House of Commons Hansard Debates for 6 Dec 1993

Sir Terence Higgins (Worthing) : I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor on his presentation on Budget day, which was extremely effective. The Select Committee on Procedure has just published its responses to the Government's proposals on budget in which the new format is working.

The hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar), in a Freudian slip, referred to the debate on the Queen's Speech. That was a rather understandable slip. We had an economic debate on the Queen's Speech, at the choice of the Opposition, just a few days before the Budget statement and we now have a wide-ranging debate on the Budget this afternoon. That does not really fulfil the objective set by the Government, who said :

"this improved presentation should contribute to a more informed and focused debate on public expenditure, taxation and borrowing". We shall need to look carefully at the extent to which the change in timing and the change in format are achieving the Government's objectives.

The centrepiece of my right hon. and learned Friend's Budget is, in a very real sense, the proposal for putting VAT on fuel and the proposal for compensating pensioners and people on low incomes who are affected seriously. My feeling, as my right hon. and learned Friend well knows, is that this is a political time bomb. No tax, not even the community charge, has caused as much furore as this tax before a single penny of it has been paid. I felt that there was a strong caes for going to the 17.5 per cent. rate straight away rather than for moving to 8 per cent. next spring and then to 17.5 per cent. after that.

I in no way complain about--on the contrary, I greatly welcome--my right hon. and learned Friend's proposal for helping those on pensions and those on low incomes who will be affected by the tax. My right hon. and learned Friend has emerged as a kind of Robin Hood. [ Hon. Members :-- "Nottingham."] Indeed, he comes from Nottingham. I sometimes thought that he might make a

Column 56

rather good Friar Tuck ; Robin Hood was not the role in which I envisaged him. My right hon. and learned Friend now proposes to impose VAT on fuel on virtually the entire population and then to spend almost half the money raised on 15 million people. That action cannot be described, as the hon. Member for Garscadden did, as a regressive move. On the contrary, it is a move in the opposite direction.

I am glad that my right hon. and learned Friend has resisted the temptation to extend VAT to other items that are presently zero rated. The experience of extending VAT to fuel should give us a clear indication of what the consequences of extending VAT to other items would be. We should be likely to lose half the revenue in compensating the people affected. Be that as it may, I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will not be tempted to stick at 8 per cent. for fuel. The introduction of multiple rates in VAT is a move that should not be made. In addition, my right hon. and learned Friend will have to be pretty tough with members of the European Community in resisting their pressures to abolish zero rating here. Perhaps I might also express a general concern about the tendency of Chancellors of the Exchequer--perhaps two of the recent Chancellors--to anticipate future tax changes. If the Treasury forecast was brilliantly accurate and could be relied upon, there might be a case for that. Any attempt to pre-empt the view of the Chancellor 18 months or two years ahead, when the forecast clearly is not accurate, should be done with considerable restraint.

Another thing that has worried me since the last Budget has been the extent to which many proposals for tax increases or public expenditure cuts have been floating around. Despite my right hon. and learned Friend's view on purdah, the case for both the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary going into purdah in the period up to the Budget is considerable.

Of course, there is great relief once we have heard in the Budget that many of the scare stories have not come to fruition. We should not underestimate the concern which scare stories about the closing of sub-post offices or the means-testing of pensions can cause to our constituents. Their fears are real, and the fact that those fears turn out not to be realised in no way should diminish the concern that is felt in the intervening period.

Mr. Dewar : I have some sympathy with the right hon. Gentleman. Does he accept that the disinformation sometimes comes from the Government, not from the Opposition?

Sir Terence Higgins : I said that it had been a rather general tendency lately and it is important to bear that in mind. Having got through the Budget, there are other proposals which have been floated immediately. I refer in particular to the proposal for negative income tax or a tax credit scheme which has been going around for the past few days. Long ago in 1974, the Conservative Government did a great deal of work on that subject. Had we not lost the 1974 election, we had every intention of legislating and we had gone a long way towards drafting the proposals.

