Amendments made: 44, page 58, line 37, leave out sub-paragraph (4) and insert-

'(4) For subsection (4) substitute-

"(4) See also section 1 of the Civil Service (Management Functions) Act 1992 under which functions conferred on the Minister for the Civil Service by section 3 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 may be delegated to the Scottish Ministers etc."

(5) Omit subsection (9).'.

Amendment 45, page 60, line 11, leave out sub-paragraph (4) and insert-

'(4) For subsection (4) substitute-

"(4) See also section 1 of the Civil Service (Management Functions) Act 1992 under which functions conferred on the Minister for the Civil Service by section 3 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 may be delegated to the Welsh Ministers etc."

(5) Omit subsection (10).'.- (Mr. Wills.)

Title

Amendments made: 46, line 6, after 'generally' insert

'; to make provision about the accounts to be prepared by the Electoral Commission'.

Amendment 89, line 6, after 'generally' insert

'; to make provision relating to the counting of votes in parliamentary elections'.

Amendment 47, line 22, at end insert

'; to amend the Public Records Act 1958 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000'.- (Mr. Wills.)

Third Reading

Finally, we have reached the end of the Commons stages of the Bill. Since the beginning of its gestation more than two years ago, Parliament and politics have faced new challenges, and the Bill has grown to meet them. Its basic components have remained the same, but, as with a fine wine, it has absorbed elements from its environment to mature into its final expression in the House tonight.

The Bill represents significant constitutional reform. There have been six days in Committee on the Floor of the House, 18 consultations and publications, draft Bills, and several Select Committee reports. Many hon. Members have contributed diligently and tirelessly to improving it as it went on its journey, and I should like to take this opportunity to thank them all.

As far as possible, we have tried to proceed on the basis of consensus. The Public Administration Committee, for example, found

"much to welcome in the Government's proposals for the civil service" when it considered the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill. This part of the Bill delivers the Northcote-Trevelyan recommendations of more than 150 years ago. The Joint Committee on the Draft Constitutional Renewal Bill agreed with the Government that

"putting the Ponsonby Rule on a statutory footing, together with giving the House of Commons an effective veto on the ratification of a treaty, is a positive and beneficial reform".

We welcomed constructive comments from both sides of the House as the Bill proceeded. The Government have considered and adopted amendments from my hon. Friend Mr. Dismore on nationality restrictions on Crown employment. We have also given our backing to an amendment tabled originally by Mr. Grieve and his colleagues, including Mrs. Laing, to ensure that the counting of votes in parliamentary elections will begin within four hours of the close of the poll. We are very grateful for the support of both sides on this measure.

The Government tabled a further amending provision on Report, as all sides recognised that the original clause needed further amendment to make it technically effective. The new clause provides that a returning officer must take reasonable steps to begin counting the votes on the ballot papers as soon as practicable within four hours of the close of the poll. Where the count does not begin within that specified time period, which may of course be for perfectly understandable reasons, returning officers will be required to submit a report to the Electoral Commission to explain why and to describe the steps that they have taken.

The new clause, which was shared with the Opposition Front-Bench teams, strikes a balance between the strong and clearly expressed view of this House that overnight counts should be the presumption and the need to avoid at this stage the considerable technical changes to electoral legislation that would have been needed to make the original clause 86 effective. Unforeseen circumstances on the night of the count-a major weather condition in a remote constituency, for example-might well mean that no further reasonable steps could have been taken to ensure an overnight count. The approach taken in the new clause allows for that, but the intention is to ensure that returning officers actively consider what action could reasonably be undertaken to achieve an overnight count in as many constituencies as possible. That will continue at the next general election.

I want to make it clear that the new clause respects the independence of electoral returning officers, and I think that everyone in the House respects that. However, I should make it clear that if that independence is exercised at the forthcoming general election in a way that is seen with hindsight to have flouted the clearly expressed wish of this House that there should be a presumption in favour of an overnight count-with the exceptions that I have mentioned-I have no doubt whatever that the new House elected in the next two or three months will return to the issue.

I entirely agree with everything the Minister has just said. May I make it clear that we entirely accept that new clause 37 is superior in form, albeit identical in intention, to the original clause 86? I am grateful to the Minister for coming forward with a better version of the law, but with the same intention. May I make it clear that we entirely support the Minister in saying that the will of this House and of Parliament is absolutely clear? There is no dissent. We trust that those who have the duty to put into action the will of Parliament will do so forthwith.

