Fair enough, I take your point.
Certainly, it wasn't the only time that had happened. It used to happen all the time in the 18th and 19th centuries, but it doesn't happen now. The king used to also enter the House of Commons with armed men and seize members who were going to vote the wrong way and lock them up until they decided to change their minds, but we don't do that either, all, by the way, as a result of making small changes rather than omnibus changes to the Standing Orders, one of which is that the king can't enter the House of Commons.
All right. I was saying that there were three things this reminded me of. Government motion number 6 was the first. The second one was electoral reform. The third was the assisted dying bill. Here, there's a parallel between the process behind the assisted dying bill, the process for considering electoral reform, and the process for dealing with the Standing Orders.
The parallel is this. In each case, the government has, at stage one, announced some kind of apparently consensual goal that's likely to have broad-based support—in all fairness, the assisted dying bill isn't really about government powers—but does not extend its power or reach and does not diminish the well-being and liberty of others. Then it engages in a very long, amorphous consultation period, which is different in kind and certainly in order from the way in which we normally would deal with bills or legislation. Then it creates a panic and a rush to get things done in a great hurry and suggests we should do whatever it takes—throw on extra meetings, meet late into the night, be in on weekends—to get things done by a very tight and artificial deadline.
At about that point, it became clear that their agenda was actually entirely different. It was to increase their own powers, and they hoped that the process of spinning their wheels and creating an artificial crisis would accomplish their goal.
This happened with the assisted dying bill, where they delayed things so long through the committee hearings, which should have taken place after the government had produced its bill but instead took place beforehand as an information-gathering exercise.... They were up against a deadline. Now, in all fairness, the government had sought an extension from the Supreme Court, which refused an extension, but we know that the deadline, which we wound up missing, in June of last year.... June 23, I think it was. Forgive me. I can't remember, but it was a day in June—