Standing Committee F
Thursday 3 July 2003
(Morning)
[Mrs. Marion Roe in the Chair]
9.25 am
Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire): On a point of order, Mrs. Roe. We have been examining the precedent for a re-committal to Committee, such as we are debating this morning and have undertaken extensive research in ''Erskine May'' and elsewhere. Without going into matters in great detail, we discovered two precedents. Mr. Speaker recommitted the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill to Standing Committee in 1949 because
''inadvertence extended the Bill by means of a new Clause and a new Schedule to the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands as well as to England''.—[Official Report, 15 November 1949; Vol. 469, c. 1939.]
Unfortunately, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands were put into Scotland, and the Bill had to be recommitted to Standing Committee to sort out the oversight.
As for the Mineral Workings Bill in 1951, Mr. Deputy Speaker said:
''I have to call the attention of the House to the fact that Standing Committee 'A', by inadvertence, omitted to leave out certain words in Clause 26''.—[Official Report, 18 June 1951; Vol. 489, c. 200.]
The Bill then had to be recommitted to Standing Committee A.
Mr. Peter Luff (Mid-Worcestershire) rose—
The Chairman: Order. [Interruption.] Mr. Luff, will you please resume your seat? The hon. Gentleman is raising a point of order and you cannot intervene.
Mr. Gray: My hon. Friend has said from a sedentary position that he cannot hear my point of order. I shall speak more clearly.
The precedents for a re-committal were in respect of extremely minor errors caused by inadvertence. In the history of Parliament and British democracy, this is the first occasion on which a Bill had gone back to the Floor of the House on Report, with Back Benchers then deciding to overturn the will of the Committee and make a fundamental basic change to the purpose of the Bill. Mr. Speaker then decided to recommit the Bill. There is no precedent for such a re-committal. I should value your advice, Mrs. Roe, about whether our sitting today is proper.
The Minister for Rural Affairs and Local Environmental Quality (Alun Michael): Further to that point of order, Mrs. Roe. Clearly, proprieties are matters for the authorities of the House. However, the issues that result from the decisions that were made on Monday are simpler than misplacing Northern Ireland or Scotland. The House decided to go for more simple legislation, so the enforcement and registration system needs to be removed from the Bill. The Bill has been recommitted for the sake of simplicity so that the consequences of the decision can be dealt with. We
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said from the start that if there were such a motion, such action would be necessary. That is why the Government put the concept of re-committal into the resolution that was before the House and which has existed for many months.
The Chairman: I am grateful to the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) for giving me notice that he wished to raise a point of order. I understand the strength of feeling about such matters and the House has decided that the Bill should be recommitted, and that the Committee should report not later than Monday. I am bound by those decisions and we cannot take time today to go over them again.
The Bill has been recommitted as a whole, which means that the Committee will have the chance to decide whether each clause and schedule should stand part of the Bill or be struck out. It has been recommitted
''for the purpose of making such amendments as the Committee consider to be necessary or expedient in consequence of the addition to the Bill of new clause 11 on consideration.''—[Official Report, 30 June 2003; Vol. 408, c. 144.]
That clause would stop the registration of foxhunting. While it is for members of the Committee to propose whichever amendments they regard as consequential, the Chair is exercising its powers of selection to ensure that amendments that meet the House's criteria are put before the Committee for debate. It is then for the Committee to decide on the amendments.
Mr. Gray: On a point of order, Mrs. Roe. I fear that you may have been responding to the point of order of which I gave you notice last night, which is a separate point of order from that which I raised a moment ago. I said earlier that the committal of the Bill was improper.
I should like to raise the point of order of which I gave you notice last night, Mrs. Roe, which I have not yet had the opportunity to raise to the Committee, if that is acceptable. You will recall that the committal order states that the Bill will be recommitted to the Standing Committee
''in consequence of the addition to the Bill of new clause 11 on consideration.''
In other words, it seems—we have consulted ''Erskine May'' extensively about such matters—that the committal motion made in the House on Monday stated that we should be discussing matters related to new clause 11, which hon. Members will remember is entirely to do with foxhunting, and not anything else. In particular, new clause 14, which relates to mink hunting, was not mentioned during the re-committal motion. On examining page 541 of ''Erskine May'', it is plain that a motion for re-committal may be made in respect of the whole Bill:
''Where a motion in respect of certain clauses or amendments only is made, the debate on the motion is restricted to the purpose and extent of the proposed re-committal of the bill.''
It is our contention that, through an error, the re-committal motion allows the Committee to discuss only foxhunting, because that is the topic that new clause 11 specified in the motion, and not any other subject, particularly not mink hunting. If the answer to that is, ''Yes, we can'', why is it that the words ''new
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clause 11'' are included in the re-committal motion? If it has been made in order to discuss the entire Bill, why use those words?
Rob Marris (Wolverhampton, South-West): Further to that point of order, Mrs. Roe. I am sure that you are aware that Mr. Speaker ruled on such matters on 1 July. He said that
''the re-committal motion authorises the Standing Committee only to make such amendments as it considers necessary in consequence of the addition of new clause 11.''—[Official Report, 1 July 2003; Vol. 408, c. 175.]
I stress that ''it'' means the Committee. If those on the Floor of the House believe that we have made inconsequential amendments, they could overturn any such amendments that we may make today.
Mr. Luff: Further to that point of order, Mrs. Roe. I admit that what I am about to say is a detailed point, but it is important. We are in uncharted territory. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire has made the position clear. It was a fine point of order and I interrupted it only because I could not hear it, as a result of the noise coming from Labour Members.
