it is also an issue which provokes extra-Parliamentary activity because it affects wealthy vested interests and powerful pressure groups.

If the hon. Member for Worcester makes the charge that the first postwar Labour Government's Transport Act of 1947 was, and this Transport Act in 1968 is, far more important than their two Tory counterparts, much more far-reaching in extent, and far more innovating in purpose I shall not deny it. The Tory Measures were denationalising, disintegrating, negative Measures. Ours are constructive. They have aroused fierce opposition because they are bold Measures of radical reform which challenge vested interests of the status quo, 1666 and insist on submitting them to public control. I was not surprised to find myself called on to speak to this Motion in due course. The only question was when.

§ Mr. Peyton

What the right hon. Gentleman has been saying are things which only he would have the audacity to express. As he was so well forewarned that a Transport Bill would come up against fairly heavy criticism from the Opposition, why in the name of conscience did not he take the trouble to put the Bill down earlier so that there would be adequate time for it?

§ Mr. Crossman

If the hon. Gentleman will contain himself in patience, I shall come to that charge. I have gone through and listed the points that he wanted me to answer. In my speech I should like to answer them in my order, and not his.

It remains true that whenever the Government—of the Right or Left—promote a major transport Bill they find themselves faced with the choice which confronted the right hon. Member for Enfield, West in 1962, that of either asking for the allocation of time, or dropping the Bill.

Now I turn to the second contention relating to time. I gather that for many weeks now the hon. Member for Worcester has contended that a time-table Motion would be unnecessary if only the Government were content to see the Bill come back to the House at the end of June. We shall discuss this on a later Amendment. This strikes me as distinctly optimistic, but even if it were a realistic assessment of the pace achievable in Committee, it is an unrealistic assessment of the time required both for the concluding stages in this House, and for the necessary procedures in another place. It is our contention, and I have seen nothing to contradict it, that to get the Bill through all its stages in this Session it must be reported here in mid-May, and since the Opposition will not collaborate in a voluntary time-table for concluding the Committee stage by 15th May, this Motion has become inevitable.

I have heard it suggested that even so we have been unduly impatient in bringing this Motion forward, and that if we had been reasonable people, the Minister of Transport and I would have 1667 let things go on for a week or two longer Upstairs before introducing the timetable. To this I would say that there is nothing more frustrating to good debate, and more infuriating to serious Opposition, than a time-table which jerks a Committee which has become acclimatised to a lazy slow-motion Clause by Clause consideration—I am not referring to this Committee—and precipitates it into a breakneck rush over the rest of the Bill.

To show what I mean, I should like to compare what we are doing with this Bill, with what the Conservatives did in 1962. When they were in office the Bill was allowed to crawl along day by day at little more than the speed of one Clause every two weeks. That was the pace which was achieved in the period before the guillotine. And then, suddenly, when the guillotine was introduced, the process was accelerated by approaching 1,000 per cent. The right hon. Member for Enfield, West decided to accelerate the process from a slow crawl to a breakneck Gadarene drive.

We have timed ourselves better and I calculate that if the time-table is successful the rate will have to accelerate somewhat—the progress on this Bill has been much better, it is true, but it is a longer Bill—but we shall have to ask for only a three-fold increase in pace instead of the ten-fold increase which the Tories sought. I seriously suggest that the Opposition will get a better debate, a better spaced debate, which is divided up and considers each part of the Bill more adequately, under this planned compulsory time-table.

Under our time-table, when the Bill is finally reported, as it of course will be, more time will have been devoted to it in Committee than to any other Bill. I reckon, in the history of the British Parliament—twice as long as the Conservatives gave for the 1962 Transport Act. It is, in fact, the equivalent of 76 ordinary sittings of two and a half hours each. Therefore, those who are concerned, not to prevent the Bill being passed, but to ensure that it has adequate time, will have a hard job to convince me, when I can show how much time we shall give and how fairly and reasonably that time will be spaced, by introducing a timetable now, between the various parts of the Bill—

§ Mr. James Dance (Bromsgrove)

But will the right hon. Gentleman not agree that this is not one Bill but ten in one, which is why it is taking all this time?

§ Mr. Crossman

I remember from my time in Opposition that when one is in Opposition and dislikes a Bill one of the things which one always feels about what the other side regard as a big, important, statesmanlike Measure is that it is a package of terrible things, and one tries to chop it up and destroy it bit by bit. That is why we need the time-table, but we are getting slightly nearer agreement about why the time-table is necessary.

It is always a temptation for the mover of a Motion such as this to dilate on precedents, and I will quote the right hon. Member for Enfield, West only once more on this subject. He was speaking not on the Transport Bill but on the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill. He did a whole series of guillotines. We all remember the 15 Bills guillotined by the Tories in their 13 years. And there were several in one day: they did them in bunches, not singly, as we do.

