House of Commons Hansard Debates for 4 Mar 1992

Mr. Jimmy Hood (Clydesdale) : I am disappointed that the regulations do not cover the real problems experienced by the sufferers of myalgic encephalomyelitis, of whom there are between 200,000 and 300,000.

The Department of Social Security is well aware of the problem, because it has received representations not only from hon. Members and as a result of private Bills, but from the ME Action Campaign and the ME Association.

There is a strong feeling among politicians, sufferers and the charitable organisations that try to care for those sufferers that there is a conspiracy among the medical profession not to identify the real problems faced by ME sufferers. Only recently, I received a representations from those in psychiatry who have challenged some of my views. However, I should like to restate views that I have already made known to the House.

For too long, the medical profession has used psychiatry as the dumping ground for its failures and

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inadequacies. More than 200,000 people suffer from an illness that has not been properly recognised. They suffer day in, day out for 24 hours a day, and they need help and recognition of their illness. The Government talk, rightly so, about spending money properly and getting value for money. We have never been able to calculate the millions and millions of pounds that are spend in the health service on ME sufferers because of misdiagnosis. I challenge the Government to reconsider this matter. If we recognise the illness of ME properly we will not only be able to help those hundreds of thousands of sufferers and their families, but also save money for the health service. That is a true, self- financing Tory phenomenon.

I ask the Minister to reconsider this matter and, please, to ignore the advice that is coming from the demagogues of the medical profession who have ignored the plight of ME sufferers.

9.17 pm

Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) : I strongly support my hon. Friend the Member for Clydesdale (Mr. Hood), who has done so much work on this disease. All our constituents are grateful to him.

I have a question for the Secretary of State, who is present. In the necessarily fallow period while the elections are taking place, we all know that civil servants put their heads in proverbial cold towels and produce all sorts of plans for whoever are the incoming Government. I ask the Secretary of State to give an instruction while he is on the hustings that a good deal of thought is given to this complex problem. It is not easy, as all of us who have had to deal with this illness at first hand know.

This is a time for consideration and reflection in the Department. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will ask his chief medical officer and others who are likely to be producing plans for whoever are the incoming Government to have something ready on ME by the time that that Government are in place.

9.18 pm

Miss Widdecombe : This has been an interesting debate, with many contributions from hon. Members who have earned distinction for the way in which they have pursued these issues--over many years in the case of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris).

Although most of the points that have been raised have precious little to do with the regulations, they are important. I hope that I shall be allowed the same latitude in answering them as right hon. and hon. Members were allowed in the first place.

The hon. Member for Paisley, South (Mr. McMaster) spoke about the terminally ill and the sensitive problem concerning those who do not know that they are so ill, who find out that they have a limited time to live when they are informed about what money they will receive. The problem is fully recognised. Claimants have to be notified that they are receiving money and how much money, and we have not found a way to avoid doing that. However, they are not, and they never will be, told the reasons why.

We shall be watching this closely in view of the representations that have been made. I hope that that is satisfactory, but if, even on that limited basis, the hon. Gentleman can raise cases of distress being caused,

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perhaps he will continue his correspondence with me and we shall have another look. However, I cannot do as he asked and promise new regulations to take account of that.

I was amazed to be told by the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe that the television advertising campaign is propaganda. It is the provision of information, and that has been widely welcomed by just about all the disability organisations. If we had not had a take-up campaign or a series of advertising to get across the message, the right hon. Gentleman would, quite rightly, have been the first to ask what we were doing to make sure that a completely new benefit, and a slightly complex one, was being taken up. I refute any suggestion of propaganda.

The right hon. Gentleman raised a valid point about the unfortunate error in the disability working allowance advertisement. I assure him that anyone who sends off one of these coupons will get the right information and we shall be placing many more advertisements in an attempt to get the right message across and to correct that unfortunate error.

I am aware of the unfortunate business about disabled members of disability appeal tribunals and the problem of the effect on their benefits. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that the Minister of State is giving active consideration to how we can put this right. Three hon. Members mentioned the ME Action Group and, before one of them was ruled out of order, they got in enough points to enable me to respond. The ME Action Group has made representations to the disability living allowance advisory board about whether people with ME should qualify for the DLA. That section of the handbook on ME was rewritten in the light of the helpful comments from organisations representing ME sufferers, but the whole point of the DLA is that it is related not to the illness or complaint of disability but to the effects of those disabilities.

