House of Commons Hansard Debates for 14 Mar 1990

Mr. Clarke : First, I believe that we made a proper response to the debate last night. Secondly, my right hon. Friend made it clear that we will all respond properly to the vote of the House last night as soon as we can. Whatever may have been the feelings of my hon. Friend last night, I do not believe that that lay behind the Opposition's activity on the Bill thereafter. However, I am grateful for my hon. Friend's support of the guillotine as I do not always get it for other measures before the House.

If I may be allowed to do so, I shall move speedily to my conclusion. I have explained that the reason for presenting the guillotine is to get back on to the satisfactory course of debate upon which we were set until there was a daft change of mind on the part of the Opposition at about midnight last night.

We are also amply supported by precedent. There have been guillotine motions in previous similar circumstances and reference was made this morning to the Health Services Act 1976, a major piece of legislation taken through the House by Barbara Castle. More time has been spent in Committee than on that Bill--we have had more than 100 hours in Committee. In 1976, the Labour Government guillotined both the Committee and the Report stages and did not allow matters to proceed to the point that we had reached until we were provoked into the action that we are taking today.

The hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) can scarcely contain himself any longer, although he looks more relaxed than he did during most stages of our proceedings. He will know that the motion will allow us to proceed in a perfectly reasonable fashion. As soon as the motion is passed by the House, if hon. Members accept my arguments, we shall proceed to Report, which will be finished by midnight tonight. If the hon. Gentleman has a

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copy of the timetable motion, he will see that paragraph 6 describes the conclusion of proceedings and the Questions that will be put by the Chair, if necessary. How many debates we get through between now and midnight is entirely in the hands of Opposition Members.

Not all my hon. Friends will be precluded from taking part in the debates, but I hope that I speak for them all--certainly those who followed the Bill through Committee--when I say that I expect that they will speak briefly. If the Opposition do not want to move some of their new clauses, they can move to others. They can command the time between now and midnight as they wish, making such progress as they can.

In Committee, much progress was made in seven and a half hours. At midnight, the proceedings will come to an end, as described in paragraph 6. Tomorrow, we shall come to the Third Reading motion, which will allow a Third Reading debate tomorrow afternoon.

Mr. Patrick Cormack (Staffordshire, South) : Of course, I understand my right hon. and learned Friend's dilemma. But can anyone pretend that adequate consideration can be given to one of the most important pieces of legislation placed before the House in the 20 years that he and I have been here?

Mr. Clarke : My hon. Friend has been an hon. Member for exactly the same time as I have. He is an independent Back-Bencher, who puts his opinion quite frequently and is a strong parliamentarian. I hope that he will agree that, after two days on Second Reading and over 100 hours in Committee, it is reasonable to have two and a half days on Report. Our misfortune is that we are trying to make up in injury time for the eight or nine hours in the small hours of this morning when the Bill was filibustered. The Government cannot be fairer than that.

I would like to resume a measured level of debate. I believe that there is a wide consensus on the National Health Service. There is no division between us on the principles of the Health Service, the commitment to free treatment paid out of general taxation, and the provision of a comprehensive service as good as that available under any other health care system. Obviously, when we come to the mechanics, there are detailed differences between us. But I believe that there is widespread support for a reform that will bring better financial management, better quality control, and a greater say for patients paving the way for a better patient service. There was more controversy on the care in the community part of the Bill.

Mr. Andrew Mitchell (Gedling) : It seems that my amendment No. 158 is not likely to be reached this evening. My right hon. and learned Friend knows the great importance attached to extending and clarifying the role of the Audit Commission. Is my understanding correct that, in its place on the amendment paper this amendment will now receive Government support?

Mr. Clarke : My hon. Friend will be glad to know that I have rescued his amendment from the debris. It is up to the Opposition to see what they can rescue from the debris. The hon. Gentleman's amendment is one of those listed in paragraph 6(1)(c) of the timetable motion and it will be put to a vote at 12 o'clock. It will be debated, and my hon. Friend can deploy the arguments that the Government

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would have accepted had he had the opportunity of moving the amendment--if we make proper progress on Report between now and midnight.

There is widespread agreement. Care in the community has caused controversy, but the Griffiths report received all-party support. For heaven's sake, we all accept the need to improve the system for providing care in the community to the elderly, the disabled, the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped. Why is not the House capable of having a sensible debate on the issues of detail that divide us?

