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Mr. Leighton : Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Michie : No, I really should carry on--but I did say that I would give way to the hon. Gentleman. I shall give way for the last time.

Mr. Leighton : I have listened carefully to the hon. Lady's speech, and she said a moment ago that Scottish Members of Parliament did not want to come here. Does she really mean that she does not want to be here? Presumably she wants to go somewhere else. Is that her party's official policy?

Mrs. Michie : The official policy of the Liberal Democratic party is to have a federal United Kingdom, and that includes a Scottish Parliament looking after its own affairs. I have come here, and it is pleasant to meet you all here, but--

The Second Deputy Chairman : Order. As the hon. Lady is here, she must abide by the rules of the Committee.

Mrs. Michie : I hope that you will accept, Dame Janet, that I was trying to reply to the intervention by the hon. Member for Newham, North- East (Mr. Leighton).

I believe that Scotland will get a better hearing on the continent in the Committee of the Regions than it gets in the House. The Minister would find it easier to nominate representatives to serve on that Committee if we already had the federal United Kingdom that I described. Its members could then be more easily drawn from Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, as they are drawn from the regions of Germany.

There is no doubt that a truly democratic European Community needs to be accountable to the interests of all the countries that lie within its boundaries. That includes countries such as Scotland and Wales. We in the Liberal Democratic party want to see a strengthened and more democratic European Parliament. I believe that there, and through the Committee of the Regions, Scotland in particular will find a voice, albeit a small voice as yet, in the Community. Allies will be found there among the peoples on the geographic periphery of the EC and from the centre, and among other ancient and historic nations with which we shall be able to co-operate and find common interests, not least cultural interests. For the time being, the Committee of the Regions gives Scotland a voice. That can only be good for our country.

Mr. Garel-Jones : This has been an interesting and useful debate for Ministers to listen to.

Mr. Leighton : On a point of order, Dame Janet. The Minister says that this "has been" an interesting debate. I would say that the debate "is" interesting. Why is the Minister using the past tense, as though the debate is closing?

The Second Deputy Chairman : As I have had occasion to point out before, whoever is in charge of the Committee is not responsible for the accuracy of what is said.

Mr. Garel-Jones : I used the phrase "has been" in the sense that I shall now refer to the points that have been raised. As the hon. Member for Newham, North-East will

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be aware, it is not a matter for me when the group of amendments will cease to be debated. I am simply intervening at a time that seems convenient for me and for the Committee.

As the Committee will be aware, the lead amendment in the group, amendment No. 13, was moved as a probing amendment--

Mr. Bill Walker : Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Garel-Jones : I should begin my speech before taking interventions--but I shall give way to my hon. Friend.

Mr. Walker : I trust that when he responds to the points that have arisen, my right hon. Friend will take careful note of the way in which separatist elements in Scotland see the Committee as a vehicle for breaking up the United Kingdom.

Mr. Garel-Jones : I have, of course, taken note of that fact, and my hon. Friend can rest assured that I shall deal with it. The Committee is indebted to the Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen for giving us the opportunity to debate both cohesion and the Committee of the Regions. I shall begin with amendment No. 28, on the Committee of the Regions, because that is the subject about which most, although not all, hon. Members have spoken.

I do not want to resume, if I can avoid doing so, the exchanges that I had with the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) about what other member states have done. The hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Hoon) said that my choice of illustrations was selective. Indeed it was--the only two member states to which I referred were those that have actually selected their membership. I simply said--and I reiterate now--that in neither of those countries were all the nominees elected local government representatives.

I reassure the Opposition, and the rest of the Committee, that the Government have made no decision whatever on either the distribution or the composition of the Committee of the Regions. I may inadvertently have misled some Opposition Members, but I am not in a position to say even that the Government reject the concept that we may end up with elected local government representatives. I ask the Committee to reject the amendment, if there is a Division on it, because enough interesting and important suggestions have been made from both sides of the Committee and from all the parties represented here for there to be meat for a proper consultation process. I utterly reject the idea that the Government have it in mind to pack the Committee of the Regions with Conservatives. I hope that we are not seeking to be frivolous, or to make debating points across the Chamber. If we are not, every Member of the Committee will know that there are proper ways for us to consult each other, both between political parties and, if that seems appropriate, between regional interests. That is what we intend to do.