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for those comments, and I pay tribute to her and her colleagues who played such a constructive role in bringing this forward at some speed. It is worth putting on record that the main reason why so many Members have taken this view is that it reflects the wishes of their constituents. We are not talking just about the will of Parliament; the will of the British people is at stake in this, too. I am grateful to all hon. Members who played a constructive role.

Also with cross-party support, we have introduced several significant amendments to the Bill. As a result of the recent consensus on the issue of parliamentarians' tax status, for example, it was possible to table amendments with the support of the Conservative Front-Bench team, which will ensure that hon. Members of both Houses of Parliament are liable to pay the same taxes as most UK taxpayers. Many hon. Members will recognise how important that is in the current climate. We have also delivered on the cross-party commitment to implement the report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life on MPs' expenses.

It is fair to say that some provisions have not been universally welcomed. New clauses to provide for a referendum, offering the public a choice between the current first-past-the-post system and the alternative vote system, have left the Conservative party isolated in their opposition. In contrast, we believe that we must do all we can to restore trust in politics, and it is clear that part of that process must involve consideration of which electoral system can best serve the people of this country. We believe that a credible alternative should be put to the people-it is not for the Government to decide this; it is for the British people themselves-one that would retain the link between MPs and constituencies, which we believe is fundamentally important. We believe that most hon. Members-whatever their view of the electoral system-consider that link to be important, and we believe that the British people themselves consider it to be a very valuable part of our political system.

In our view, the Bill as a whole gives greater clarity and transparency to Government business, both financial and non-financial. It tightens rules and regulations on membership of both Houses of Parliament in the wake of the profoundly damaging controversy over some Members' misuse of the allowances system, and it gives those rules and regulations teeth. It reasserts the right of people to protest around Parliament if they are unhappy, and it puts in their hands the decision whether to change the current electoral system if they feel that they would prefer a different and a better one. This Bill reinforces the principles of probity, transparency and accountability at the heart of public life, and I hope very much that Parliament will look favourably on it.

I am aware that the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, Mr. Wills is approaching the end of his time in Parliament. I know that the Bill is of great importance to him, and I recognise that in piloting it through the House, he wanted to achieve as much consensus as possible.

Let me say at once that the Conservatives have no difficulty in welcoming many aspects of the Bill. Indeed, we have expressed our support for those aspects from the outset. They include the move to put the civil service on a statutory footing, the proposal to beef up the Comptroller and Auditor General's national audit role and the work on judicial appointments, all of which, as the Minister will recall, we supported in earlier debates on the Bill.

We also welcome the small but nevertheless important tidying-up of matters relating to, for instance, human rights claims against devolved Administrations, ratification of treaties, Crown employment and nationality. Although I must tell the Secretary of State and the Minister that the Bill does not quite live up to its grandiloquent title-certainly the "governance" bit-we can happily welcome its sensible constitutional reforms, and we therefore will not seek to divide the House tonight.

That said, there are some aspects of the Bill that we find much more troublesome. I think it only right for me to mention them, because given the timetable facing the remaining life of this Parliament, sensible decisions will almost certainly have to be made at some point about whether the Bill can be enacted with the consensus that will be needed at the end of the Parliament's life or whether it should fail. As the Bill contains an adequate number of provisions that I want to see on the statute book, I hope that the Government will listen carefully to what I have to say about the parts of it that continue to cause us concern.

First, however, let me say something about new clause 37. I am grateful to the Government for taking account of the concern expressed by Members in all parts of the House about what appeared to be the creeping in of a substantial change in the way in which counts take place after elections. I am delighted that we were able to table the new clause, and even more delighted that the Government were able to adopt it in a way that would otherwise not have been possible. I have no doubt that one or two noises made about it by some returning officers are without merit or substance. Ultimately, it is for the House of Commons to decide how counts should take place, and not for bureaucrats to start deciding that they are a law unto themselves. We are fully entitled to lay down the ground rules for ourselves, especially if they are-as they appear to me to be-entirely reasonable.

The Government have also done a great deal in introducing clauses relating to IPSA, which my right hon. Friend Sir George Young has already commented on. There have been some sensible debates. We entirely endorse the need for reform, and we are pleased that the opportunity has been taken of trying to resolve the matter as far as possible before the general election. We hope very much that the proposals will work and lead to far greater public confidence in the way in which the House works.

I have to turn to those bits that please us rather less. We think that the Government's proposals for a referendum on the alternative vote were brought in in great haste and in the most extraordinary fashion at the end of a long process-the Government have previously shown themselves to be rather hostile to such proposals. We think that a referendum would be a complete waste of money and undermine the first-past-the-post system, in which we believe and in which I think many Labour Members also believe. It strikes us that that measure is unnecessary, and we certainly would not wish to see it placed on the statute book.