So as to guage accurately those effects, we have the rather long form that has been criticised tonight. For many years, as the right hon. Gentleman will be only too well aware, we have been under pressure from organisations representing disabled people to introduce more self-assessment and to have less what they call "interference" from the medical profession. Self- assessment means asking claimants a large number of questions that would previously have been asked of the medical profession. Therefore, although the form is long, it is designed to address points made in the representations that we have persistently received, and it has been widely welcomed.

Mr. Dalyell : I ask this in an interrogatory spirit rather than a hostile or critical one. Is the Department quite sure that both it and the medical profession can be certain about the effects of ME? I have the impression as a layman that this is one of the problems. Constituency experience has shown me that there is considerable argument about the effects of ME. There is possibly a difference between how doctors see it and how patients perceive themselves.

Miss Widdecombe : Yes, but there is disagreement among the medical profession about the effects. The hon. Gentleman must realise that the advisory board is no longer medically dominated and we now take the advice of those suffering from disabilities and of laymen. It is not just a question of accepting one set of medical advice. We

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can act only on the information that we are given. I stress that it is the effects that matter, and the effects of most disabilities and illnesses vary from person to person.

Mr. Hood : I thank the Minister for her clarity. I shall photostat a few copies of Hansard tomorrow and send them to one or two doctors who have been ignoring the effects of illness and disability. I agree with the Minister. Those of us who try to advise our constituents on health matters are frustrated by the fact that doctors are getting into a wrangle about diagnosis and are ignoring effects. When a person is disabled, he or she should be treated as such. Although doctors may argue about diagnosis, they should ensure that a person who is ill and bedridden and needs help receives it. I am pleased to hear the Minister say that it is the effect that matters.

Miss Widdecombe : If the hon. Gentleman's interventon was aimed at getting me to clarify what I said, I have pleasure in confirming that his interpretation is correct--the effect rather than the defined illness matters.

The issue of counsellors relates to a completely different disability benefit--severe disablement allowance. I do not wish to introduce too quarrelsome a note into the debate because it has been productive, but I absolutely refute the suggestion by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) that the Government are guilty of double-speak when it comes to the new money that we are investing in the measure. It must be obvious to anyone capable of moving beads on an abacus that, if people are to receive the same level of benefits and if others are to be brought into the system for the first time, extra money is being made available.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) for his contribution. Obviously, we are in constant contact with our colleagues in the Department of Health and we recognise the many community care issues that must be dealt with.

Mr. McMaster : May I press the Minister on a further issue ? Who will the Minister consult in future when bringing forward regulations that affect disabled people ? Will she consult the groups that know what the problems are and can draft appropriate regulations ?

Miss Widdecombe : I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for having missed that point out of the many that he raised. We have already consulted widely on the regulations, the main Bill, and the various suggestions that were made to us as a result of the Bill and we shall continue to consult widely.

In the meantime, I commend these technical and beneficial regulations, which we have rather forgotten tonight, to the House. 9.28 pm

Mr. Alfred Morris : By leave of the House, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is no part of my intention to forget the amendment regulations. I return specifically to them. It is not just my view but that of many other people who know the 1991 Act well that these amending regulations in no way alter the unacceptable complexity of the rules of entitlement to the DLA care component and attendance allowance for people in all the various forms of institutional care.

It is put to me by organisations closely involved in the care of disabled people who live in institutions that, as I

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argued, the main ambiguities revolve around the definition of "scheduled accommodation". For example, it is not clear how respite care funded by local authorities is classified, which must be an important point. Someone looking for respite care for a temporary period is likely to have difficulty finding out whether he or she is excluded from benefit by regulation 9. I ask the Minister to respond specifically to that point about the amendment regulations. I am grateful to the Minister for recognising the validity and force of the point that I made about the appalling mistake in the advertisement that appeared in two national newspapers. I am glad that the hon. Lady has accepted that it was a serious mistake that not only appeared in The Observer on Sunday but was repeated in The Guardian on Monday.