Mr. George Robertson : We listened with great care when the Minister said that the Government still have an open mind on the matter. But of course we have listened with enormous care to him in the past, too, and we have learnt that all is not always as it seems.

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I shall ask the right hon. Gentleman a question : can we take it that, if the Committee votes for amendment No. 28, the Government will accept that decision and will not use some legal trickery to vote down or ignore the voice of Parliament?

Mr. Garel-Jones : The hon. Member and all of us at times find it difficult to resist making clever debating points. Let me say two things to him. First, it goes without saying that, if the Committee votes for his amendment, the Government will accept the will of the Committee in this matter. It also goes without saying that, when it became apparent to the Government that the legal advice--I accept that the hon. Gentleman will come back to this--which I gave the Committee in good faith was not correct, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary came immediately to the House--

Mr. George Robertson : He did not.

Mr. Garel-Jones : Yes he did, and he apologised to the House. This is one of the amendments on which it is indeed the case that, if the Government's view did not prevail, the Government would of course accept the will of the Committee. It also means, I hope, that we can have a serious and proper debate where we listen to each other. I assure the Committee that the Government have made no decisions whatever on this matter.

Mr. Salmond : Amendment No. 28 says nothing about political balance. Theoretically we could have 20 local councillors who were Conservatives. What many of us would like to hear is some elaboration of the Minister of State's point that there will be a proper political balance proportionate to support of the parties in the various parts and nations of the United Kingdom.

Sir Roger Moate (Faversham) rose--

Mr. Garel-Jones : If I may, Dame Janet, I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham. Then I would like to come to the meat of the debate and answer the point made by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond).

Sir Roger Moate : When my right hon. Friend said that the Government would accept the will of the Committee if the amendment were carried, may I urge him to be more cautious? Presumably he meant the will of Parliament as a whole. There would be a Report stage, would there not, and proceedings in another place, which would allow us to reverse such an ill-judged decision?

Mr. Garel-Jones : I do not anticipate the defeat of the Government on this matter, because I have listened carefully to what all my hon. Friends have said and I think that I have sensed in other quarters of the Committee some reluctance to tie the Government down--or, rather, tie the country down--in this matter. I would now like, if I may, to come to the principal points that have been made in the debate. In essence, we are looking at a Committee of the Regions which, as the hon. Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing) said, could be important. I would not care to anticipate how the Committee of the Regions may or may not develop. The hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Ynys Mo n (Mr. Jones), who speaks for Plaid Cymru, made points which many of my hon. Friends picked up.

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They are separatists. I do not think that they would deny it. [ Hon. Members :-- "Oh!"] Perhaps I shall stand corrected, but they have a view about the United Kingdom which I do not share and which I think that nobody on the Government side shares.

Having said that, however, I think that the Committee of the Regions, like so much else in the Community, depends on what the political parties and the participants in it choose to make of it. Our intention is that the United Kingdom should send people of the highest quality possible to the Committee of the Regions, and I hope that they will play a constructive role in it.

Mr. Gunnell rose--

Mr. Garel-Jones : I wish to make a bit more progress and address some of the arguments. Then I will give way to the hon. Gentleman. The Committee will, I hope, play an important consultative role--the House will recall that the Committee of the Regions is a consultative body--and the information and feedback that will come in from the regions to the Commission and to the Council will be of consequence. But the two issues that must be addressed are, first, the breakdown of the 24 members of the Committee and, secondly, its composition. The hon. Member for Moray--the point was picked up immediately by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-West (Mr. Butcher)--made the point extremely well. She put it to the Committee that there was a case, at any rate, for Scotland to have nine members. She went on to say that, if Scotland had nine members, Wales should have nine and Northern Ireland, like Luxembourg, should have six members. She acknowledged that that would account for all 24 members of the Committee of the Regions. I was pleased to hear some of my hon. Friends asking, as I asked myself, what about England? What about England indeed?