It has been a matter of considerable regret during the passage of the Bill that it has not been possible to debate Opposition amendments that required debate and certainly should have been debated, such as our new clause this evening about evening out the size of constituencies and reducing the size of the House. At the risk of repeating what I have said frequently, I do not think that at any stage during the passage of the Bill and debate on the Floor of the House there has been time wasting. Indeed, I think that the Minister will acknowledge that this evening, in an effort to make progress, at times we have curtailed debate to make very short contributions. Yet we face the fact that, at Report stage of a constitutional measure of considerable importance, a huge number of amendments have not been debated at all. I deeply regret that we have not had a chance to debate our proposals, which would have reinforced the first-past-the-post system, made it fairer and produced fairer results.

In so far as our proposal has any pain involved in it, I say to the Secretary of State that, far from, as has been suggested, it being a piece of gerrymandering, the pain would fall fairly evenly. I cannot for the life of me see where the gerrymandering would be, because ultimately the decisions as to the shape of constituencies would lie entirely with the Boundary Commission, not with us as politicians. Our inability to debate that in this place during the passage of the Bill strikes me as an enormous missed opportunity. The title of the Bill does not reflect its true scope, and we have not had an opportunity to conduct a debate on that matter.

I turn to other areas of the Bill. There are some sensible amendments in respect of the House of Lords, which we also welcome, and we await with interest how the other place responds to them. Some of the amendments are extremely good. We are delighted that our proposals about the tax status of Members of the House of Lords, put forward by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and tabled by us, enabled us to bring about a change- [Interruption.] I see Mr. Prentice smiling, but the fact of the matter is that, until we tabled that amendment, there was nothing in the amendment paper to bring that about. It was only our intervention, and our saying that that was clearly an area of public concern that needed to be addressed, which finally enabled us to do that. I am delighted that it has happened. Times change, and what may have been deemed to be acceptable in previous generations, when Commonwealth citizens, or Commonwealth residents, were encouraged to come and spend parts of their careers in this country and then go back to their homes, is no longer seen as acceptable, because of the public perception that people may derive tax advantages from it. That is all the more reason, therefore, to change those rules, but until we tabled that amendment, we were not in a position to do anything about it. I acknowledge that the hon. Member for Pendle had this in his sights for a considerable period, but he did not seem to be very successful in persuading his own Front Benchers to take the issue particularly seriously.

What's new then?

The hon. Gentleman says, "What's new?" I acknowledge that he has a personal approach, which is much respected by Conservative Members, in terms of being willing to articulate what he believes to be right. On that we are in agreement.

We are less in agreement on two matters relating to the House of Lords. I do not wish to go over the first in great detail, but it is worth reminding ourselves that the Government's decision to get rid of the by-elections for electing a certain number of hereditary peers pending the final resolution of the constitutional status and reform of the Upper House is a flagrant breach of the undertakings that they gave at the time of the initial House of Lords reform. I very much regret that; this is not a final reform of the House of Lords. If it is, the Government have been misleading the public as to what the final reform might be. For those reasons, I do not think that this is a good idea, and I strongly believe that the Government will find that when the Bill gets to the other place, they may have difficulties there as well.

Then there is an issue that is of deep concern to us but is quite capable of being resolved. I have to put the Minister on notice that unless it is sorted out, it will prejudice the ability of the Bill to go on the statute book; it is the extraordinary procedure by which it will be possible, under the Bill as it stands, for a Member of the House of Lords to resign and immediately stand for election for the House of Commons. I think that I am right in saying that the Liberal Democrats and ourselves-and, indeed, I suspect others in this House-tend to see that as a device by which certain Government Ministers who have found their political careers in this place ended by various problems and gone to the other place for a resting period while they recover their strength, like Lord Voldemort, can come back to this House, reinvigorated. Quite frankly that is unacceptable.

There must be a period between resignation from the House of Lords and return or re-embodiment in this Chamber. There should be a period during which that return is not permitted. It is likely that that matter will be returned to in another place. If there is no time, and we get to the wash-up and there have to be discussions about issues in the Bill, that is one that will have to be sorted out to our satisfaction if the Bill is to go on the statute book. As it stands, it is contemptuous of the public and of the reasons why people should be going to the House of Lords in the first place as legislators; usually because they accept that some aspect of political ambition is gone and not as a springboard to a resurrected existence in this place. For those reasons, I hope that the Government will listen to the arguments in the other place and act accordingly.