There is a great case for a tax credit scheme. We recognised at that time that we did not have the money to make the change. It is an expensive change and we proposed to legislate and to implement gradually over time. The same idea came up 10 years ago, when a study

Column 57

group on the subject, which I happened to chair, was set up in the Conservative party. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House was much involved at that time. We were concerned that changes had been made in the interim by the Labour Government, because Joel Barnett and Barbara Castle--as they then were--had stopped our proposals. It was felt that, in the intervening space of time, we had probably diverted from the direction which a tax credit scheme would require. That turned out not to be the case.

If one looks in detail, it is no more difficult now than it would have been earlier to implement a tax credit scheme. In some ways, it would solve the problem of child benefit and similar problems. The problem with child benefit is that it is universal, because it is a tax allowance which applies to everyone, whatever tax rate they might pay. That is why we are stuck with the universal child benefit handout. However, if we were to move to a tax credit scheme, that would mould automatically to the arrangements where, as income goes up, so benefits decline and tax payments increase.

Mr. Jack Straw (Blackburn) : It is no secret that the Labour Government which came in in 1974 also looked at the tax credit proposal. For similar reasons to which the right hon. Gentleman adverted, they decided that they could not go ahead at that time because of the additional cost, over and above the existing and separate schemes of tax allowances and social security benefits. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the cost of implementing such a scheme would still be substantial?

Sir Terence Higgins : That is certainly the case, but I do not think that that was the reason why the proposal was killed. It was killed by a Committee which contained--as I remember--Barbara Castle, Joel Barnett and someone else.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman : I was on the Committee also.

Sir Terence Higgins : I apologise to my hon. Friend.

Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. The hon. Lady has been here long enough to know my feelings about seated interventions.

Sir Terence Higgins : I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) and I said so a moment ago. We were proposing to legislate and then bring in the proposal as soon as it could be afforded without wrecking the economy.

Mr. Robert Sheldon (Ashton-under-Lyne) : I was also a member of that Select Committee. The major reason why the proposal was not brought in was the cost, but also 44 benefits would not have been included. That would have produced a large number of falsifications of the amounts of money which were going to be paid to an individual. That was the complexity on which the proposals foundered.

Sir Terence Higgins : That is true--I am agreeing with everyone. It is true that we could not have a tax credit scheme that was totally comprehensive.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman : Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Column 58

Sir Terence Higgins : With respect to my hon. Friend, I must press on. I will now leave what turned out to be a remarkably controversial remark and speak on the Budget judgments.

I will speak about two of the broad issues raised by my right hon. and learned Friend. We are having the old debate between Keynesians and monetarists. It does not seem inappropriate that, in the present economic situation, we should run a large budget deficit. I understand the points which have been made by my right hon. and learned Friend about the need to reduce that in time. There are arguments for delaying that until such time as the recovery has proceeded further, and one could then see to what extent the PSBR had diminished because of increases in tax revenues and reductions in unemployment benefit.

I fear that, if anything, there is a danger that my right hon. and learned Friend may have planned to take out rather too much too soon. After all, a swing from £50 billion to £38 billion on the PSBR is a pretty massive shift. On the other hand, it may well be taking coutervailing action with regard to the money supply, because my right hon. and learned Friend persisted in the rather strange arrangements which were announced by the previous Chancellor, who confused the issue with regard to funding policy.

The Red Book states that funding policy would continue on the basis set out in the 1993-94 medium-term financial strategy, with sales of debts to banks and building societies from 1993-94 onward counting as funding in the same way as debts to other sectors. That, of course, is a complete perversion of the normal terminology. When one says something is "fully funded", one means that it is being fully funded from the non-bank sector. Therefore, what is involved is that it is being fully funded, including payments to the banks. I will not go into the usual rigmarole about printing money and so on.

It reassures me that, if my first proposition were true, my right hon. and learned Friend may have overdone the reduction in size of the PSBR or, at least, in not funding it completely. We must hope that the overall effect of those difficult matters of judgment will be to lead us to recovery without an upsurge of inflation. The forecast of 2.25 per cent. growth in non-oil GDP during the next year, against the present background of unemployment, is not a highly ambitious target.

I will say a final word, and I will finish as I began. It is important that we should look at the new procedures. It has always been the case that, at the time of the autumn statement, the House has debated both public expenditure and taxation. The same has been true in the spring. However, the Budget was not a unified Budget in the sense that any hon. Member could say that he would like to put up taxes on this or put up public expenditure on that, with the two being taken together. That is not so.