The hon. Lady said that she could not accept my charge that the Government are guilty of "double-speak". I made it pikestaff plain that the charge is not mine. I quoted the Disability Alliance, which speaks for more than 200 organisations of and for disabled people, many of them household names. It states :

"The most glaring example of Government double-speak concerns the £300 million new' money they claim to have put into disability benefits in The Way Ahead' package (January 1990)."

To correct what the hon. Lady told the House, the organisation said that, with one cut alone--

"the phasing-out of rights to invalidity benefit (additional pensions)"--

the Government will save £475 million. It is the totality of help arising from the package with which the organisations are concerned. The hon. Lady told me that she did not think that the press and television advertising about that benefit was misleading. It is not my charge, but that of Sally Witcher, than whom few people know more about disability benefits, past and present. She was asked to join the consultative panel for the "BBC Select" series and says : "BBC Select has so far clearly demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice understandability at the altar of propaganda Presenting DLA and DWA in such a rosy light will not obscure the gross inadequacies of the two benefits."

The important charge that she makes, and which I have sent to Sir Michael Checkland, is that blatantly misleading election propaganda is to go on being transmitted by a public service broadcasting organisation, without right of comment by other parties, virtually throughout the expected timing of a general election campaign.

The Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Tony Newton) : Before the right hon. Gentleman concludes his ridiculous flight of rhetoric, will he tell us whether or not he thinks that measures that extend nearly another £12 a week to 300,000 people should or should not be advertised, so that the money can get to them?

Mr. Morris : I have said nothing against the desirability of advertising. I am quoting the organisations of disabled people. If it is a ridiculous flight of rhetoric, that is a criticism of what they are saying. I ask the Secretary of State, who has great experience in this policy area, and the Minister of State, to meet as quickly as they can with representatives of Disability Alliance and other organisations whose views I have been trying to present to the

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House tonight. They ought not to be of ridiculous flights of rhetoric. I am simply saying that their views--[ Hon. Members :-- "What are your views?"] My view is that grave mistakes have been made. It has been accepted--

Mr. Newton : I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way again, as this is important. I am not asking him to rehearse the views of organisations outside the House. I am asking him to give me, across the Floor of the House, his view on whether additional benefits of nearly £12 a week to several hundred thousand people should or should not be advertised to those people.

Mr. Morris : I am saying that, if the benefits are advertised, they must be advertised correctly, not misleadingly. When the Secretary of State for Social Security was on the Opposition Benches, I was in government. He was always beside himself in trying to tell the House what organisations of and for disabled people were saying about the policies of the Government of the day--for example, about the mobility allowance that I introduced, the invalid care allowance and so on. He was always telling us what the organisations said. I rest our case there in support of listening to what the organisations say--please listen to them.

9.35 pm

Miss Widdecombe : With the leave of the House, Mr. Speaker. I cannot allow the comments of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) to go unchallenged. Before I come to the unpleasant part of the business, I must say that, on the matter of respite care--the purely technical point raised by the right hon. Gentleman--there is no change in the current position.

I am sorry that a productive, courteous and useful debate has had to end on a note of quite disgraceful propaganda--not from the Government, but from the Opposition. They accused us of issuing propaganda, but when challenged all that they could say was that there had been a mistake in one advertisement. Of what are they accusing us? The right hon. Gentleman cannot wash his hands of it ; he has made accusations from the Dispatch Box. What is the right hon. Gentleman's view? Will he give my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State an answer? Should those benefits be advertised, or not?

Mr. Alfred Morris : I was a Minister for more than five years and I advertised benefits. Every conceivable step should be taken to maximise take-up. I am saying that a great deal of misleading information has gone to people who have enough to put up with because of their disabilities, without having to complain to the House about misleading information.

Miss Widdecombe : We are now clear that the complaint is not about propaganda, but about a mistake. The right hon. Gentleman has withdrawn the complaint about election propaganda. Is that what we are to understand? I think that we do understand that.