Finally we come, with some regret, to the issue concerning noise in Parliament square. The Government tabled some sensible amendments to the Bill to try to resolve some of the civil liberties issues surrounding demonstrations around Parliament where we were unhappy-the Government had begun to accept out unhappiness-that the structures that had been set up previously were a fetter on civil liberties and freedom of expression. We were supportive of the Government on that and pleased that they were in.

We had also understood-we believed that the Government shared our concern-that in some cases the right to freedom of expression was being abused by people bombarding Parliament with amplified noise to such a level as to constitute a serious nuisance. Indeed anyone who works in this building will know exactly what the impact is, particularly if they have rooms or offices that are adjacent to Parliament square itself. It was our understanding that this was a subject where the Government recognised that there was an issue, were happy-we thought-for there to be a free vote and were encouraging that it should not be seen as a partisan issue, as indeed we did not. We tabled an amendment in good faith, which we very much hoped would command acceptance. Indeed, until very recently we thought it would receive considerable encouragement from the Government. It is therefore unfortunate that this Bill will be going ahead without a section dealing with the noise nuisance in Parliament square.

I am the first to accept the cock-up theory of politics, rather than the conspiracy theory, and the Minister for Policing, Crime and Counter-Terrorism, who answered for the Government on Report, appeared to say that he had been brought into this matter at the very last minute, so I can understand why he might not be aware of the Government's previously stated position on a number of occasions, particularly by the Secretary of State for Justice, and have suddenly got cold feet. I found it difficult to disentangle the reasons for that. On the one hand, they might have been procedural, in that he shared the intention but thought there was a defect in the Opposition amendment. I have to say that it is not the first time that Opposition amendments have been defective, however; it is often jolly difficult for Oppositions to draft amendments that are perfect, and if the Government support the principle behind them, we rather expect them to lend a hand in tidying things up. On the other hand, however, the problem might have been that the Minister for Policing, Crime and Counter-Terrorism had suddenly decided that there was some electoral, or other, advantage in arguing that people should be allowed to bombard the Houses of Parliament with amplified noise at nuisance level for hour after hour every day. I do hope that the latter is not the case. Indeed, I find it difficult to believe it is the case, because of all the expressions of concern about this issue from Members throughout the House, including the Government Back Benches.

May I therefore make a plea to the Minister? I hope that he understands that we felt that we had to put the matter to the vote, because of the Government's unexpected withdrawal of support for the proposal without coming up with any alternative. Clearly, the opportunity still exists to deal with this, and I urge the Minister to do so in a way both that sends out a message that the House of Commons supports civil liberties and freedom of expression, and, equally reasonably, that maintains that there are proper ways of expressing oneself that do not involve a noise nuisance perpetrated hour after hour. I cannot believe that it is beyond the wit of a parliamentary draftsman to put something together that can provide that without also silencing the bells of Westminster Abbey, as has been suggested in rather apocalyptic fashion. I am by no means persuaded that the amendment that was tabled would have done that, but it was clearly not the intention that it should do so.

The Bill is lacking in this respect. The Government took a specific decision to deal with demonstrations in the vicinity of Parliament square, which was a sensible move, but at the end a key component is missing. I urge the Minister to address this when he goes away to discuss these matters with his colleagues and to consider what is to be done in the other place.

I do not want to take up any more of the House's time. This Bill has been a bit of magical mystery tour, in that we have never known from one day to the next what would be in it. It started out in concept as very grand indeed, but by the time it was launched on Second Reading it had shrunk to mouse-like size. It has since been mildly reinvigorated in some areas, but it is defective in others. We have got to try to sort that out. If we do so, I would like to think that even if the Minister is not completely satisfied with the outcome, he will at least leave this place with a proper sense that he has actually achieved something that is a monument to his endeavours. I say to him that I would like to see that happen. A bit of flexibility on the part of the Government in the dying weeks of this Parliament can ensure that it does.

I shall be very brief. In some ways, this should be called the "constitutional highways and byways" Bill, because we have roamed freely during its passage. For a moment I wish to return to where we started, because I was keen on where we started and, in particular, on the proposition that the time had finally come, after 150 years, to put the civil service on to a statutory basis. Many of us had been campaigning year in, year out on the issue and undertakings had been given by this Government and, in some respects, by the previous one, that this would happen, but I had begun to think that it never would. I am delighted that it has been possible, through political consensus-that was always the precondition for this happening-to get within a close distance of having secured it. I can say to the House that this measure will be an enormous source of satisfaction to the civil service of this country, which has wanted this constitutional underpinning for a long time-securing it will be a huge achievement. Whatever else happens in the remaining life of this Bill, I hope that we can at least secure that provision because that was its core constitutional element when we set out and not to secure it at this stage would be serious.