The hon. Lady was making the point to be helpful to the Committee, to demonstrate what a difficulty we face and how we need to bear these matters in mind in our discussions, but let me stand the hon. Lady's point on its head. It will not have escaped her notice that, on a proportional basis, England--my constituents--might be able to claim 20 of the 24 seats, leaving us two for Scotland, one for Wales and one for Northern Ireland.

Mrs. Ewing : I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, because he appreciated that I was making, essentially, a fairly facetious point in that regard. But do we not have to look seriously at the difference between a United Kingdom argument and a European argument, because we are talking about a European committee and not a United Kingdom one?

7.15 pm

Mr. Garel-Jones : I hope that I made it clear to the Committee, for those hon. Members who have just come in, that the hon. Lady was making the point to be helpful to the Committee and to illustrate how difficult it will be to crack the problem of distribution. I simply make the point, as an English Member, to the separatist Members here that I am a Welshman representing an English seat--and my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor) is a Scotsman representing an English seat. So I suspect--it would be unfair otherwise--that the lion's share of the members must go to England. Equally, even

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English Members sitting behind me, whose voices were, rightly, raised in defence of England and the English regions, would recognise that there needs to be some tilting towards Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Mr. Marlow : To a certain extent I agree with my right hon. Friend, but whereas one can make a case within the United Kingdom that Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, in numbers of constituents, should be slightly over-represented, for various reasons that we all know about, when it comes to a European institution which is trying to achieve regional representation throughout the European Community, there is no argument whatever that Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland should be more heavily represented than the regions of England--none at all.

Mr. Garel-Jones : These are matters in which the opinions expressed in the Committee must carry weight. I am sure that most of my hon. Friends will agree that the Committee of the Regions, which is, I understand, a subject of great interest in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, is not one that has been on the front page of the Watford Observer over the past 12 months--nor probably the Northampton Times .

Mr. Marlow : I assure my right hon. Friend that if Scotland had three times the representation of my constituents, it would be all over the front page and the back.

Mr. Garel-Jones : I detect, unusually in these debates, a consensus between my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) and myself and perhaps a consensus in the House, too. Not all the seats on the Committee of the Regions will be allocated to Scotland, to Wales and to Northern Ireland ; nor can it be the case that England will get 20 of the 24 seats. We have the mechanisms--our political system in Britain is quite sophisticated--for discussions among ourselves to try to find a sensible balance that enables the regions and England to be fairly represented.

If we can solve that difficult problem, the second point is the composition of the Committee of the Regions. Various difficulties and points have been raised, particularly by the hon. Member for Ynys Mo n (Mr. Jones), or Anglesey, as we would say on this side of the border. He spoke of the methods of nomination and about who chooses. Again, I assure hon. Members that the Government will listen to the ideas flowing from all quarters of the Committee. Of course, there is political diversity in parts of the United Kingdom. As hon. Members have pointed out, people live in a four- party system and there will have to be some effort to take that into account, if possible. The hon. Member for Ynys Mo n made two interesting and novel suggestions. The first, in regard to the Principality, was that the Welsh representatives on the Committee of the Regions should be answerable to a form of revamped Welsh Grand Committee. That suggestion is new to me, and it would need to be discussed. He also made the interesting suggestion that the Interreg programme might be used to assist Wales, as it were, in a structural manner. That idea is for discussion as well.

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The principal point that I put to the Committee is that while I will ask hon. Members to reject the amendment, I do so not because we do not recognise that a substantial

Mr. Gunnell rose --

Mr. Garel-Jones : I am sorry ; I promised the hon. Gentleman that I would give way.

Mr. Gunnell : May I again make the point that the Committee of the Regions will have a total membership of 189? It cannot function, even as a consultative committee, with 189 members without developing its own executive or bureau. My understanding is that the protocol will go for a bureau of 30, to be elected by the 189 members. I think the Minister accepts that the majority of nations will send elected members. If we do not send elected members, what likelihood is there that the 189 will choose our non-elected members to go on the bureau? By having non-elected members, surely we will not be effective in the operation of the committee.

Mr. Garel-Jones : As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, the two countries that have so far nominated have not nominated all their people as elected representatives. Seven of the 12 Danish appointees will be Queen's commissioners, appointed by the Crown. Those people play the role of mayors or burgemeesters in their areas, but they are not elected. The Government do not reject the proposition that there could be, or almost certainly will be, some elected local government representatives on the Committee of the Regions. For all I know, they may all be elected local government representatives.