The two benefits will bring help to an additional 850,000 people, which will give additional help amounting to £300 million--no matter what the Opposition say--and which have been widely welcomed by a vast range of disability organisations, on whose representations we made the changes in the first place. They represent a major advance. I do not want to divide and rule, but most of the right hon. Gentleman's hon. Friends have been

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constructive tonight. The right hon. Gentleman's sentiments will not be shared by those who will now be able to work, but who were not able to work before without severe loss of benefit, and by those who will now be able to claim care components that they could never claim before.

This is a great, humane piece of legislation. It stands as a testimony to the ability and the dedication of my right hon. Friend the Minister of State--who, regrettably, cannot be here tonight--and to the humanity and the deep commitment to the disabled of the whole Government. The right hon. Gentleman should be ashamed of the way in which he has warped the debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the draft Social Security (Disability Living Allowance) Amendment Regulations 1992, which were laid before this House on 25th February, be approved.

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PETITION

Mifegyne

9.38 pm

Mr. Michael Lord (Suffolk, Central) : I wish to present to the House a petition drawn up by the Ipswich branch of the organisation Life against the drug Mifegyne, also known as RU486. The petition bears the signatures of 194 parishioners of St. Mary Magdalene's church, Norwich road, Ipswich, who believe that untold harm will be done if that pill becomes generally available in this country : Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House, which is committed to upholding respect for human life and protection of the weak and vulnerable, will do everything possible to prevent the distribution and use of Mifegyne (known as RU486) and any other drugs which, like it, are produced with the deliberate intention of destroying human life.

And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

To lie upon the Table.

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Ozone Layer

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.-- [Mr. Patnick.]

9.39 pm

Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) : In the 30 years since I was elected in May 1962, I have had 37 Adjournment debates ranging from Lockerbie to the rain forest, from kidney transplants to unemployment in the then mining villages of Blackridge, Fauldhouse and Stoneyburn which, in 1963, stood at an unacceptable 5.5 per cent. Yet in all that time no topic has approached in importance the plant pathology and skin cancer threat of an ozone hole.

The stakes are mind-boggling. The issues, as the Secretary of State for the Environment was reported to have said in New York earlier in the week, are dramatic for humankind. If some of the more alarmist views are half correct, it could mean that we could go the way of dinosaurus and pterodactyl, and it would be curtains for human life. However, I am not alarmist. One of the saltier scientists with whom I talked said that, in the short term, if a person spent March and April in the nude in Scotland he would be safer than if he sunbathed on one day at high noon in Malta. That is the view that I take in the short term. In the medium and longer term it may be a different story. In general, I am concerned about the year 2000, 2005 and 2010. By his nodding of the head I think that the Minister assents to that general view.

My application for an Adjournment debate was prompted first of all by the recent NASA public statements, which may, incidentally, have been prompted in turn by internal problems in the NASA set-up and, secondly, by the widely reported statements of Greenpeace. For example, at the top of page one of The Scotsman on 14 February, over the byline of its justifiably respected environment correspondent, Auslan Cramb, my concerned constituents were told : "Pollution map points way to ozone hole over Scotland." That appeared on the front page of a quality newspaper. He went on to say :

"A new map of atmospheric pollution has for the first time given a dramatic early warning of possible ozone destruction above Scotland. It shows exceptionally high levels of the main ozone-depleting chemical--chlorine monoxide--over Scotland, Scandinavia and Russia, with the highest concentrations above Shetland and the west of Norway. Scientists have given warning that the pollution, caused by man-made chemicals, could herald the creation of an ozone hole similar to the one which appears over the Antarctic every spring. The next few weeks will be critical as increasing sunshine in the northern hemisphere encourages the reactions which can destroy the life saving layer."

That is strong stuff, and it is no wonder I came rushing down hoping to put a private notice question, so concerned were my constituents. That article continued :

"Ozone protects the planet from cancer-causing ultraviolet radiation, and health specialists say a 10 per cent. decrease in ozone levels could lead to 300,000 extra skin cancers and up to 1.75 million extra eye cataracts each year.

The possibility of an ozone hole above highly-populated areas was revealed last week by scientists in Europe and America."

What are the people affected to make of that? The article adds : "The latest graphic representation of the findings, showing the highest concentrations of C10 in yellow and orange, was produced for Heriot-Watt. Dr. Robert Harwood, of

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Edinburgh University's department of meteorology, stressed that concentrations of C10 would vary, and its presence was not a guarantee that ozone-thinning would take place."