In his most robust form, the right hon. Gentleman said: …the clearest and most robust declaration of what we are all aware to be one of the facts of Parliamentary life was made by the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) during the last debate on an allocation of time Motion. This is what the right hon. Gentleman said: 'So long as I sit in this House and when my party is in power, I shall support the efforts of the Government to get their business. But if the party opposite is in power I shall oppose the Government getting their business, and I hope that no one will have any illusions on that score.'… That is a splendid, almost a classical exposition of the situation, and that, after all, is what this debate is about."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th January 1962; Vol. 652, c. 417.] That was an unusual piece of candour, which I might have been accused of showing myself, and which I am exercising the greatest care in avoiding this afternoon. It is one of those pieces of candour which does not really describe the situation—

§ Sir Harmar Nicholls

Is the right hon. Gentleman not being candid, then?

§ Mr. Crossman

No, I said that it did not describe the situation. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would be good enough to pay attention just to this point. When 1669 we are discussing guillotines and time-tabling, we should face—the Leader of the House especially must face—the fact that, if we ask for a constriction of time and a limitation of debate, we must justify it to ourselves. It is not right to take the attitude, "Whenever I am in Government I will rail-road my policy through and when I am in Opposition, I will use every means of stopping Government policy", because Parliament does not work that way. We on our side must be careful when we ask for a time-table that we have taken trouble and weighed all the considerations and arranged a fair time-table. We must be fair.

All I would add is that there is an equally serious danger to the danger of Governments being autocratic, and that is a danger for which Oppositions are responsible—their power to prevent good Government and decision by frustration and delay. In the kind of decision which we are making today, the real test is whether this action achieves a fair balance between the legitimate insistence of Government on concluding the discussion of a vital Measure in good time for it to go to the other place for discussion, and the legitimate demand of the House that the Bill should be adequately discussed.

I have always believed that a voluntary time-table, if possible, is not the enemy of good discussion, but an essential precondition of it. I was reinforced in this view by the Report of the Select Committee on Procedure which strongly recommended the use of voluntary timetables. l t was with this sensible concept in mind that the Minister tried hard to reach agreement with the hon. Member for Worcester. In view of the size of the Bill, she offered, right from the start, that the Committee should meet three times a week, including long sittings on Wednesday. She accepted, too, two all-night sittings to give extra time to discussion of Opposition Amendments. She made it clear that, if agreement could be reached on a time-table, she would allocate time in the total to take into account the wishes of the Opposition.

But all in vain. The hon. Member for Worcester asked for—how much? Not everybody has seen this figure. He asked for 455 hours in Committee. That is 182 normal sittings, and the Bill would have 1670 taken two years in Committee. Hon. Members opposite all nod their heads. That is what they wanted. When my right hon. Friend said that she wanted to work out with the hon. Member a sensible voluntary time-table, that was the rumbustious reply which she got—

§ Mr. Peter Walker

Would the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the time for which I asked was less per Clause than the present Government gave on the Iron and Steel Bill, without guillotining it?

§ Mr. Crossman

Of course, the hon. Gentleman will be able to make out reasons for his action and make it sound less insane when he makes his own speech. I am simply pointing out that, when the hon. Gentleman was offered a voluntary time-table and said that he wanted two years in Committee, this suggestion was nothing short of frivolous and cannot be taken seriously by a Government such as ourselves.

§ Mr. A. Woodburn (Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire)

is my right hon. Friend aware that on one of the Transport Bills which he did not mention our party agreed to a voluntary time-table and that that was the best conducted debate ever on a Bill?

§ Mr. Crossman

I would add that it was not one of the really contentious Transport Bills. We are dealing with one which is contentious because someone will be hurt and someone will benefit by it. These are the contentious ones.

The hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) said that we should not have brought a Bill of this size to Committee as late as mid-January, and that things would have been different if the Bill had been brought to the House for its Second Reading—

§ Mr. Peyton

I did not say that. The right hon. Gentleman should be a little more tidy about his quotations. This cynical sloppiness with which he uses other people's words and twists them in a serpentine way which comes natural only to himself is intolerable.

§ Mr. Crossman

One of my difficulties is that I have to try to summarise in precise form the passionate orations of the hon. Gentleman. I thought that it was fair to say that he had complained that 1671 we produced the Bill to the Committee too late. Is that right?

§ Mr. Peyton

Yes.

§ Mr. Crossman

Right. In mid-January? Or was his complaint that it should have been in December?

§ Mr. Peyton

I am so sorry that the right hon. Gentleman is slow to take the point, though he may have a note to deal with this later in his speech. The point is—let us labour it: there is plenty of time—that if the Leader of the House, as he says, was forewarned of trouble in getting the Bill through, one is slightly curious to know why he did not take the elementary precaution of getting started with it as soon as possible.

§ Mr. Crossman

I like questions put in that moderate and modest way, since I can reply to them moderately and modestly. If that is the question, why we decided to bring it forward in January, my right hon. Friend will go into it in greater detail, but I am told—I know this as a Member of the Cabinet—that there were many matters on which we had to have expert and precise consultation, and in our view it was better to spend time on consultation and get the Bill in January rather than to have it less well prepared in December.

Since great play has been made with the question of the Bill having been brought in late, it is interesting to note that the longest time we possibly could have had in Committee with this Measure would have been an extra two weeks before Christmas, which represents four sittings. When I compare that with the 455 hours, or two years, being sought, those two weeks would have made very little difference indeed.