We have to be careful about the precedents that we establish during our proceedings today. Although hunting matters a great deal to many people, it is not the most important issue in the world. Other important matters could be affected similarly in the future by the precedents that you set from the Chair today, Mrs. Roe. I urge you to reflect carefully on the point that new clause 14 has become clause 7 of the Bill. A Government amendment has been tabled to delete it. That is not covered by the re-committal motion. Clause 7, which was new clause 14, has nothing to do with new clause 11. I do not know what the genetic link is between foxes and mink, but it is small, and virtually non-existent. This is a serious point. It would not be in order to select the amendment to delete clause 7 because that is completely contrary to the re-committal motion.
There would be other important implications. If we cannot delete clause 7, we cannot delete part 2 of the Bill, which is what the Government want to do. Otherwise, the reference to registration in clause 7 would be ludicrous. This is an important matter of great precedent. Clause 7 should stand part of the Bill and cannot be deleted.
The Chairman: As I have already said, it is for the Committee to decide which clauses stand part of the Bill. I have already made my ruling. I considered the matter carefully because it is important, and I think that we should abide by the instructions of the House. We must now get on with the business.
Alun Michael: I beg to move,
That—
1. The Standing Committee, in addition to its first sitting on Thursday 3rd July at twenty-five minutes past Nine o'clock, shall meet on that day at half-past Two o'clock.
2. Proceedings in the Standing Committee shall (unless already concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.30 pm on Thursday 3rd July.
3. The proceedings shall be taken in the order specified in the Table below.
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4. Proceedings specified in the first column of the Table shall be brought to a conclusion (unless already concluded) at the time specified in the second column.
TABLE
Proceedings
Time for
conclusion
Proceedings relating to provisions about the registration of hunting (except for Clause 53)
11.25 am at the 1st sitting
Amendments to paragraph 1 of Schedule 1 (except for Amendments relating to the use of dogs below ground)
3.30 pm at the 2nd sitting
Amendments relating to the use of dogs below ground
4.30 pm at the 2nd sitting
Amendments and New Clauses relating to compensation and proceedings relating to Clause 53; and remaining proceedings
5.30 pm at 2nd sitting
I am pleased to move the programme motion, which is simple and straightforward, as is the business of the Committee. However, we have already heard contributions from hon. Members who have sought to complicate the matter. I should make it clear that new clause 11 dealt with foxhunting in relation to the Bill as a whole, and had great implications for registration and the tribunal system set out in the Bill as it came before the House on Monday. New clause 14 and its acceptance on the Floor of the House was a straightforward consequence. We could have left consideration of the matter to Committee, but we dealt with it on the Floor of the House in order to simplify matters for the Committee, and to clarify, for Committee members who might want to contribute, the direction that we will have to take as a consequence of the House's support for new clause 11.
In the Programming Sub-Committee yesterday, I made it clear that we wished simply to help to make coherent the debates that we need to have in Committee today. Those debates are not complicated. First, we need to take out of the Bill those references to the registrar and the tribunal that could not properly be left in, as their purpose has been undermined by the decision taken by the House. That means tidying up and taking out significant elements of the Bill, and is a direct consequence of the decision taken by a large majority on the Floor of the House on Monday.
Secondly, exceptions need to be dealt with. In the Bill, there were some clearly stated exceptions, but there are other issues that would normally be dealt with by the registrar and the tribunal when considering the applications of those who wish to undertake activities with dogs. Clearly, one cannot leave those issues unresolved if there is to be no registrar and tribunal to take those decisions. The Bill needs to be tidied up to make the line between what is and what is not permitted under the Bill absolutely clear. It is important that people know where they stand, and that we do not leave ragged edges in the Bill. There are two elements to that, and therefore we propose two debates, of which the first will finish at 3.30 pm and the second at 4.30 pm, relating to the use of dogs below ground.
Finally, we shall discuss amendments and new clauses more generally. That includes the issues of
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compensation and proceedings relating to clause 53. We have up to half an hour to consider how we will discuss matters. It is up to the Committee whether that time is used, or whether we go straight on to substantive consideration. The Committee does not have to take up all the time allocated. For instance, Committee members may feel that the task of taking elements out of the Bill, for which we have until 11.25 am, can be done expeditiously, as it is clear, simple and straightforward. The time saved on that can be added to the time available for discussion of the remaining amendments and new clauses later on in the Bill.
The House has debated the issue of hunting with dogs time and again. None of the issues are new; they have been debated in Committee. The Government—and myself in particular, as I take responsibility for the drafting of the Bill—brought forward one way of dealing with the issues, and the House considered that approach on Monday. It voted differently; it voted for new clause 11. We have to tidy up the Bill to make it consistent with the House's decision.
I underline that taking out the system of registrar and tribunal would require people to make an application and have it resolved before they undertook any activity. We have instead a more straightforward Bill, which makes clear what is legal and what is not, what can be prosecuted and what should not be undertaken. In that sense, there is nothing new in the Bill; nothing that has not been debated by us on many occasions. I appreciate that one or two members of the Conservative party slept through our last debate, but they have contributed at great length to some of the issues that are back before us today.
The motion is a simple, straightforward and common-sense way of dealing with matters expeditiously, so that we can report back to the House as we have been instructed to do. I hope that we move expeditiously to deal with those items that have been selected for debate today.
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