Member

A letter was sent to all Members of the House on 7 September last year, signed by the noble Lord, Lord Harper, and my noble friend Lady Berger. That letter sought to persuade the House—and I agreed—to introduce a Select Committee. It said, rightly, that at that point, in September, we had several months in which it was entirely possible to complete all stages of the Bill—and yet we have not. Why has this happened? It has happened because the Order Paper has been flooded with amendments, because the speed with which we have got through our work has been unnecessarily slow, and because some opponents— not all—resisted all attempts, including by some noble friends who are no friends of the Bill, to agree a path by which we could reach a conclusion. With over 1,200 amendments across 80 groups, no more than four groups were dealt with in a day in Committee, and on most Committee days it was fewer.