Given the complexities that have emerged, and the balances that we must seek, especially in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but in England, too, so that it is properly represented, it would be unwise of the Committee to fetter our joint hands by approving the amendment. When the amendment is reached, I shall ask the Committee to reject it.

Mr. Gunnell : The right hon. Gentleman has cited Denmark. We already know that from Germany there will be at least 21 members representing regional authorities ; from Italy there will be at least 22 representing regional authorities, and from Spain 21 more representing regional authorities. The argument in other European countries is about the balance between regional authorities and municipalities, not between elected and non-elected members.

Mr. Garel-Jones : The assertions of the hon. Gentleman cannot yet be backed. Of the two countries which have completed the process of nomination, neither has nominated solely on the basis of elected authorities. He talked about Spain and asserted that the autonomies would be represented. In Spain there is a strong dispute on the distribution of the 21 seats between the 17 autonomies or regions and the municipalities ; that dispute has not been resolved. Reportedly, the Spanish Government may nominate elected officials or, in the case of the autonomies, appointed officials from the regional governments.

We may end up where the Opposition amendment seeks to bring us, but all that I am suggesting--I do not think it is controversial--is that it would be unwise at this stage to approve the amendment. Rather we should have proper discussion of the kind that we are used to in this country.

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Mr. Mallon : I thank the Minister for giving way, because I probably will not get an opportunity later to make this point. Earlier in the debate, when we were discussing nationalism in its various forms, Welsh, English and Scottish, I referred to the Irish term Sinn Fein and its literal definition. It means "ourselves alone". In retrospect, that may have caused offence to some hon. Members who were arguing from a different point of view. It was insensitive to use the term in that way. I still feel that that type of nationalism, which is introverted and introspective, leads to problems. I ask hon. Members, and especially the hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman), to accept that I was less than sensitive in putting in that way.

Mr. Garel-Jones : Before I move to discuss briefly the points raised by hon. Members on cohesion--

Mrs. Gorman : Before my right hon. Friend leaves the point, will he make it clear to the Committee whether those who serve on the Committee of the Regions will receive remuneration? If they are to receive only their expenses, will he tell the Committee how those expenses are to be controlled? If they are to be selected from among people already elected to public office, how will their duties be tied in and co-ordinated with the duties which they already have in this country? Our electors already find it unacceptable that so much of their money is gobbled up by this bureaucracy.

Mr. Garel-Jones : My hon. Friend should speak to those who serve on the Economic and Social Committee, where the work is similar and equally valuable. If I am corrected by my officials, I will ensure that the Committee is aware of it, but I gather that the expenses to be paid to members of the Committee of the Regions will be similar to those enjoyed by the members of the Economic and Social Committee. In the last few months, we have lost some valuable members of that committee who were unable to meet the burdens of the work. I do not agree with my hon. Friend that the amount of work done, and the potential for feeding regional points of view into the councils of the Community, is an undue burden to ask our taxpayers to bear. I agreed with the hon. Member for Moray when she said that the geography of the matter needs to be taken into account. I certainly agree with the principal point of her remarks, which was that proper consultation must take place before any final decisions are made. Finally, I should like to say a few words about cohesion, which was referred to by some hon. Members.

Sir Roger Moate : I am sorry to interrupt again, but my right hon. Friend said "finally", so he has left the question of the Committee itself. Before he leaves that matter, perhaps he could address some of the many points which have been made in the debate on the principle of the Committee of the Regions. He will be aware that the Committee has been welcomed by-- as he calls them--the separatists and the nationalists, for obvious reasons, and by the federalists and the socialists for their reasons.

Is not my right hon. Friend worried that such a proposal from Conservative Members is attracting such support, when it is clear that, philosophically and constitutionally, the Committee of the Regions is intended to bypass this Westminster Parliament and create a structure that relates the regions directly to Brussels? Is not

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that the reason why the Committee is so welcomed? Does he not feel a sense of embarrassment or even shame that we should be proposing something of that sort?