We are precluded by the rules of order and by rules about money resolutions and about Ways and Means resolutions from debating all the proposals which might be made for increasing taxation or public expenditure. The Procedure Committee's recommendations are worth while, but it is not even a unified Budget in terms of the Government. I have a strong suspicion that, when various Ministers went to my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary or my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor, they did not say that they would have more money if my right hon. and learned Friend was prepared to put up tax on this or that. The Budget is not unified even within the

Column 59

Government. So we are a long way from becoming a Parliament that has a properly unified Budget. There was initially a lack of consultation on the unified Budget. The consultative document was published, then we had an election and no one thought about it any more. The next thing we knew, the unified Budget was about to happen. I hope that we shall manage to get our procedures sorted out despite that and after the event, but I am not at all convinced that the arrangements that we have brought into play are ideal. We should in any event look at what the Procedure Committee has said in response to the Government's reply to its report.

5.59 pm

Mr. Denzil Davies (Llanelli) : I admire the ingenuity of the Government in devising new and additional taxes. I suspect that my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) is quietly admiring, too. I have to hand it to the Chancellor : the tax on commercial insurance is a first-class wheeze. I use the word "wheeze" because there was a previous Chancellor who used it--indeed, as I watched the present Chancellor presenting his Budget, I asked myself, "Who does he remind me of?", then banished the thought immediately from my mind. The tax on commercial insurance is extremely clever and opens up possibilities for next year, because, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman told us, insurance is in the exempt list attached to the sixth directive, as are financial services and consumer credit. That is because--as the right hon. Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins) knows better than anyone, having introduced this wretched tax--it is very difficult to impose VAT on insurance and commercial and financial services. How would we deal with inputs and costs, for example?

I congratulate the Government on the way in which they have been able to invent more and more taxes--whether on aeroplanes, cars, houses, individuals or fuel. And who knows what will happen next year ; we may have VAT at 17.5 per cent. on food, domestic transport, print and water services. The Government have shown themselves to be far more ingenious than Labour Governments at increasing taxes and imposing new taxes on the British public, even though Labour is supposed to be the party that imposes taxes.

At one time, Tory Governments and Tory Chancellors defended increases in and the proliferation of indirect taxes by saying, "Ah, but we are reducing income tax. That will mean more money in the pocket and will be an incentive to business men, workers and industrialists. It will bring freedom of choice." But there is no freedom of choice when people are taxed on their homes or motor car insurance. Intellectually, therefore, the Conservatives' freedom of choice argument is fast disappearing.

The Government cannot even argue that they are reducing income tax, because they are putting it up : it has been increased in the previous Budget and again in this Budget--very cleverly, of course. Allowances are not to be indexed. When I was on the Government Benches, Lord Lawson, as he now is, would bore us night after night about how important it was to index everything. In those days, Conservative party policy was : "If it moves, index it." Now we have moved away completely from the concept of indexing allowances. Allowances now apply not against

Column 60

40 per cent. but only 30 or 25 per cent.--and down to 15 per cent. in the case of mortgage tax relief. The Government have proliferated indirect taxes and created and imposed more income tax.

May I make a plea, as I did last year, on behalf of someone about whom we have all forgotten. I refer to the middle manager--the person who is a manager or technician in a small or medium-sized engineering or manufacturing firm. I realise that--with one or two exceptions--the modern Conservative party has little interest in manufacturing or engineering. Managers and technicians in smaller firms earn £40,000, £50,000 or perhaps even £60,000 a year. Above £30,000 or even less, their income is taxed at 40 per cent. That is an extraordinarily high rate of tax to charge people who, as much as anyone, are our wealth producers. It would be quite easy to reorganise the income tax system to increase the ceiling on the 30 per cent. band to £50,000. I have tabled some questions on that subject and I will not go over the ground again, but the Chancellor could perfectly well have done that.