I invite the hon. Member for Livingston to agree to that sensible procedure, allowing us to get back to where we would have been had it not been for his behaviour from about one o'clock in the morning.

Mr. Hind : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance. If the House decided to collapse the debate now, would it be in order immediately afterwards to debate the clauses that are the subject of the Report stage?

Mr. Deputy Speaker : The answer to that is yes. Immediately this debate is completed--it need not last for three hours--we shall proceed to debate the clauses in the Bill.

4.40 pm

Mr. Robin Cook (Livingston) : I beg to move, as a manuscript amendment to the motion, in paragraph 6(e), to delete "that all" and insert "On each of the".

To those of my hon. Friends who do not immediately apprehend the objective of the amendment, I should explain that it would enable the House to vote separately on Government amendments on which it wished to vote separately, as opposed to the iniquitious proposal in the timetable motion, which obliges the House to vote on Government amendments as a block. I shall return to that issue later. I refer to the point of order of the hon. Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind). It may be proper for the House to find extra time for the new clauses and amendments that have appeared today in the amendment paper, but it would be possible for it to do that only by submitting without murmur or protest to such a constitutional outrage. A glance at the timetable motion confirms the contempt that the present Administration have for the right of parliamentary scrutiny and the ability to challenge legislation.

Mr. Hind : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Cook : I shall do so on this occasion, as I am conscious of the hon. Gentleman's observations, but other hon. Members wish to participate in the debate, so I shall not give way again.

Mr. Hind : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Will he accept that, if we were to pass the guillotine motion now, we would have two and three quarter extra hours in which to debate the clauses of the Bill, some of which are thought to be extremely important by all hon. Members? Will the hon. Gentleman reconsider his position in the light of that?

Mr. Cook : If the Treasury Whip had not moved a motion to report progress six and a half hours ago, we should have had an additional nine hours of debate. It is

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important for the House to consider the timetable motion. If it submits to the motion without a whimper of protest, it will happen every second sitting day.

My hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) has repeatedly asked the Secretary of State to tell us the effect of his motion. There are important new clauses still to be debated. They refer to important issues, the first of which is not within the scope of even this Government to prevent us debating. That is the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) referring to the rights of patients to appeal against the decision of a GP to delete them from his list. There are other important new clauses that I fear we will not reach under this timetable, such as the rights of staff who are transferred to self-governing trusts and the ring fencing of grants for community care, which was a central issue in the Griffiths report, and which should be central to the clauses on community care in this Bill.

In addition to the new clauses, there are 212 amendments to 62 different clauses that still stand selected. The Secretary of State said that the motion would provide a perfectly reasonable way of handling the new clauses and amendments, but he has proposed 285 minutes in which to debate 252 new clauses and amendments. There is no way in which we can cram debates about those new clauses and amendments into such a finite time. There is no way in which the House could even vote on all those new clauses and amendments without any debate. There is not even an attempt in the timetable motion to pretend that it is possible to timetable that for useful debate on the new clauses.

This is not a timetable motion ; no times are fixed in the motion. This is a simple, unadorned guillotine that falls at midnight. The Secretary of State said that it would enable the House to finish the Bill. We will not finish the Bill at midnight ; I doubt if we will even have started consideration of amendments to the Bill by then. What happens at midnight is that the Government get their Bill, and they will get it without any debate on the clauses on community care.

I have to say to my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham, who served with me on the Committee, that, had I any doubt about the importance and correctness of our strategy in approaching the Committee sittings, and in seeking agreement to ensure that we had adequate days in which to air the issues in the Bill, that doubt would have been removed by a timetable motion that shows that, given half a chance, this Administration would block any debate on those clauses. Among the 212 amendments there are 100 Government amendments. The effect of the timetable motion--an effect about which the Secretary of State was rather coy--is that those 100 Government amendments will be put to the House in a single Division. I have checked with the authorities and have been advised that there was no parallel with such a proposal before this Government took office.

There are a number of significant and important Government amendments, including an amendment to permit officers of health authorities to serve on health authorities and Government amendments relating to the transfer of assets to self-governing trusts. There is even a Government amendment on the restrictions on GPs. The House is being denied not only a debate on the amendments, and the opportunity to scrutinise them ; it is even being denied a Division on them.

