Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think I am petitioning to make another statement.
Owing to the loss of the programme motion, I have to make a statement, because the Bill now stands referred to a Committee under Standing Orders 83A and 63. I mention that for the convenience of the House. I have no option but to make a business statement, as we cannot continue with the business previously set out for tomorrow. The business for the rest of the week is:
Wednesday 23 October—Continuation of the debate on the Queen’s Speech on the NHS.
Thursday 24 October—Conclusion of the debate on the Queen’s Speech on the economy.
I thank the Leader of the House for making a business statement and not a point of order. He heard Her Majesty’s Opposition and will know that we stand ready to work with the Government. The Opposition Chief Whip is a very reasonable person and will be very happy to discuss a proper way to proceed through the usual channels.
This is important. It was only earlier this week that the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union was not clear on the tariffs going from Northern Ireland to Great Britain and from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. As the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) has made clear, this is really important for the Union.
I am obviously disappointed, as are right hon. and hon. Members who have prepared for the Queen’s Speech debate. This is no way to conduct business. We have been moved around—jerked around, quite frankly—by the Government in a shambolic way. This has not been done in an orderly fashion. We now have the votes on the Queen’s Speech on Thursday. I would be grateful if the Leader of the House clarified that there will be votes on Wednesday and Thursday.
Just before I call other colleagues, I want to make something clear. I thought it emerged in the course of points of order and my responses to them, but just in case there is any doubt, the technical term for the status of the Bill is that it is in limbo. That is the technical term, advised to me by the Clerks. I refer Members to the ruling of the Chair on 10 July 2012 and to paragraph 28.58 of “Erskine May”. Any motion to enable the Bill to proceed to Committee or beyond requires notice and so will be considered on another day. One could have had an indication of intent, but there does exist a requirement for notice. That, I think, completes the picture.
I was fascinated to hear that the Bill was in limbo. Theologically speaking, it is reported that Pope Benedict XVI abolished limbo. I wonder whether the Bill is not in the heaven that is having been passed, or in the hell of having failed, but in purgatory, where it is suffering the pains of those in purgatory. [Interruption.] Original sin is beyond the immediate competence of my answer on this statement.
To reply to the right hon. Lady, discussions always take place between Whips Offices, as is well known. The difficulty was that the Opposition wanted the debate to continue past 31 October, which is the deadline for leaving the EU.
I would like to correct the right hon. Lady on the issue relating to tariffs. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union did not say anything about tariffs. It was not a tariff issue. There are no tariffs between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Forms and tariffs are completely different things. I am so sorry that the Opposition are confused, after so many years of debate on this subject, between a form and a tariff. No doubt we can provide specialist expertise to explain the difference.
The interruption of the Queen’s Speech debate has a wonderful historical tradition. We always take the First Reading of the Outlawries Bill immediately after the Queen’s Speech as a sign that the House is allowed to debate what it chooses and is not there to oblige the Crown. Perhaps more relevantly in these circumstances, there is the deadline of 31 October. We on the Government Benches are trying to meet that deadline by getting the deal through. The House has voted for that deal, but it seems to will the end but currently not the means.
Given everything else, the Government must clearly have an understanding of the limit beyond which it will be not be possible to go with the Bill in respect of leaving the EU by 31 October and completing its progress. In the light of that, has my right hon. Friend kept in reserve the consideration that it may be possible for the House to sit through the weekend if necessary, and, if necessary, to sit around the clock to achieve whatever is required to meet that deadline of the 31st?
The problem—the constraint—is, of course, the fact that this is a bicameral legislature. However long we sat, the House of Lords would also have to sit, and the deadline is Thursday week. Even if we were to sit around the clock, having the hours that we were to have had today, given the time required for the House of Lords, there would still be very little time left; and after people have complained that the time is insufficient, it might be peculiar if they were then to say that an even shorter time was sufficient. I welcome the intent of my right hon. Friend’s question, but I do not think that that will work.
