I thank the Minister for her kind words and for wishing me well, as I am expecting my first child increasingly soon. It has been a pleasure to shadow her over the past couple of months—there have certainly been some mix-ups with our names. It is certainly one of the more interesting shadow relationships, as our names are so similar.

As this is the last Committee sitting I shall be attending, I want to put on the record some of my thoughts about the Bill. Given that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton intends to keep coming back to the Committee to pursue the Bill, I expect to be substituted in future sittings. The Government’s efforts to sabotage the Bill by refusing to grant a money resolution defy the will of the House. That sends a clear message to Members of the House and to our constituents that the Tories care more about their own political advantage than about doing what is in the best interests of the country.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the Standing Order No. 24 debate on Monday, and on persevering in holding the Government to account. I share his concerns that the Government are trampling over parliamentary procedure and making a mockery of the private Member’s Bill process. During that debate we witnessed a Government who were unable to put forward a single convincing argument to justify their undemocratic actions. The Leader of the House claimed time and again that

“it is for the Government of the day to initiate financial resolutions.”—[Official Report, 21 May 2018; Vol. 641, c. 595.]

That simply is not true. It is an established parliamentary convention that the Government bring forward money resolutions for private Members’ Bills that have received a Second Reading, as this Bill has.

Until recently, the Government largely followed that convention. In 2013 the former Leader of the House, Andrew Lansley, told the Procedure Committee in evidence:

“To my knowledge, Government has provided the money resolutions...whenever we have been asked to do so.”

The Procedure Committee’s 2013 report therefore concluded:

“Government policy is not to refuse a money or ways and means resolution to a bill which has passed second reading.”

The Speaker also made his position extremely clear by saying that the Government should bring forward a money resolution and impose some “logic and reasonableness” on the process.