Given that that provision was the Bill's core element at the beginning, I regret very much that many amendments relating to it were never able to be taken because we went off on this constitutional tour. However, I am delighted that the Government have now accepted what is contained in amendment 35. It has not been discussed at any point, and in a different world it would have been the subject of exhaustive discussion because it turns on the powers that we think special advisers should have; this would have been a major item of debate on this Bill. So although I say that it is good that right at the end the Government have accepted an amendment that the Public Administration Committee had proposed, it is not satisfactory that it has not been discussed as we progressed. A long list of other amendments on the civil service have not been discussed either, and that cannot be satisfactory.

Having said that, I was one of those who was pressing for some of the highways and byways to be explored and, in particular, some of the tidying-up measures relating to the House of Lords. I was pleased that we managed to accommodate those in the Bill, but my regret is that we did so selectively. The Government have taken up large elements of Lord Steel's Bill, but they failed to take up the residual bit that proposes that it is time to put the House of Lords Appointments Commission on a statutory basis. I think that the House of Lords will have something to say about that omission. That bears directly on today's controversy about Lord Ashcroft, because it cannot be right that when a non-statutory body imposes an obligation on a prospective Member of the House of Lords to come onshore for tax purposes that can be disregarded without any sanction. It cannot be right that a non-statutory body can start inventing rules of that kind which are then not enforced. We have to be serious about this machinery and not just have a row about the consequences of it. We must ensure that we have the machinery embedded, constitutionally, in the proper place-I suspect that we are not done on that.

I was not one of those who was pressing to include a provision on the electoral system, but, on balance, I think that the alternative vote system is probably preferable to first past the post. I merely note in the margin of that discussion that it has implications for us. Everyone party to that discussion was lining up to say how much they believe in the single Member constituency. Of course we all love the single Member constituency because we are all "the single Member". I am not sure that it looks quite the same from the point of view of the citizen. I am about to become what we like to call "an ordinary person" and, as such, my view of these matters is liable to be quite different from the one that I have as the single Member for my constituency sitting in this place. Casting an eye in the Speaker's direction, I shall simply say that at some point we will have to revisit the guidance if we are all so attached to the single Member constituency. After all, we send letters out to people saying that we cannot possibly deal with their case if they are not one of our constituents. In fact we say-I do it, too-that there is a strict parliamentary convention against it. If someone happens to have a Member of Parliament who they find politically or personally so antipathetic that they want to go nowhere near them, which is not inconceivable, and seeks to approach another Member of Parliament to take up their cause, I am not so sure that that citizen-that ordinary person-will feel quite so attached to the single Member constituency when they get the letter saying that there is a strict parliamentary convention that means that the second MP cannot deal with them. If that is the general consensus of opinion in the House, even if we might change in the direction of the alternative vote, we must revisit some of the conventions to which we say we are so attached.

I had hoped to go to my political grave having secured one further thing, which I have failed to do. It is a simple thing: to allow citizens to take up cases directly with the ombudsman. When the House set up the ombudsman system in 1967, it worried that the system would undermine the ability of Members of Parliament to deal with the grievances of their constituents. That turned out to be completely false. For the past 30 years, successive ombudsmen have called for the right of direct citizen access. The Cabinet Office had a discussion 10 years ago and it recorded that there was universal dissatisfaction with the present system. In 2004, my Committee, in association with the ombudsman, did a survey of all Members of Parliament and found that there was a clear majority in favour of direct access.

Here we are again, about to face a general election and for many weeks citizens will not have access to the ombudsman because there will not be a Member of Parliament through whom they can do so. As the ombudsman has pointed out, this is a completely unsustainable position. It would take one simple clause of the kind that we have described to make the required change and I suspect that the House of Lords will be interested in that, even if we are not.

Finally, I said earlier that I thought that the Bill was a Christmas tree without Christmas, but I do think that there are things of value in it that should be welcomed. We might not get all the goodies that Christmas can bring, but we shall get the orange and the chocolate mouse, and they are certainly worth having.

I certainly agree with what Dr. Wright said about this Bill's being a Christmas tree bill. I also agree with what he said about the ombudsman. A number of serious aspects of the Bill could have been attached to the tree rather more usefully than some of the stuff that is in it.

In introducing the debate on Third Reading, the Minister said that the Bill had matured like good wine. It is certainly different from the previous version. It is very different from the draft Bill, to the extent that one might fear that this is one of those French wine scandals. The original draft Bill had about 45 clauses, 17 of which are now no more-they are nowhere to be seen. The remaining 28 clauses form less than a third-more like a quarter following our proceedings on Report-of the Bill. This is a very different Bill from the one with which we started. It is certainly much longer, as it is about double the size that it was when we started to discuss it on Second Reading.