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I turn from the effect of the motion to the observations by the Secretary of State. I assure the House that I shall be as brief as I can in dismissing them, but first I express some anxiety on behalf of all hon. Members who served on the Standing Committee. There is growing anxiety in our midst about what has become of the hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Knight). I do not recall seeing him on the Treasury Bench since the Division on new clause 1. I hope that he has not vanished down whatever oubliette is reserved in the Whips Office for the failed Whip.

The Secretary of State was good enough to say--I hope that the hon. Member for Derby, North has the message brought to him wherever he is incarcerated --that he had no complaints about the debate on new clause 1. That debate lasted five and a quarter hours. I differ slightly from the interpretation put by the hon. Member for Ross, Cromarty and Skye (Mr. Kennedy) on the length of the debate. The hon. Gentleman suggested that the debate was long because large numbers of Conservative Members spoke against the Government.

I believe that the debate, if it was unduly long, was so for the simple and self-evident reason that the House received no response from the Treasury Bench to what was patently the will of the House. If, throughout our proceedings, we had had Ministers who were willing to listen to the points of debate, and to take the sense of the debate and the will of the House, it would have been possible for us to make more rapid progress.

Throughout the entire proceedings on the Bill, both in Committee and on Report, the Opposition have received not one concession. Indeed, if there is one thing that infuriates us more than not getting a concession it is the fact that we cannot even get the Secretary of State to agree that we disagree with him on the content of the Bill.

Having said that, I have to say that the timetable motion is a fitting end to the proceedings on the Bill. It was conceived in secrecy, in a furtive review, behind closed doors, through which only Ministers were admitted. Those Ministers took no evidence, and held no consultations on the review ; they issued no Green Paper to stimulate debate.

This is a fitting end to a Bill that will centralise in Richmond house the powers of control of the Health Service. On Second Reading, I drew attention to the Bill's 127 references to the Secretary of State, all of which gave him powers to regulate, to order and to instrument. Each of those 127 references survived Committee, and each of them will now survive Report, without debate.

It is fitting at this stage of the Bill that one of the four debates that we were allowed--before being muzzled--was one that exposed just how anxious the Government are to avoid democratic debate within the Health Service, and their determination to avoid people having a say in whether their local hospital opts out of local health authority control. The Government are terrified that they would not win a single ballot.

This is a fitting end to a Bill for which the Government had no mandate in the previous election. The proposals have not gained support since then. The Bill enjoys more unpopularity in the opinion polls than the poll tax Bill did at the same point during its passage through Parliament. But although the timetable motion provides an appropriate end to our proceedings, it will not quite be the

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end of the Bill. There is one ballot that Ministers cannot guillotine--the ballot that will take place in the forthcoming general election. Democracy will then take its revenge for the way in which the Government rammed the Bill through the House.

From now until that election, we shall set the agenda on health. We shall measure and broadcast each shift to a commercialised marketplace in health care. We shall log and publicise each patient who is refused treatment. Each speciality that is forced to the wall by competitive contracts will be recorded and remembered. Each of those issues will be put in the reckoning on the day of the general election. I am confident that that election will return a Government who will re-create a Health Service that will give patients the treatment they need, not the treatment that they or their doctors can afford. As a result of the motion, the Bill will leave the House tomorrow. At that point, the Secretary of State's problems will start. The Bill will be leaving the one place in Great Britain where it could find a majority. It has no majority in the world outside. The right hon. and learned Gentleman cannot dragoon a majority for it by putting the Whips on to the world outside. The guillotine motion is the last throw of the discredited doctrine that "No. 10 knows best"--a doctrine of which the nation is heartily sick. When the electorate has its next turn to speak, the Bill that that doctrine seeks to protect will be rejected, along with the Government who imposed it.

4.52 pm

Mr. Patrick Cormack (Staffordshire, South) : I think that I have voted in almost every guillotine debate for the past 20 years, but for reasons that I shall explain, this guillotine is one guillotine too far.

Much humbug is spoken by those on Conservative and Opposition Front Benches when guillotine motions are introduced. The sort of speech made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State, for whom I have enormous respect and regard, is made from every Government Front Bench whenever a guillotine motion is introduced. I am delighted to see in his place the father of all guillotines, the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot). When he was Leader of the House, he entertained us hugely and introduced more guillotine motions than any other right hon. Gentleman.

