Yes, absolutely.
She continued:
On the whole we are satisfied with how programming is working. We note that one consequence of programme motions is that Third Reading debates are often truncated—time is taken out voting on amendments on report stage.
But it's done so that the people know what's coming, and they get to say their piece. We don't speak on every piece of legislation here, but I can certainly request that I get involved, like anybody else can, and I think it allows the balance that anybody who is about to get into government will do the same. We're not planning for just our own government. We're planning as well for others that come along. That's an acknowledgement that I truly don't feel we'll rule forever; I've been here too long to think that.
Philip Cowley thinks it's a great thing, as does Michael Zander, and as does David Kidney, who is a former Labour MP. Philip Cowley is currently a professor at Queen Mary University of London. They all state that it has provided a good sense of balance.
Quite frankly, I'll leave it at that, because there were some things said about it and I wanted to go more in depth about it. I think that on several levels it allows us to talk about how we can come into a debate and use it through the House of Commons such that people get their say, but at the same time respect the fact that government gets to do its legislation that it campaigned on. That's why I brought up this article from The Huffington Post.
On the modernization of this particular hallowed institution, I want to go back to earlier thoughts about the discussion paper itself and one of the things that was said about committees, which is that the discussion paper talks about reducing the amount of time at committee to 10 minutes and that's it, as some form of closure, but here's the thinking. I looked into this. There are 10-minute blocks to speak, much like you have in the House of Commons, but that's not your last one. You get to go again.
Tom, how long do you figure you spent speaking today?