The main measure of how different the Bill is can be seen if one looks at the long title, which is now nearly three times longer than the title with which we started. Topic after topic-and specific topic after specific topic-have been added. That is an interesting way of assessing what has happened to the Bill. The Government never wanted it to be a constitutional reform Bill in the sense that it was about the constitution of the country. The long title was never designed to allow extensive debate about any topic of constitutional reform. It was specifically designed to describe a small number of specific reforms. Having set out on that route, the Government then added more and more specific topics without there being any great theme.

Nevertheless, there is much in the Bill to welcome. Let me start with new clause 37, which the Minister spoke about at the start of his speech, about counting votes on election night. I strongly welcome his comments on that measure, especially the way in which he described how it will operate. It is important that it should have the flexibility that he described because there is a danger, especially when there is consensus in the House, of legislating at great speed and ending up with an unworkable, rigid piece of legislation. I hope not only that returning officers will listen to what the Minister and the Opposition spokesman, Mr. Grieve, have said about how important this matter is to many Members of Parliament, but that they will listen regarding the important flexibility that the Minister put into his interpretation of the new clause. In some parts of the country, votes are never counted on election night. Indeed, in some areas, such as the far northern islands and highlands of Scotland, there have been times when the count did not happen until the Saturday. We must understand the practical difficulties that many returning officers face.

The omissions in the Bill are very important. Dr. Wright has described many aspects that the Select Committee on Public Administration wanted to discuss. One such missing issue is the measures regarding the role of the Attorney-General that were in the draft Bill but mysteriously disappeared from the version that was put forward on Second Reading. I have wanted to discuss that issue throughout the Bill's various stages, including Committee and Report, but we have not got around to it and we have never had a proper debate about what the Government were up to. It still strikes me as utterly unsatisfactory that a Minister of the Crown should have a decisive say in any way about whether a particular individual or company is prosecuted. That aspect of our system of government must be put right. International organisations have noted that that is not how a modern state should operate.

Nevertheless, the civil service part of the Bill is a great achievement and should be strongly welcomed. The last-minute acceptance of new clauses on special advisers should also be strongly welcomed. They are not quite right in our view and so we tabled some amendments regarding those measures, which were never discussed, about precisely how that should be done-in the law or simply in a code of practice. Another crucial issue that we never got around to discussing is how many special advisers there should be and whether there should be a numerical limit. Without such a limit it will still be possible to appoint 3,000 SpAds and to end up with a senior civil service that is more of the American style than the British style. We should have discussed that issue more seriously.

I congratulate Mr. Dismore on getting the provisions of the Crown Employment (Nationality) Bill through. He has been struggling with those measures for many years, and it is good to see that, in the end, they have made it to the statute book-at least at this stage.

I strongly welcome the progress on the treaties part of the Bill, but there has not been much progress. The Government still insist on using the negative resolution procedure, which effectively denies Parliament a voice. It is a more open procedure, but it still is not effective. It is disappointing that the Government have chosen not to move on other aspects of the prerogative on which they have promised to move since at least 2007 and earlier, such as war powers and the Dissolution of Parliament-an issue that we will face all too soon.

On the referendum on electoral reform, it is the wrong system, as it is not a proportional system. However, that reform is a small step in the right direction. We are prepared to face a referendum with equanimity. We hope that a future Government will move much more radically towards an electoral system that is not only fair but produces legitimate Governments. The present system produces Governments who are elected on such a low percentage of the vote that, regardless of party, they have little public support-so little, in fact, that they are unpopular and illegitimate from the start.

I very much welcome those parts of the Bill that deal with the implementation of Kelly. I think that the Government have fulfilled their promise in that regard, and that is much to be welcomed.

On the House of Lords, I am greatly disappointed that we have not made proper progress towards the promise that my party made in 1911. We promised then to introduce a House of Lords that was elected on a popular basis, but it looks like 100 years or more will pass before we achieve that. I am sure that there are members of the Conservative party who hope to delay it even longer, but it must come. We cannot have a legislature that is appointed. We cannot have people with a serious say in what counts as the law of the land who are not elected-

Yes, we can.

The hon. Lady says that we can have such people, and we do have them, but should we? Again, how is that a legitimate system of government? I do not think that hon. Members on any side of the House realise quite how near to the edge of illegitimacy we are with our system of government. We spend a lot of time congratulating ourselves here, without realising how deep the political malaise in our political system is. That malaise extends to the House of Lords and to the voting system for the Commons.