We owe it to ourselves and to our constituents to consider what we are about in this place in a way that we have not considered it so far. Those of us on the Back Benches have rights and duties. One duty is carefully to scrutinise legislation. Our constituents expect us to examine Bills seriously and in detail. This Bill affects vast numbers of our constituents. It could be said, without great exaggeration, to affect each one of them directly or indirectly.

No doubt all of us have attended meetings in our constituencies, as I have done, with general practitioners and others who have been worried and sometimes alarmed at the Bill's contents. Many such worries have been based on misconstruction, and many alarms have been grossly exaggerated. There has been mischief-making against the Bill by those who should have known better. Nevertheless, this is a serious matter. The Bill affects all of our constituents and contains controversial elements that demand careful and detailed scrutiny.

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Our debate this evening calls into question not only the Bill but how we deal with all legislation. It is time seriously to consider that aspect. We let down our contituents by our perfunctory approach-- [Interruption.] It would be good if the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) listened, because my argument is serious. We should get away from our perfunctory examination of all legislation.

Let us consider what happens. A Bill comes before the House and has a Second Reading. By the very nature of things, even if it is a two-day Second Reading, few of us can pronounce on the general principles. The occupant of the Chair has an impossibly difficult task in knowing whom to call so that the various strands of opinion and parties in the House are represented. Few right hon. and hon. Members have the chance to take part in Second Reading debates. Next, a small number of Members go into Committee to debate the Bill in detail. As a Chairman of Committees, I know full well that Government Whips often exercise a certain persuasive power to curb the eloquence of Government Members, so that the Bill has a reasonably speedy passage through Committee. I do not point the figure at any particular Minister or Government. It happens, as all right hon. and hon. Members know.

Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent) : Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Cormack : Not at the moment. I am trying to develop a serious argument, but I may give way later.

The Bill then comes back to the Floor of the House, often lucky to have escaped a guillotine. The vast majority of us have had no chance to examine it in detail, to speak about how its provisions affect our constituents or to consider its implications for the country as a whole.

We then come to the Report stage. Today, we have a grotesque example of what can then happen. It seems generally expected that this debate will last until 6 o'clock or thereabouts. We shall then have between five and six hours in which to consider hundreds of amendments and dozens of new clauses to a Bill that affects everyone in the land. That will not be debate, consideration, scrutiny or what our constituents expect us to do. It will be another perfunctory gallop. Many right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House who wish to speak will have little chance to do so. Those who are called to speak will have to truncate their remarks. Tomorrow, after a brief Third Reading debate on generalities, the Bill will go to another place. It will come back to the House only in so far as their Lordships make amendments to it, which I trust they will ; but we must wait and see.

What does it all mean? I do not criticise Front Benchers on either side of the House, but the House of Commons must consider how we go through our legislation. I believe that every Bill needs a proper timetable, not one agreed through the usual channels, nor cooked up at dead of night or in the early hours of the morning to cope with a crisis. What is needed is a proper timetable that is worked out by a scrutiny of legislation Committee of the House.

We should consider setting up such a Committee at an early date. It should consist of senior and experienced Members from both sides of the House, not just Privy Councillors but those such as my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) and me and others who have experience of chairing Committees, who can consider

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a Bill without regard to partisan points. They should consider what the Bill seeks to do, and its length and contents, then decide how reasonably it should be divided so that each clause can be properly debated. That is what our constituents expect us to do, and we let them down because we do not do it.

At the root of the matter is the amount of legislation before the House. If we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that few of us have the chance to understand even a fraction of the Bills before the House. They come thudding from the Vote Office on to our desks or doorsteps. They are complex and affect the lives of people all over the country--I am speaking not only of this Bill.

Let us consider the past Session or two and think of the reforms that have been introduced in this House. How many hon. Members can say that they have truly been able to understand and to follow the complexity of the legislation? I was privy to a Tea Room conversation only yesterday. A distinguished member of the Labour party was having a snack with me and a member of the other place came along and said, "Did you realise that that Bill which went through without a Division the other week had this measure in it?" He did not realise it, and neither did I. Frankly, I do not believe that any other hon. Member sitting round realised it.