I thank the Leader of the House for his short business statement. He is absolutely right: he has met his obligations according to the Standing Orders of the House by making the statement. I also thank him for not making it through a point of order, as he did on Saturday. He has done the right thing by addressing the House with a business statement on which we can question him about certain aspects of what he has said.
I listened carefully to the Leader of the House. He described the current withdrawal agreement Bill as “in limbo”. I was hearing from the Prime Minister, and I think that several journalists in the Press Gallery were being briefed today, that the Prime Minister was prepared to withdraw the Bill if the programme motion was not passed. That was a very clear statement. Will the Leader of the House therefore clarify the “limbo” that he has described? When are we likely to see the withdrawal agreement before the House again? I remind the Leader of the House that the 31st is next Thursday. The Prime Minister is committed to adhere to the Benn Act and seek an extension. I think that the Leader of the House should explain how these competing tensions will be resolved.
The Queen’s Speech debate is to return to the House. That is right, too, and I congratulate the Leader of the House. It is right for the House to consider the Queen’s Speech properly and to have an opportunity to vote on it. However, we need to know will happen beyond that. There is only one week until the Prime Minister’s self-imposed deadline, so what is going to happen?
I hate to quibble with the hon. Gentleman, but it is not a self-imposed deadline. It is a deadline that was selected by the European Union. Members may recall that the previous Government went to the European Union suggesting a deadline around June. It was rejected by the EU, which set a deadline of 31 October. In a remarkably short space of time, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister renegotiated the deal, which nearly everybody had said was impossible, and the deadline has remained fixed.
The hon. Gentleman raised the question of limbo, and how that correlates with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s reference to the Bill’s being withdrawn. The key thing to remember about limbo is that to enter it, one cannot still be alive, and therefore the Bill is no longer a live Bill.
Oh, we are wallowing in the realms of metaphysical abstraction, as Burke would have said, and almost certainly did, albeit not in relation to this Bill.
May I urge my right hon. Friend to reconsider the point made by our right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith)? I think we all know that the people who voted against the programme motion tonight did not really want more time to consider the Bill; they wanted to frustrate Brexit. They wanted to block it. Nobody is fooled. Why do the Government not play them at their own game? The Father of the House, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), said that another three days would do it, so why do we not start the Committee stage tomorrow? The extra three days that seem to be required could be Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We could sit till any hour on all three days, and we could then see how much appetite there really is for extra scrutiny of the Bill. I suspect that if the Leader of the House were to do that, he would find that, actually, not much scrutiny would be required from Opposition Members.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for a characteristically good idea on how we might be able to proceed. The only difficulty is that the programme motion has been voted down, and to sit in the way my hon. Friend suggests would require another programme motion, and there is no indication that that would meet with greater satisfaction from the Opposition. The House of Lords also has to consider this Bill in due time, so I fear that his great solution is not going to be a way forward.
I had not intended to seek to intervene on this exchange, but I am so offended by the remarks of the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) that I feel inclined to do so.
It is not the truth; it is in fact something that we are only allowed to call a terminological inexactitude—in other words, it is absolute rubbish to suggest that people who voted against this programme motion only did so to delay Brexit or because they are opposed to Brexit. Any hon. Member who understands their duties in this place should never have voted for this programme motion in the first place. I say further that the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), who is a former leader of the Conservative party, is equally at fault in not understanding when the sensible thing to do is to accept with good grace the very generous and sensible offer immediately made by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition.
Finally, on the question of limbo, I rather thought one had to be pure of soul to get in, so not many people are going to end up there.
I think the original understanding of limbo—one that is no longer widely accepted—is that it was a place for the souls of the unbaptised and for those who died before salvation was brought to us at the point of the Resurrection, but I think the understanding now is that that is rather a narrow interpretation.
The issue of what motivates people to vote in this House is one that is always very difficult to settle. I have always accepted that right hon. and hon. Members in this House want what is best for the country, but think that there are different ways to do it. But we must draw conclusions from people’s actions, and I do not think it is unreasonable to conclude that people who voted against the Second Reading of this Bill and against the programme motion are not the greatest admirers of the proposals towards Brexit.