Mr. Garel-Jones : My hon. Friend will not be surprised to know that my view and the view of the Conservative party about the way in which the Committee of the Regions will develop--I hasten to tell them that the setting up of the Committee was welcomed by Her Majesty's Government--will prevail, just as the views of the party to which he and I belong have prevailed for quite some time. That is why we sit on this side of the Committee and Opposition Members sit on the other side of the Committee.

I urge my hon. Friend not to believe--as one would expect the Welsh National party and the Scottish Nationalist party to believe--that this will be some sort of Trojan horse which will insert all those separatist dreams into the life blood of the Community. I assure him that that is not part of the agenda of the Spanish Government, the French Government or the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The Secretary of State for Wales and the hon. Member for Ynys Mo n recognise that. The regions in the United Kingdom have already taken an important initiative which brings Wales into contact with other regions in the Community. That is our agenda for the Committee of the Regions. I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Sir R. Moate) that our agenda in this, as in so many other matters, will prevail over the agenda of the Labour party.

I shall now turn to the cohesion fund. I simply remind the Committee that cohesion has been an explicit Community goal since 1986. As the Committee will be aware, the roots of cohesion go back much further than that. The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston) reminded us of that in his intervention in the debate.

Several hon. Members and hon. Friends asked why the cohesion fund is directed towards countries and not regions. The cohesion effort takes place at regional, national and Community level. The cohesion fund will provide support for projects of general interest to the Community in transport infrastructures and the environment in the least prosperous states while they are under the strict budgetary restraints which are required by the convergence process.

Mr. Christopher Gill (Ludlow) : Will my right hon. Friend give way?

7.30 pm

Mr. Garel-Jones : I shall give way in a moment.

I remind the Committee that the whole of Greece, Portugal and the Irish Republic and most of Spain are already classified as objective 1 regions. I have checked the figures which I gave the Committee as to how much the United Kingdom and other member states are contributing to the cohesion fund and I am glad to say that they are accurate.

The United Kingdom is the fifth largest contributor to the cohesion fund. Germany will contribute about 30 per cent., France 20 per cent., Italy 20 per cent., Spain 10 per cent. and the United Kingdom 5 per cent. The United Kingdom contribution is only slightly larger than that of Holland.

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Mr. Gill : My right hon. Friend will not be unaware of the current interest in railways. It has been said that, when the trans-European railway network is completed--it will be defective in the United Kingdom but completed on the continent by and large--it will be possible to get from Frankfurt to Messina in a much shorter time than it will be possible to get from Frankfurt to Glasgow.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that some of our constituents might have a view about that, and might question why the United Kingdom is contributing to cohesion funds which will create such facilities in countries in other parts of Europe out of our taxpayers' money when those facilities which we consider we so badly need will not be available in the United Kingdom?

Mr. Garel-Jones : I am sorry that my hon. Friend continues to examine these matters in what I regard as an exceedingly narrow way. He intervened previously to make a similar point. I think my answer to him then was that, since the United Kingdom has more transnational companies than any other country in the Community, the improvement to the trans- European network--albeit, as he would see it, building roads for the Greeks and the Portuguese--redounds to the benefit of our companies, which are big investors in all four cohesion fund recipient countries.

Sir Teddy Taylor : The Minister will be aware that, in terms of the gross national product per capita, Wales could well have qualified in its own right for cohesion funds--although, obviously, we do not qualify when the gross national product per capita is taken on the United Kingdom basis. Given that the attempts to get objective 1 status for Wales appear from the announcements in the newspapers today to have failed, can the Minister in any way press, through the institutions of the European Community, to see whether the transnational links to which my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) referred a moment ago can be improved by virtue of the cohesion funds in a way which would benefit the railway services running through north and south Wales linking London to Ireland?

Mr. Garel-Jones : My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) made some interesting suggestions in that area. I have given an undertaking that we will not only examine them but, if there is any way forward on that line, we will certainly press them.

Sir Teddy Taylor : Is the Minister saying that Britain will qualify for aid from the cohesion fund? I am sorry ; I misunderstood him. I thought that he was saying that to the hon. Member for Ynys Mo n (Mr. Jones).

Mr. Garel-Jones : I do not think that he was saying that ; my hon. Friend must have misheard him.