There is too much legislation. Every party that goes to the country aspiring to government promises to bring in less legislation, not more. It is a pledge that is repeatedly broken. We need a ration which allocates time properly between Government and Opposition, which must have time for proper debate of the policies and approach of the Government of the day, whichever party forms the Government. There should be time, far more than there is at present, for Select Committees. Select Committees labour away and produce far-reaching, stimulating and important reports which are frequently put into pigeonholes and never discussed on the Floor of the House. We do not have enough time for private Members, and legislation crowds out other things. Even the legislation itself is not fully and properly considered. That is highly unsatisfactory, and it is time that we put a stop to it.

Today's proceedings are particularly unsatisfactory. From those unsatisfactory proceedings, I would like to see emerge a Committee of Members of the House, first perhaps even setting themselves up spontaneously and unofficially, to consider ways and means by which our procedure could be improved to ensure fair distribution of time between the separate interests and issues before us and the detailed discussion of every Bill.

Dame Jill Knight (Birmingham, Edgbaston) : I am listening to my hon. Friend with great care. I agree with what he said about the advisability of having less legislation. My hon. Friend appears to be saying that every Bill should have its Committee stage on the Floor of the House, with all hon. Members involved in it. That troubles me, because, if hon. Members are interested in a particular subject, it is easy, through the Library or by reading the Official Report , to find out all that they need to know. I cannot envisage a House of Commons in which all the Committee work is done on the Floor of the House.

Mr. Cormack : I apologise to my hon. Friend. If that was the impression that I gave, I must correct it immediately. I am grateful to her : if there were ambiguity

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in my remarks, I should not like to sit down and leave that ambiguity in the minds of right hon. and hon. Members. I believe very much in the Committee procedure ; I believe that all Committees should be properly timetabled, so that there is no risk of a suddenly imposed guillotine, and that matters are properly discussed in Committee.

My point, which I obviously did not make as well as I should have, is that, for every piece of legislation--whether it be on student loans, the reform of the National Health Service, the privatisation of an industry or the introduction of the community charge--the vast majority of us are, inevitably, not on the Committee. When a Bill returns to the Floor of the House on Report, we should not run the risk of the sort of nonsense that we now face. There should be a procedure worked out by a scrutiny of legislation Committee, which would allocate a proper portion of time--for this Bill it should be at least four days--so that the legislation could be looked at properly and at a decent hour.

Mr. William Cash (Stafford) : I am intrigued by what my hon. Friend- -who is a neighbour of mine--is saying, because I am a member of the Committee that is considering the Broadcasting Bill. How much attention did members of the Committee that considered this Bill pay to the allocation of time to consider questions that might arise? We are often in danger of spending too much time waffling in Committee when we should be concentrating on important questions, some of which are arising now. [Interruption.] I accuse the Opposition--including the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore), who is muttering from a sedentary position--of waffling in Committee to precipitate the very situation that we are facing now : a guillotine. That happened when we considered the Telecommunications Bill, and it has also happened in this case.

Mr. Cormack : My hon. Friend is merely making my point for me. If there were proper timetabling in Committees, there would be no temptation to waffle, there would be no self-induced--or Whip-imposed--vow of silence by Government Members, whichever party formed the Government, and there would be true debate in Committee.

Mr. Rowe : I accept entirely what my hon. Friend says in so far as it applies to my experience of other Committees. However, on this Committee, Government Members were given as much freedom to speak as they wished. Because our speeches were almost universally short, every one of us had the chance to say as much as we wanted.

Mr. Cormack : I am gratified to hear that. It is unusual, but my hon. Friend was on the Committee and I was not. I accept what he says and it is good to hear it.

I was about to mention the time at which we hold our debates. People outside think that it is absurd that we go through the night. I saw a distinguished Secretary of State at lunch when we were attending the same function. It is ridiculous that he should have been up until 3 o'clock or 4 o'clock this morning when he has extremely important work to do in his ministerial capacity on behalf of everybody. The same applies whether it be a Labour or a

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Conservative Secretary of State. For a few to keep their colleagues up through the night, often talking endlessly about nothing, is ridiculous.

I should like to see a system whereby we finished our substantive business at midnight and no votes were taken after midnight. We owe the nation a quality of administration which, frankly, we are not providing. We must meet head-on the question of the procedure of the House, particularly now that we are under closer and more detailed scrutiny ourselves. I would say that whether we had a Labour or a Conservative Government. I am speaking without fear or favour when I say that, unless and until we do that, we shall not do our job as well as we should or earn the esteem which any legislator in a democracy ought to earn.

