No, because I shall come to the hon. Gentleman in a moment.

The Bill raises important questions about whether there should be agreed procedures for the conduct and financing of referendums. However, there are to be short debates or no debates at all on all those issues.

In opening the debate for the Opposition, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) said that the first duty of Parliament was to debate legislation. He reminded us that when Michael Foot guillotined devolution Bills in the 1970s, he did it after 30 days of debate. His complaint was that hon. Members had already spoken too much. One of the complaints of Labour Members now is that not enough Opposition Members have spoken in the debates so far on these matters.

There is no precedent that Labour Members would like to look at in detail for the action that they propose. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe showed that the guillotine is not simply about limiting debate, but about denying it. The effect of the motion will be that the referendum procedures, the possibility of asking the people of Wales about tax-raising powers, the financing of the campaigns and the issue of a majority threshold cannot be debated. Are those trivial and esoteric questions which can easily be cast aside? Are they not worthy of being debated for at least an hour or of a single comment by the Government? Do they not deserve cursory examination by the mother of Parliaments?

The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) raised the Gary McAllister question. I suspect that that will join the West Lothian and Bury North questions and become part of our political language. The hon. Gentleman asked questions that Ministers have not answered and propose to skate over.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) took issue with the assertion that the merits of a guillotine could be determined by the number of hon. Members who were present on Second Reading. At the end of Second Reading there were still some hon. Members waiting to take part, and among them was my hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green. He reminded us that if the Government were truly intent on modernising our procedures, they would do it with the interests of hon. Members in mind rather than solely the interests of the Government. He said that it is the duty of the Leader of the House to stand up for its rights and to strike a balance between the Government's wish to get its business through and the need for Parliament to give that business proper scrutiny.

The behaviour of the Leader of the House on this matter has been a disgrace. After she had made her statement yesterday evening, she scuttled out of the House while points of order about it were still being raised. She has not managed to scuttle back in to hear the winding-up speeches. Within a month of taking on her responsibilities, she has been bullied into surrendering rights of the House by the Secretaries of State for Scotland and for Wales. I have never seen the Secretary of State for Scotland as a bully and I am disappointed in him. However, we all know that the Secretary of State for Wales is a bully and the right hon. Lady should have seen him coming. She should have known that she would have to resist such attacks when she took on her responsibilities.

If the Leader of the House believes in a timetable, why was one not offered to the Opposition? If she desires the orderly passage of business with adequate debate, why did she not discuss the terms of the timetable with the Opposition? The excuses that the right hon. Lady gave last night were pathetic. She said: It is a simple, straightforward Bill with only six clauses. If it is so simple and straightforward, how come Ministers have not yet managed to answer most of the simple, straightforward questions about it? [Interruption.] Here she is; now she can deal with some of these herself. She said about the Bill: The Government also have a clear mandate for it."—[Official Report, 2 June 1997; Vol. 295, c. 123.] However, what she forgot and what she is paid to remember is that hon. Members all have a mandate to scrutinise legislation and to ensure that it receives proper debate. Does she not realise that the confidence of the House in a Minister, above all the Leader of the House, is not automatic but has to be earned? She has done nothing to earn it in the way in which she has abdicated her responsibilities in this matter.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) pointed to some of the dangerous language used by Ministers on this subject: the Secretary of State for Wales had said that he would brook no interference in dealing with these matters; and the Prime Minister had said that it would be game playing not to legislate with all possible speed on the matter. The language that the Government have used is deeply unappealing to people who believe in open debate.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) reminded us that sensible timetabling is one thing, but draconian timetabling is another. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills(Mr. Shepherd) spoke powerfully of the inappropriateness of guillotining a Bill that may have lasting consequences for the Union of the United Kingdom. My hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) reminded us that the only reason why the Government are in a rush to hold referendums and to secure the Bill is that they fear the consequences of sustained debate about the detailed proposals that they have yet to produce for the benefit of this Parliament and of the people of this country.

What that adds up to is a growing streak of arrogance in the Government's behaviour. What seemed like carelessness in the first few days they were in office has turned into a habit of overweening arrogance. We saw it with the decision about the Bank of England, which was made without even consulting the Cabinet, in the changes to Prime Minister's Question Time to try to turn it into a weekly yawn, in the changes to questions to other Departments, as was raised at points of order earlier today, and in the huge increase in political and personal appointments by Ministers. Now we see it in the cavalier use of the power to guillotine. It adds up to the arrogant abuse of power. The Government may enjoy it for the moment, but they will certainly regret it in the end.

That arrogance is all the more disturbing when accompanied by Ministers being unable or unwilling to answer clear questions about the implications of the legislation that they have brought to the House. How many of the questions that we asked on Second Reading are still unanswered? A great many. How many will still be unanswered when we finish these curtailed debates in Committee? A great many. The Government have not begun to answer the questions about how devolved systems of government would work. They cannot even answer satisfactorily how the voters in a referendum can assess their answers.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham reminded us, the Prime Minister said that the Bill would be published for people to examine before the referendums were held. Now it has been turned into the White Paper. Are we not to believe what the Prime Minister says in the House? The Government are not able to say how extensive, informative or conclusive that information will be. They are not able to answer the most basic and fundamental questions about their proposal.

We believe that it is right to hold referendums on these proposals, but we believe that the Bill entails holding referendums at the wrong time and in the wrong way, and that it asks voters to approve proposals that are unclear or may be changed afterwards, with the House of Commons being told that it must pass the measure without a fuss because a referendum has approved it.

The use of a referendum to gain a general mandate rather than approval for specific proposals is the use of a referendum as an anti-parliamentary device. Our protest is that the Government are coupling the misuse of one constitutional innovation with the abuse of another. They are bringing about one procedure unsuited to parliamentary democracy by employing another. No wonder so few Government Back Benchers have had either the courage to oppose nor the confidence to voice support for the measure. In the end, they will be the losers, but it is a pity for all concerned that the functioning of the House is the loser in the meantime.