Progress was also made on the tax status of Members of the House of Lords, although it was not quite what it should have been. What sort of person should we have in the Lords? That is the question to ask: the important thing is not whether that person should pay tax, but whether a person who does not want to pay tax should be there in the first place.

Progress has been made on public order. Two steps forward have been taken by removing the excessive regulation of protest near Parliament, but the institution of a heavy-handed regime amounts to one step back. I believe that we will have to watch that regime very closely, to make sure that the powers that it contains are not abused.

I profoundly disagree with what Mr. Grieve said about noise. This is a constitutional Bill, and the noise made outside Parliament does not strike me as a big enough issue for a Bill like this. Also, I caution him against treating noise as an issue significant enough to obstruct the progress of a Bill of this importance. I am sure that he did not mean that.

I want to make two points to the hon. Gentleman that he may agree with. First, part of the Bill deals with demonstrations in Parliament square. Strictly speaking, that is not a constitutional issue, but rather one of the odd, Christmas-tree aspects of the legislation. However, he may agree that it is quite an important change, in light of the deep disquiet that exists about fettering freedom of expression and civil liberties. Given that context, the issue of noise clearly could have been dealt with in this Bill, and he may also agree that it is unfortunate that we have not done so.

Secondly, I want to make it clear that I do not see the question of noise as the be-all and end-all of this legislation. I never suggested that it was.

I am glad for the final sentence of that intervention. It strikes me as disproportionate to suggest that reform of the civil service should be put at any risk because of a disagreement about something else.

I just want to make myself clear. As I indicated to the Minister, I have very deep disquiet about certain elements of the Bill, but the question of noise is not one of them. I expressed regret that a consensual approach-and I thought that we had achieved consensus on the matter-seemed to have failed. I also said that I hoped very much that the issue could be dealt with in the other place.

I am very glad of that clarification. I am sure that the Minister is too.

The big problem with the Bill now is timing. Its process through the House has not been handled well. We eventually had six days in Committee on the Floor of the House, whereas we were originally going to have four. The Government's real intentions for getting the Bill out of this House and into the other House were not made clear at any point. I suspect that the Bill will get its Second Reading in the other place some time between 22 and 24 March. That is very late in the life of this Parliament, and the Bill is unlikely to receive a Committee stage in the House of Lords.

The Bill contains important and welcome reforms, but it is in danger of being hacked to pieces in the process of negotiation that happens at the end of Parliaments. It would be regrettable if that were the case. This is not a real constitutional reform Bill, which would deal with much bigger issues. It would be a shame, however, if the achievement, such as it is, were lost in procedural wrangles at the end of the Parliament.

A few minutes ago, the hon. Gentleman mentioned the debates that we had on the provisions relating to the ratification of treaties. From memory, when we debated ratification processes-we also discussed Lisbon-I said that in the other place there had been a vote on the so-called in-out referendum, in which the Liberal Democrats voted against taking a different position from the one that they took in the House. We had another debate on a completely different topic last Friday. While I was preparing for it, I looked again at the Division lists, and in fairness, it turns out that the Liberal Democrats abstained from the vote in the other place, rather than voting against the measure. As he mentioned it, may I take the opportunity to set the record straight?

I am grateful for that partial peace offering from the hon. Gentleman, and I hope that that is the spirit in which the Bill makes progress.

I do not want to say a great deal, but I do want to say something about chapter 4, which deals with Crown employment nationality provisions. I did not have a chance to address the matter when we considered my amendments in Committee, because of the guillotine that was operating. The extent to which the Bill has been subject to guillotine motions throughout its progress is regrettable, as it has meant that we could not discuss many things that should have been discussed at greater length and that some things were not discussed at all.

I wanted to refer to the provision, because it is rather close to my heart, as several Front-Bench spokespeople have said. I began work on the issue about 10 years ago, and the measure has gone through various guises, including presentation Bills, ten-minute Bills and so on. The object was to straighten out the provisions on recruitment to the civil service. The measure has been around for a long time-I think that this was my ninth attempt to legislate on the issue-and it began as a hand-out Bill with Government support. The Government then went rather neutral and decided that it was not such a good thing after all, but eventually we won them round again. After a lengthy period, the measure in its various guises enjoyed different degrees of support from the Government, and the same is true of the Opposition.