I have just come back from a few days in Romania, where people are desperate for the sort of things that we take for granted. They face their first election for 50 years, desperately hoping that it will be free and fair. I am sure that I speak for all right hon. and hon. Members in devoutly hoping that it will be both free and fair. The Romanian people look to us to provide models. They look to this country as the mother of Parliaments. Although I much enjoyed trying to explain what we did here, I was conscious of the imperfections that riddle our procedures. I earnestly beg right hon. and hon. Members, especially my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench, to think seriously about changing our procedures.

Because the Bill's consideration tonight will be a travesty, I shall have no part of it in the Division Lobbies. I do not propose to vote any more on the Bill today.

5.11 pm

Mr. Michael Foot (Blaenau Gwent) : I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack). I agree with his comments about the quality of the legislation that has passed through the House of Commons in recent years. There has been a considerable debasement of the quality, but my reasons for saying that are different from those of the hon. Gentleman. I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman's cure would be any good. It has been suggested in many other quarters and would be grabbed immediately by the Treasury Bench. The Government would love to have a system under which any measures presented to the House would go through according to a timetable which was understood. The Government would be certain of getting measures through at particular times, but it would not be good for the House of Commons and it would not guarantee any improvement in the quality of legislation.

I should like to correct the misleading remarks that the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South made about me--quite unconsciously, I am sure--at the beginning of his speech. He called me the father of guillotines. I may be very old, but I am not so old as that. The father of guillotines can be traced back to the Liberal Benches and the pre-1914 Government. To discover who introduced guillotines, the hon. Gentleman would have to go back and have an argument with Mr. Gladstone's son, if not with Mr. Gladstone himself. The Liberals introduced the guillotine motion to deal with a House of Commons which would otherwise have prevented their legislation from being passed. Some of the people who were creating the biggest row were the predecessors of the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South, although they were not all on the

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same side of the Conservative party, as he would have liked them to be. The origin of the guillotine therefore goes back a long way. The hon. Gentleman should also not say that I was responsible for more guillotines than anyone else. Many more guillotine motions have been introduced in the past five or six years than in any previous parliamentary period. They have been introduced in the most objectionable manner at a late stage in the consideration of Bills such as this one to deal with immediate crises.

The previous Leader of the House did not seem to care at what stage he introduced fresh guillotine motions--he just introduced more and more of them. I am sorry that the present Leader of the House is not here to speak on this, although the Minister for Health--the hon. Member for Surrey, South-West (Mrs. Bottomley)--is a good substitute. I understand that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is in Chile, no doubt polishing up his methods by talking to Mr. Pinochet, to whom he gave so much support when he was at the Foreign Office. They probably have much to talk over, though not how a Parliament should be run. If the Bill is to be pushed through in this way, it is a pity that the Leader of the House has not been present throughout the proceedings. When I was Leader of the House, I considered it my duty to be present almost all the time and to be responsible for any proposals.

I am glad to come along on these occasions, partly for the sake of auld lang syne and to remember what used to happen, but also because there is always the danger that some blithering ignoramus--I am not referring to the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South or to the Secretary of State for Health--will suggest that, as Leader of the House, I did something similar to what the Government are attempting to do today when in fact they are doing something quite different. There is the important question of the mandate. The Government cannot claim that it is not important. Whenever the Prime Minister is forced back to the House, as she frequently is, to defend measures such as the poll tax she refers to her mandate, saying that there was a mandate for the poll tax. The measures on which I asked for a guillotine, and which would not have had a chance of getting through the House without a guillotine, all figured in our party manifesto. The country had been able to vote on them and was familiar with many of the arguments. That is important for high quality legislation. Such was the quality of the five measures on which I introduced the guillotine that most of them are on the statute book today. People may not have liked the contents of those measures, but no one ever complained about their quality. Before introducing proposals in the House, we did our best to ensure that they were properly drafted and considered. We also wished to ensure that they were properly investigated by the House of Commons, which is at its best in Committee.

People often deride the House and say that time is wasted late at night or that few Members of Parliament are present. In my long experience, I have found that some of the worst features of bad Government legislation have been dealt with on the Floor of the House, often on Report, and sometimes late at night. That is one of our great protections.

