Justice Week 8-12 December 2008

March 02, 2007

The Campaign Continues

In the end the Government had a majority of 25 over the combined opposition at Third Reading of the Bill on Wednesday 28th February.

This is a disappointing result but there are a number of mitigating factors, including over a dozen Northern Ireland MPs who were supporting our campaign being away involved in local elections and massive pressure from the Whips on potential dissenters.

It is also important to the campaign that the Home Secretary, John Reid, did make a number of concessions in response to Labour Members’ concerns during the course of the debate.

The Napo campaign - particularly the effort made by members and branches with their MPs locally - has therefore had a very positive effect and that campaign WILL continue.

The Bill will now move swiftly into the Lords. It had it's first reading today, which means it will come up for debate in about two weeks. We have already made contact with a number of Peers about coordinating amendments there. If these are successful - and we believe they will be - they will have to be voted on again in the Commons. This gives us another chance to lobby MPs.

We had always known it was extremely difficult to get MPs to vote against a whole Bill - and much easier to get them to vote for amendments. Indeed, 51 Labour MPs did vote for Neil Gerrard's amendment excluding core probation tasks at Report Stage .

You can download a copy of Stop the Bill Bulletin No 15 below.

It gives an analysis of the Third Reading debate and the vote, looks at the concessions made, and sets out the timetable for the continued campaign in the Lords and then back to the Commons.

Download file

You can also download a copy of John Reid's speech at Third Reading here.

Or click here for a copy of the Report Stage debate.

Posted by kfalcon at March 2, 2007 12:45 PM