That is alarming enough.

Those of us concerned with the environment are delighted that Geoffrey Lean of The Observer has made a marvellous and miraculous recovery and is returned to health, and he showed enormous courage in doing so. He wrote under the headline

"Fears over the ozone layer spur action on treaty"

the following report :

"The studies predict that harvests in the US and the former Soviet Union will be decimated as the greenhouse effect takes hold. Food exports from the US, which help to feed 100 nations, could fall catastrophically.

The African savannahs, home to 200 million people, would dry out to resemble the Sahel."

That also is alarming stuff, yet with the experience of having written on a weekly basis for New Scientist for more than a quarter of a century, I must tell the Minister that Mr. Chris Rose and his colleagues at Greenpeace have produced serious work that deserves serious and detailed Government reply.

Greenpeace knows that I am the public friend of the nuclear power companies, of British Nuclear Fuels and, heaven help me, of Nirex--and do not always share Greenpeace's opinions. Rather than repeat everything that they said, and although I am fortunate to have a little extra time, I shall truncate their remarks. However, I asked Mr. Chris Rose to submit his material to Dr. Alan Apling of the Department of the Environment and to the Minister's other advisers. I also gave notice to the Minister of other authorities that I consulted in preparation for this Adjournment debate and before formulating my questions.

Those to whom I spoke included Professor Tom Blundell, FRS, director of Agricultural and Food Research Council ; Professor John Dale, professor of botany at Edinburgh university, dean of the faculty of biological sciences- -I should say I am a member of the university's biological sciences advisory committee ; Dr. Joe Farman of Cambridge, who first identified the ozone hole above the Antarctic ; Professor John Knill and his colleagues at the Natural Environment Research Council ; Sir John Mason, a distinguished cloud physicist who was the former head of the Meteorological Office ; Dr. Paul Rogers of Bradford university, and expert of NASA and a plant pathologist by training ; and Dr. David Royle of Long Ashton research centre. I received valuable briefs from the House of Commons Library science section, and from the Labour party.

I just have time to make brief reference to the Greenpeace brief that was sent to the Department. It states :

"We are pressing for a complete and immediate ban on ozone depleting substances and will continue to do so in the run up to the March 23 formal EC Environment Ministers meeting. Germany has reiterated its intention to go further than the EC informal agreement (of a 100 per cent. phase out by the end of 1995) and intends to phase out all CFCs in 1993. There is no legal obstacle to Britain doing the same (it is allowed under Article 130 of the Single European Act)."

Greenpeace believes that the results from NASA, and from the European Arctic stratospheric ozone experiment, show that severe ozone depletion, possibly resulting in the creation of an ozone hole could occur over parts of the northern hemisphere--including Britain--in the next few weeks or months. Preliminary NASA results released on 3 February show that the development of a late winter or

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spring ozone hole is increasingly likely. The reason is that CFCs and other chlorine-containing chemicals have reached the stratosphere and have been broken down to chlorine monoxide, with halons being broken down to create bromine monoxides. NASA has found 1.5 parts per billion of chlorine monoxide over eastern Canada and northern New England--a higher level than has ever before been recorded over the north or south polar regions.

Data have also indicated a lessening of the atmosphere's predicted ability to recover from periods of ozone depletion. The likelihood of significant volcanic ozone loss over the northern hemisphere, now and in the future, is greatly increased by the presence of large quantities of natural volcanic particles in the lower stratosphere, which effectively lock up oxides of nitrogen that would otherwise combine with reactive chlorine before it is involved in the reactions that lead to ozone destruction.

An increase in the number of sulphuric acid particles, which act in that way, is the result of a tenfold increase in stratospheric aerosol created by the Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption. That eruption has affected the likely timing and severity of ozone depletion, but it would not cause that without the chlorine and bromine pollution.

The chemicals that contribute to the pollution include CFCs, carbon tetrachloride, HCFCs, methyl chloroform and halons. In the United Kingdom, ICI is the largest manufacturer of those chemicals. It has announced the closure of its CFC 11 and CFC 12 plants from early 1993, but it then intends to import CFCs from the Dutch chemical company Akzo.