One such debate took place last night and the Government were defeated. Even if they had not been defeated, the discussion would still have been beneficial. No one who listened to that debate could deny its quality.

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The result was good for most of the country. It showed the House really working properly and it was not under a guillotine. Last night's debate could not have taken place under a guillotine or under the permanent guillotine that some Members desire. A debate such as last night's debate can take place only when the House is at its best. Great credit goes to my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) who put the case so well, but a range of other speeches came from other quarters, which did not immediately change the Government's mind but which will do so eventually.

No Member of Parliament who was present last night would deny that at the very moment when the House showed itself at its best the Government chose to bring down the guillotine and to say, "We will have no more debates like that. Look what happens--we actually get defeated. We must have no more of that, so we shall stop it right away." Under such a procedure, we shall have no more great debates. The way in which so many debates are jammed in together is a disgrace to the House of Commons.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston said, the crucial aspect of the debate is the origin of the Bill. Had the Bill been an item in the Conservative party manifesto and been debated during the last general election campaign by the general practitioners who now oppose it and by the hospital workers who are now affected by possible opting out, things would be very different, but we all know that there has been no investigation. When Aneurin Bevan carried through the National Health Service Act 1946, he said that there should be fresh discussions about it in the years to come. He did not claim that it was perfect in every way--he wanted a five-year clause in each piece of legislation to require people to re-examine it. Nothing like that has happened with this Bill, as the Minister for Health must know even if she cannot admit it.

This measure started with the fatal decision at No. 10 to do for the Health Service what has been done already for education and social security. It is now being pushed through without proper discussion. That is especially disgraceful, given that the Government have spatchcocked another major Bill into the legislation by amalgamating two Bills. The future of compassionate care is a matter of major discussion throughout the country. Every hon. Member knows that that debate is real and no one would dare deny what I say. Yet the Government decided to manacle another measure to this highly unpopular, undiscussed Bill, and the two measures are interlinked. The Secretary of State could not come to the House to defend the Bill yesterday --his junior Minister had to do that--which further aggravates the offence of not allowing the House of Commons to discuss either measure properly.

Great arguments about the poll tax are raging at this very moment. The poll tax is bad enough, but it was at least mentioned as a sidewind even though it was not discussed properly. The Government have become so arrogant that they think that they can push through any measure whatever. To return to the points of the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South, that is the real reason for the debasement of the quality of the legislation going through the House of Commons. The Prime Minister knows nothing of the House of Commons. She did not spend years on the Back Benches--the best place to learn about the House. I have had experience of both Front and Back Benches. The Prime

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Minister simply hears of uproar in the Chamber. She arrived yesterday without even knowing what had happened. The guillotine decision on the Bill was made in the middle of the night. Yet the Bill touches the lives of people perhaps more than any measure since the National Health Service was set up. The Secretary of State occasionally dares to compare himself with Aneurin Bevan, but Aneurin Bevan had endless debates with doctors and invited them time and again to discuss his proposals. He constantly asked for debates in this House. Before that Bill was introduced, when there was so much pretence that it was unpopular, he suggested that there should be another debate in the House of Commons. No one believed more strongly than Aneurin Bevan that the best way to get a decent measure on to the statute book so that it lasts not just a few years but for generations is to have a decent debate in the House of Commons. That is how we got our great National Health Service, but on the orders of the Prime Minister the Government are injuring and destroying the National Health Service and the very process whereby we can maintain these proper institutions. What is happening is a disgrace to the House of Commons. The Secretary of State should go to Downing street and resign, like the Secretary of State for Wales. He should follow the example of some of his predecessors, pluck up his courage and say that he is not prepared to force such a measure through the House.

5.25 pm

Mr. Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield) : I am delighted to follow the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot). He is a man of great experience and an outstanding parliamentarian. As he said, he is wonderfully comfortable on the Back Benches, whether his party be in government or in opposition. I thoroughly endorse much of what the right hon. Gentleman has said.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack), in my 19 years in the House, I have never tasted ministerial office or preferment of any sort. Like my hon. Friend, I sit on the Chairmen's Panel, which is a tremendous challenge and a highly responsible and very enjoyable task.