The Bill, which had no priority at all, reached Report stage on three separate occasions, which was something of an achievement. The late Eric Forth took it upon himself particularly to victimise the Bill, and when he passed away, Mr. Chope considered it to be the Eric Forth memorial Bill, given the right hon. Gentleman's opposition to it, so it was an effort to make progress with it. Realistically, we are now going to put right problems that go back the best part of 200 years. When the Act of Settlement was introduced, it was a welcome measure, but has time went by, it faded away, with the Aliens Restriction Act 1914, and a plethora of regulations, orders and EU directives, which intersected to create such a spider's web of provision that it was impossible to work out who was entitled to work for the civil service and who was not. Some strange criminal offences were created-people did not even know they existed-and there were weird anomalies whereby the widow of a 9/11 victim who was an American citizen married to a British person could not work for the civil service, but Abu Hamza, should he pass the exams, I suppose, could, because he had British nationality. There were all sorts of strange outcomes, but we now have workable provisions.

Clause for clause, this is probably the most scrutinised piece of legislation that the House has introduced in recent years, apart from the fox-hunting legislation, given the number of times that it has been debated and considered. We now have provisions that will create a civil service that is more representative of our multicultural society. The legislation will reserve about 10 per cent. of civil service posts where it is appropriate that UK nationals hold them, but overall we have workable and sensible provisions that will create a civil service that reflects our society.

I am very pleased that, at long last, we have been able to take the legislation this far. There is always many a slip between cup and lip, but given the assurances of support from the various Front Benchers, I hope that, with a fair wind, this part of the Bill will survive the wash-up and, equally, the depredations of the other place, which it has unfortunately never managed to reach. I live in hope that, at long last and after nine attempts, we have finally achieved the objective of reforming the nationality rules of the civil service.

With the leave of the House, I shall say a few words in conclusion. This has been a good-spirited Third Reading debate, and I am very grateful for all that has been said. In response, I shall pick up on some of the points that have been made.

Much reference has been made to the Bill's protracted gestation, and dictionaries have been pillaged to find the appropriate imagery. It is true that the Bill has taken a considerable time to complete its journey to this stage, and one reason is that we have genuinely tried to move forward consensually. It has been, as my hon. Friend Mr. Dismore just said, one of the most scrutinised Bills ever, and I know that we could all have done with more time on it. However, there has been a great degree of scrutiny. All Members accept that we have tried to respond to the real concerns of this House and to move forward on that basis, and I think that we have had a great deal of success.

Despite all the grudging remarks about the Bill's lack of ambition, somehow everyone has found something good to say about it, and together that means that it is a significant Bill. I must give credit to Mr. Grieve for the way in which he adapted his previous characterisation of the Bill, and I am extremely grateful for his acknowledgement that it is no longer a mouse-even though my hon. Friend Dr. Wright seemed to think that a chocolate mouse was a good thing, rather than a pejorative phrase.

Anyway, I hope that when we look collectively at the endeavours in which we have all been engaged, we can all feel proud of what we have achieved. I am very grateful not only to all hon. Members present, but to all who have contributed significantly to the legislation on the Joint Committee on Human Rights, in the various Select Committee hearings and in all our protracted debates on the Floor of the House.

I have listened very carefully to what Members have said, and I particularly listened to what the hon. and learned Gentleman said about how we need to move forward. Clearly, there are still areas for further discussion and areas about which significant Members still feel strongly, but I undertake on my own behalf and that of my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State to do all that we can to meet those concerns in the remaining weeks of this Parliament.

I am confident and have no doubt that we can make some progress. I doubt whether we can do everything that everybody wants, and all of us may have to make some hard decisions in the next two or three weeks, but I hope that we can do so while remembering what gave rise to the Bill in the first place and the subject to which we have turned over and over again in all our discussions: the need to restore trust in our democratic politics.

The House has had a tough time during the progress of this Bill, and there have been many problems, but MPs' expenses did not create them; to a large extent it crystallised inherent problems, which all of us in our different ways-in our constituencies and here in this place-have wrestled with for a considerable time, and we have to take away that message. That is what gave rise to the Bill, and in seeing it through to what I hope will be its conclusion during the remaining weeks of this Parliament, I hope that we can all remember why we are doing this: to restore the trust of the people whom we all serve.

I think that the Bill goes a considerable way towards doing that, directly through the measures that we have taken to set up the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and everything around it, and indirectly by rewiring our constitutional arrangements in order to make them more transparent, to make all of us more accountable to the people whom we serve, to give power back to Parliament and to fetter the Executive. We have had a lot of discussion about that. I believe that when people look at the Bill, they will see that the Government's instinct is to give power away. It is important that we remember that as we move forward.

In conclusion, I pay tribute again to everyone who has contributed so much to the Bill. I am confident that when historians look at it, they will-

Debate interrupted (Programme Order, this day).

The Speaker put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair (Standing Order No. 83E), That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.