The Department has received the rest--and, indeed, the summary--of the hard work done by Greenpeace. Let me add that, according to the opening leader in New Scientist on 15 February--written by an extremely responsible and knowledgeable man--

" New Scientist does not always see eye to eye with Greenpeace, but it happens that when Greenpeace calls for a ban on the production of all substances that deplete ozone, it is talking sound scientific common sense. The Prime Minister should not instinctively reject its proposals."

Having received notice, will the Government tell me their reaction to the work of Greenpeace ?

The Scotsman says :

"Springtime is the danger period in both northern and southern hemispheres, when sunshine arrives after a long dark winter, causing the perfect conditions for ozone destruction by chemical reaction. The ozone overhead in Europe during this month and next month is already 8 per cent. less than it was a decade ago. Tackling the problem is not so much a political opportunity, but a life-saving opportunity, and the Government should act now. It will give scientists and environmentalists no satisfaction to say I told you so. In a week's time the satellite which suggested the ozone layer above Britain was primed for destruction, will face the northern hemisphere again. What it then reveals should be irrelevant. The need for drastic action has been proven."

My distilled view is that we are not dealing with an ecological time-bomb that is likely to go off in 1992 or 1993, but by 2005, the situation could be horrendous. However, because it will get worse before it gets better, we have a five to 10-year lag time. The questions that I ask are therefore urgent and really for the here and now. The hon. Member for Rochford (Dr. Clark), who is Chairman of the Select Committee on Energy and a knowledgeable chemist, knows that there are such things as lag times. I see that he assents to that general view.

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The chief danger may not be human beings but the effect on crops. I understand that there is a possibility of ultra- violet damage to crops, especially seedlings. DNA absorbs strongly in ultra -violet, which causes chromosome breakages and mutations in higher plants, and that is proportional to dose. The suggestion is that natural levels of ultra violet, for example in polar regions and the tropics, may affect species distribution favouring those with a low nuclear DNA content.

If that hypothesis is correct, increases in ultra-violet may have long-term effects on ecosystems leading to the exclusion of species with high nuclear DNAs. Some evidence suggests that ultra violet can damage chloroplast DNA, the extra-nuclear genetic machinery present in green cells. This may lead to abnormalities in photosynthetic machinery and loss of yield, quite apart from any other effects through the nuclear genetic mechanism.

The susceptibility of seedlings to ultra violet varies with species. Most experimental work is done with young seedlings, because they grow quickly, in a limited range of crop plants. More work must be done, particularly in relation to flavonoid synthesis. On exposure to high levels of ultra violet, many plants produce large amounts of flavonoid pigments, which absorb ultra violet and thus minimise damage elsewhere in the cell. Quite a lot is known about the biochemistry of the effects, and ultra violet appears to increase transcription rates of genes involved in flavonoid synthesis. There are common features of the biosynthetic pathways leading to flavonoid production and to production of anti-fungal compounds and phytoalexins, which are produced on exposure to fungal attack. I do not know--nor do those with whom I have talked--and I have been unable to find out whether exposure to ultra violet, thus stimulating the flavonoid pathway, also confers anti-fungal resistance by stimulating that part of the route common to phytoalexin synthesis. Plants weakened by ultra violet damage may be more liable to fungal bacterial attack nevertheless.

There is a desperate need for research in this field. I understand that researchers led by Dr. David Royle and Dr. Keith Brent at Long Ashton and by Peter Ayres at Lancaster are applying for a number of grants and help in dealing with this situation.

The Library of the House has produced some excellent material on the consequences for plants of ozone depletion. Dr. Ann Davies of the Library has written on that subject and the information will be available to the Department. I found it extremely convincing. On 25 February, I asked the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what assessment the departmental plant pathologists had made of the results for agriculture of changes in the ozone layer. The Under-Secretary replied :

"Against the background of the Department of the Environment's continuing programme of work on the effects of ozone depletion on plants, this Department is considering advertising for a research proposal on this matter."

Why do not the Government agree at once--

It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed. That this House do now adjourn.-- [Mr. Kirkhope.]

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