I said in an intervention at the beginning of the debate that I shall support the Government in the Division Lobby, but with great reluctance. Sadly, I do not believe that any timetabling of clauses, new clauses and amendments would make it possible to have a meaningful debate on this critical Bill. The right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent pointed out that the issues involved are vital to practically everyone in the country. I shall vote with the Government only with great reluctance.

When my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State introduced the timetable motion, I intervened to say that, if my views were of any importance, the House could have debated these vital matters constructively and positively if the Government had responded properly to the result of the debate on new clause 1. Conservative Members expressed their anxiety about care in the community and the dreadful problems that were occurring in all our constituencies, whether we be Labour, Liberal Democrat or Conservative Members, about the growing gap between the amount of income support that elderly

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people in private residential or nursing homes receive from the Department of Social Security and the fees for those homes. I am unhappy that matters that relate to ring fencing will probably receive no coverage in later debates today. We shall face grave problems because, as a result of a decision that was made not by the House but by the Government, geriatric accommodation in the National Health Service is being phased out. Almost all the provision for those who require such accommodation and care will be provided in private nursing and residential homes. Thus, an increasing number of people will be dependent on the income support that they need to pass their final days receiving the care and consideration that they need and merit. For that reason, the debate later today will be unsatisfactory.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South, whose view was shared by the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent, that we have too much legislation and not enough debate. I was not here, as the right hon. Gentleman was, when the National Health Service was introduced in 1948, so I did not have the privilege of attending the great debates that took place leading to the formation of the NHS, which is cherished by 99.9 per cent. of the British people.

I wonder whether, if timetable motions had been used then as they are today, we would have got the Health Service that we all admire and respect and which, having travelled throughout the world as a member of the Social Services Select Committee, I can report is the envy of the world. I do not know a cheaper, better run or more comprehensive health system anywhere else.

I am saddened by the Government's response to the outcome of the debate yesterday on new clause 1, which perhaps set the House on a trail which I deeply regret. It has meant that no meaningful debate can take place on one of the most critical Bills now before Parliament.

In many Standing Committees, Back Benchers are beginning to exercise their rights over the usual channels. I have the privilege at present to be a joint Chairman of the Standing Committee on the Environmental Protection Bill. I am pleased to say that Back Benchers on both sides of that Committee are exercising their full rights to debate the measure to the full. I am anxious that the occupants of the Government Front Bench note my claim that hon. Members should be able on the Floor of the House to debate properly the legislation that comes before us.

I have in mind, for example, new clause 73, which will receive no more than scant mention in the short debate that will take place under the guillotine. That clause relates to the funding of local authorities and the demand of the Select Committee on Social Services that money allocated for community care should be ring-fenced. That is not simply the overwhelming view of that Select Committee, which looked into the matter in detail and took evidence from experts. It is the view of Sir Roy Griffiths, who produced the Griffiths report, on which the community care provisions of the Bill are based. He urged that the money should be ring-fenced and proposed : "Central Government should provide directly to social service authorities by a specific grant a substantial proportion of the total funds it estimates are needed to meet national objectives." The Government are departing from a main proposal made in a report which they asked Sir Roy Griffiths to undertake, and the House is not being given proper

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opportunity to debate the issue. I know that the hon. Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney), who is on the Select Committee with me, shares my view on that important matter.

I make no apology for raising a constituency matter, because it greatly concerns me that we should be proceeding to a situation in which health authorities can ensure, through their senior management, all of whom are politically appointed, that hospitals should decide to opt out. There is in my constituency a small hospital called the Alderley Edge cottage hospital, which was founded and built by donation and public subscription. It was taken into the NHS when it took over the provision for health care in Britain in 1948. That facility is much valued by the people of the area, but what is happening there is not democratic and there has been no meaningful public consultation.

My district health authority has decided to implement a temporary closure of the GP beds at that hospital--it is primarily a GP hospital--pending consultation. When I heard about this development from people in the NHS-- people who know that they can come to me and get an objective hearing--I was appalled. I contacted Mr. Holt, the district general manager, who told me, "We have adopted this procedure before." I asked Mr. Holt, "Can you tell me of any hospital that has been reopened once a temporary closure has been imposed?" He hesitated and replied, "We have used that procedure before, but in respect of a hospital ward." I told him that hospital wards might reopen, but I could not discover a hospital on which a temporary closure order had been imposed and which had reopened.

The people of my area are outraged, and the majority of them are Conservative supporters--

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