Also absent yesterday during the Terrorism Bill when the Government won by one vote. Dear oh dear oh dear.

 http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?mpn=George_Galloway&mpc=Bethnal+Green+%26amp%3B+Bow&display=everyvote

Claire Shorts bill was 'talked out'

By Goeff Hoon

in one of the most disgraceful abuses of the 'democratic'
system [ha!] i have ever witnessed

he knew what he was doing and everone just let him do it

yabbering on about nothing at all...filling time until
the Speaker rang time

unbelievable


see usual guardian tosh
--------------------------------------------------
Government kills Short's war bill
--------------------------------------------------


Matthew Tempest, political correspondent - Friday October 21, 2005

A bill proposed by former cabinet minister Clare Short to force a vote in parliament before sending troops to war hit the parliamentary buffers today.

Downing Street earlier said the legislation would have been impractical.

After four hours of debate, the bill was "talked out" by Commons leader Geoff Hoon, meaning there will not be a vote on whether to refer it to the committee stage, the next step in a bill's progress. This in effect means the bill now stands no chance of becoming law.

The Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Sir Menzies Campbell, said: "Parliament missed a rare opportunity to assert its authority over the executive. "To send British troops into battle is the ultimate responsibility and it should be one for members of parliament."

Ms Short, who resigned shortly after the start of the Iraq war, today brought in a private member's bill that would have curtailed the power of the prime minister to declare war without the backing of the House of Commons. Under the bill, both the Commons and the Lords would have had to be shown the case for war and its legal justification before voting on whether to give the go-ahead. But before MPs even finished debating the bill, No 10 said such a law could stop the government acting quickly and rob it of the crucial element of surprise.

The prime minister's official spokesman also made clear there had been a vote ahead of action in Iraq. "As the prime minister and the foreign secretary have both said on the record in the past, what you do not want to do is put yourself in a position where, for some reason you can't foresee at the moment, action has to take place very quickly," he said. "Therefore you may not want to commit yourself to a position where you rob yourself of the element of surprise and give the enemy advance notice."

But in the chamber Ms Short insisted under her bill the PM would still have been allowed to take urgent action without approval but would be forced to pull the troops back if parliament then rejected the move. She said her move had the backing of a large number of MPs from all parties as well as the families of soldiers killed in the conflict. Ms Short said it was ridiculous that the power to wage war still officially lay with the monarchy as a royal prerogative - today exercised by the prime minister of the day.

The MP for Birmingham Ladywood pointed out that even if a prime minister decided to allow parliament a vote - as Tony Blair did over Iraq - he was free to ignore its decision. Ms Short said her bill would have prevented the "machinations and shenanigans" over the withholding of the attorney general's legal advice about the Iraq war. She suggested that the powers in the hands of the prime minister could be used to justify moves to "exaggerate" a threat.

"Given the powers he has, the prime minister could argue that he was entitled to secretly commit us to war in April 2002 by giving his word to president Bush as has now been revealed by the leaking of the Downing Street memo.

"Similarly he could insist that he was entitled to exaggerate the intelligence and the threat of WMD, manipulate the legal advice and misreport the French position on the possible use of their veto in the security council because if the power to make war belongs to him and requires no approval from parliament, then he was entitled to do what he thought was right and then set out to persuade, in the way he found best, the cabinet, parliament and country to support the decision he had already made."

The bill's sponsors included former Tory leader William Hague and Tory former chancellor Ken Clarke - although neither was in the chamber to hear the debate. Backing the bill, the Liberal Democrat David Heath said: "It is our right as a parliament to disagree with the executive.

"If the executive cannot command the support of the house then it has no business sending forces into conflict."

Gordon Prentice, a Labour MP, claimed the chancellor, Gordon Brown, was in favour of the bill. The Tory MP Roger Gale also spoke up in favour of the bill, reminding MPs that the prime minister of the day was neither commander-in-chief nor head of state, as is the case with the US president.

But the Tory former shadow defence minister James Gray - who opposed the Iraq war - said he did not support the bill because "only popular wars will be waged" rather than "unpopular but necessary" wars

 http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1597883,00.html

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Full text - Armed forces (parliamentary approval for armed conflict) bill
 http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Politics/documents/2005/10/21/parliamentaryapprovalbill.pdf

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The government managed to pass it's Prevention of Terrorism Bill on Wednesday with a majority of one.

Guess who didn't vote.
Answer; George Galloway.

He was at one of his 'Mother of all Bores" one man shows. No doubt signing books and making a few quid.

Galloway missed a debate on Iraq 10th Oct. He also missed a vote on 21 Oct which was Clare Short's Private Members Bill meant to limit the government's powers to go to war.