Friend helpfully traces the background to our discussion. I have a characteristically non-partisan observation. Of course, my hon. Friend is right to refer to our right hon. Apparently, that did not occur to our right hon.
Friend is right.
The issue is important. It is appropriate that there should be proper mechanisms in the House and in the other place to address that matter. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire makes proposals, which I support, to improve those mechanisms, but I want to continue to outline why the Government should acknowledge that there is common ground between the parties on which we can build. A final and important area of common ground is the way in which the operation of the legislative procedures in both Houses of Parliament has been developed under the 1994 Act. The Bill reflects a welcome convergence of views between the parties on both the substance of the matters with which it deals and the procedures by which we address them.