§ Mr. Peter Walker

I wish that the right hon. Gentleman would stop constantly suggesting that I asked for two years in Committee. I did no such thing. I stated in a letter to the right hon. Lady the Minister that we would be willing to sit the hours necessary to finish the 455 hours for which I had asked by the end of June. This statement about sitting for two years in Committee is, therefore, a figment of the right hon. Gentleman's imagination, and I trust that he will stop talking about two years.

§ Mr. Crossman

I am glad to accept that. This is something that I did not 1672 know. I said that if we had 455 hours of normal Committee work, week by week, that would take two years. If I did not say that, that is what I meant and I correct what I did say. I am glad to hear that what the hon. Gentleman was proposing was 455 hours in Committee, to be completed in June. I will get our statisticians to work and let hon. Members know how that would have worked out within this reductio ad absurdum portmanteau.

§ Mr. Bessell

Has a Bill of this size been subject to a guillotine Motion in recent history?

§ Mr. Crossman

I must be careful in answering questions of that sort off the cuff.

§ Mr. Michael Heseltine (Tavistock)

On a point of order. Am I to understand that the right hon. Gentleman is saying that he was not told by the Minister of Transport—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. The point which the hon. Gentleman is raising is obviously not a point of order.

§ Several Hon. Members

rose—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. Mr. Heseltine.

§ Mr. Heseltine

I trust that you will allow me to put my point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I understood the Leader of the House to say that he was not told by the Minister of Transport about the offer from the shadow Minister for the Committee to sit the requisite number of hours. The right hon. Gentleman should have been in possession of this information before deciding to deal with this matter by way of the guillotine.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker

As I said, that is not a point of order, but a question that may be ventilated during the debate.

§ Sir Gerald Nabarro (Worcestershire, South)

Young eagles.

§ Sir Harmar Nicholls

Further to my hon. Friend's point of order. My hon. Friend referred to a letter which had been sent to the Minister. When a document is mentioned in debate, ought not that document to be on the Table?

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker

The hon. Gentleman was not referring to an official 1673 document but to correspondence. These matters may be ventilated during the debate. They are not points of order.

§ Mr. Crossman

I am grateful for those interventions because they have enabled me to find the relevant document. I said that the presentation of the case now by the hon. Member for Worcester was somewhat different from the one I had heard from my right hon. Friend. I am interested in the attractive way in which he has presented his proposition. I gather that he is maintaining that he made the proposition that the Opposition would require 50 hours per week in Committee until mid-June. I would have thought that 50 hours was overdoing it a bit, to say the least. We believe that, instead of 50 hours per week untill June, we should have a sensibly timetabled Committee finishing on 15th May.

§ Sir Harmar Nicholls

When was the letter written?

§ Mr. Crossman

I have a mass of correspondence before me. I suggest that these are all points which can be raised in the debate. At that time hon. Gentlemen opposite will be able to make their remarks effectively and I hope that I may now continue without being constantly interrupted.

These are the hard facts: the Bill was introduced at the earliest possible moment in the Session and, as I pointed out, the two weeks which could have been provided would have made negligible difference compared with the major demands on time that are being made. In considering the present situation, in spite of the extra time which my right hon. Friend has been prepared to allow, the Bill is far behind schedule. About 2,000 Amendments have been tabled by hon. Gentlemen opposite and, as far as I know, this is a record. I understand that the hon. Member for Bodmin put down 1,000 Amendments on his own.

§ Mr. Bessell

indicated dissent—

§ Mr. Crossman

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman, since I understand that the number of Amendments tabled by him now totals 1,001.

§ Mr. Bessell

On a point of order. If the right hon. Gentleman intends to quote figures, surely it is vital that he quotes 1674 accurate figures. The number is not 1,001 but 1,047.

§ Mr. Crossman

I am glad to write that correction on the tablets of my heart. I will remember that as being the only record achieved by the Liberal Party in this Parliament.

Proceedings can be dragged out just as much by putting down and discussing hoards of Amendments as by speaking at great length to a small number of them. As the House knows, we must complete the Committee stage by mid-May if we are to finish the Bill this Session. Three sittings a week are as much as it is sensible to expect hon. Members to attend, and no hon. Member wants constant all-night sittings. After 23 sittings, the Committee is still discussing Clause 45, and that is why we have introduced this Motion.

My right hon. Friend will be dealing later with many of the detailed points. I conclude by recognising something frankly and with admiration, although I may have this quoted against me by the next Leader of the House when he is dealing with a guillotine Motion. The strange fact when reading speeches made by one's predecessors is that there is virtually no difference between them, from whichever side of the House those speeches are made. This is what makes this proceeding sometimes viewed with cynicism by people outside.

As I was saying, I recognise frankly, and with a certain reluctant admiration, the formidable scale of the publicity campaign which has been organised inside and outside the House against the Transport Bill. Indeed, our opponents have mounted this colossal propaganda offensive with such skill, such huge financial backing and such persistence—