Finally, I shall refer to the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash), who is not in his place. I will not detain the Committee. My hon. Friend made three points which were all wrong, and I shall say why. First, he said that the European investment bank never issued any press releases. The bank issued a press release in January announcing that Sir Brian Unwin, the chairman of Her Majesty's Customs and Excise, had been made president of the bank.

My hon. Friend then said that Italy got 40 per cent. of all receipts. That is also wrong. The actual figure is 24 per cent. The United Kingdom is the third largest beneficiary,

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with 15 per cent. of the total lending, with Spain second at 19 per cent. Finally, my hon. Friend said that Britain would be paying £7.24 billion. That reflects a misunderstanding of the bank's capital structure. We are committed to contributing £102 million between now and 1998.

Mr. Andrew Mitchell (Gedling) rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question put, That the Question be now put :--

The Committee divided : Ayes 288, Noes 259.

Division No. 161] [7.37 pm

AYES

Adley, Robert

Ainsworth, Peter (East Surrey)

Aitken, Jonathan

Alexander, Richard

Alison, Rt Hon Michael (Selby)

Alton, David

Amess, David

Ancram, Michael

Arbuthnot, James

Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

Arnold, Sir Thomas (Hazel Grv)

Ashby, David

Aspinwall, Jack

Atkins, Robert

Atkinson, David (Bour'mouth E)

Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

Baker, Nicholas (Dorset North)

Baldry, Tony

Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

Bates, Michael

Batiste, Spencer

Beith, Rt Hon A. J.

Bellingham, Henry

Beresford, Sir Paul

Blackburn, Dr John G.

Booth, Hartley

Boswell, Tim

Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)

Bowden, Andrew

Bowis, John

Brandreth, Gyles

Brazier, Julian

Bright, Graham

Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

Browning, Mrs. Angela

Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)

Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

Burns, Simon

Burt, Alistair

Butler, Peter

Butterfill, John

Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

Carlile, Alexander (Montgomry)

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Carrington, Matthew

Channon, Rt Hon Paul

Churchill, Mr

Clappison, James

Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth (Ruclif)

Coe, Sebastian

Colvin, Michael

Congdon, David

Conway, Derek

Coombs, Anthony (Wyre For'st)

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Cope, Rt Hon Sir John

Currie, Mrs Edwina (S D'by'ire)

Curry, David (Skipton & Ripon)

Dafis, Cynog

Davies, Quentin (Stamford)

Davis, David (Boothferry)

Day, Stephen

Deva, Nirj Joseph

Devlin, Tim

Dickens, Geoffrey

Dicks, Terry

Dorrell, Stephen

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Dover, Den

Duncan, Alan

Durant, Sir Anthony

Eggar, Tim

Elletson, Harold

Emery, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Evans, David (Welwyn Hatfield)

Evans, Jonathan (Brecon)

Evans, Nigel (Ribble Valley)

Evans, Roger (Monmouth)

Evennett, David

Ewing, Mrs Margaret

Faber, David

Fabricant, Michael

Fenner, Dame Peggy

Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

Fishburn, Dudley

Forman, Nigel

Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

Forth, Eric

Foster, Don (Bath)

Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman

Fox, Dr Liam (Woodspring)

Fox, Sir Marcus (Shipley)

Freeman, Roger

French, Douglas

Gale, Roger

Gallie, Phil

Garel-Jones, Rt Hon Tristan

Garnier, Edward

Gillan, Cheryl

Goodlad, Rt Hon Alastair

Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

Gorst, John

Grant, Sir Anthony (Cambs SW)

Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

Greenway, John (Ryedale)

Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth, N)

Grylls, Sir Michael

Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

Hague, William

Hamilton, Rt Hon Archie (Epsom)

Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

Hampson, Dr Keith

Hannam, Sir John

Hargreaves, Andrew

Harris, David

Haselhurst, Alan

Hawkins, Nick

Hayes, Jerry

Heald, Oliver

Heath, Rt Hon Sir Edward

Heathcoat-Amory, David

Hendry, Charles

Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

Hicks, Robert

Higgins, Rt Hon Sir Terence L.

Hill, James (Southampton Test)

Hogg, Rt Hon Douglas (G'tham)

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