Member

If the Minister is frustrated by what she sees—I think wrongly—as a filibuster on this or other Bills, I think she has to understand in all candour how frustrated many of us are on our side of the House that she is utterly silent about the bringing forward of the further measures which the Labour Party had in its manifesto, why no timetable is given and why no undertaking even to issue a White Paper or a consultation document has come forward. I do not wish to sound in any sense offensive, and I do not wish to impugn in any way the honour of the Minister or her colleagues on the Front Bench, but she will understand, in the light of history, why many of us find it difficult to believe that the Government will find time in the current Parliament to bring forward the legislation implied by their manifesto beyond this Bill. The sorts of assurances that we are looking for, in terms of timetabling, likely content, consultation methods and all of that, would take a lot of the sting out of this, but we hear nothing at all of it.