The present system is unfair. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) said, we read on the front page of the Evening Standard that someone who happens to be a partner in an American merchant bank receives £1 million in bonus. What has he done to earn it, I do not know. But taxing a person who earns £1 million in bonus, wages or emoluments and someone who earns £35,000 a year working in an engineering firm at the same 40 per cent. rate is not the way to get Britain back into a position where it is producing again.

Mrs. Angela Browning (Tiverton) : Did not the hon. Gentleman's own party's manifesto contain a specific pledge to raise the 40 per cent. band to 50 per cent.? Are not the people to whom he refers tonight the very people who would have paid more tax under Labour? Was that why Labour lost the election in 1992?

Mr. Davies : The hon. Lady is being very boring. I am advancing a proposal that I advanced last year, with which many people would agree : a 40 per cent. band that starts at £30,000 a year penalises those who produce much of this country's wealth. The old Conservative party--not the Conservative party as it is now--would have accepted that argument and I am sorry that the hon. Lady fails to see the point.

What of the Budget itself ? After 14 years of Tory Government, the national balance sheet is hopelessly out of kilter. The Tory balance sheet just does not balance : the assets cannot cover the liabilities. After four Tory Governments, our assets have shrunk. They have diminished because of the squandering of North sea oil revenues, the plundering of public assets for private gain and the wholesale destruction of our manufacturing industry in the early 1980s. I will not accept any lectures about monetarism from Conservative Members : the profligate monetary policies of the mid and late -1980s have diminished this country's assets.

Our assets have also been diminished as a result of the extraordinary glorification of consumption and the consumer at the expense of production and the creation of wealth. We hear little from the modern Tory party about the creation of wealth. As the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer said the other day, we now tax capital and

Column 61

income at the same rate. Capital gains and income, emoluments and receipts alike are taxed at 40 per cent. The Tory party has forgotten the difference between capital and income, just as it has forgotten the need to produce and generate wealth before starting to consume. The Government's assets have shrunk and they cannot cover their liabilities. One approach to the problem would be to try to rebuild assets in order to cover liabilities. But that is likely to be rather difficult because our manufacturing and engineering base has shrunk. The present Budget does not even begin to rebuild the assets. I do not know where the growth--we are told that it will be 2 to 2.5 per cent. some time next year- -is expected to come from. Perhaps we will achieve 2 to 2.5 per cent. growth. If we do, I imagine that most of it will come from consumption and imports. It will certainly not come from the creation of wealth and assets. A growth rate of 2 to 2.5 per cent. will not begin to rebuild the assets on the balance sheet. There is a hidden message in the Budget--and no doubt the Financial Secretary will deal with this when he winds up--to the effect that everything will come from the reduction in interest rates. It is 5.5 per cent. now--or is it 5 per cent. ; I lose count?

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Stephen Dorrell) : It is 5.5 per cent.

Mr. Davies : It is 5.5 per cent. now. We hear much about the reduction in interest rates, but I thought that steady Eddie was in charge of interest rates now. The Financial Secretary looks surprised, but I read it in the newspapers.

Mr. Dorrell : I looked surprised because I was remembering our debates on the subject as the Maastricht Bill was going through the House earlier this year. The right hon. Gentleman should be in no doubt that the responsibility for fixing the rate of interest rests with Ministers. Responsibility for the timing and handling of the announcement of it has been shifted to the Bank of England.

Mr. Davies : What does one say to that? One has to admire the Treasury. It does not want to give the Bank of England any more power. I do not either. But the trendies whom one reads about in the newspapers, the Select Committee in the House of Commons and the Europeans, want to give the Bank of England all the power. The Treasury is doing a marvellous job-- at least in the short term--in conning the City and stemming the fashionable tide by pretending that it fixed the rate, but steady Eddie does the timing.

But what if steady Eddie does not do that for two years? Steady Eddie is a steady man and may decide that there will not be a further half per cent. cut before next November.

Mr. Dorrell indicated dissent.

Mr. Davies : The Financial Secretary shakes his head. What can steady Eddie decide? He cannot decide anything, of course. We hope we know who decides : the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister.

Mr. Dorrell indicated dissent.

Column 62

Mr. Davies : The Financial Secretary has nodded, so let us forget the notion of steady Eddie deciding on the timing. I am glad to hear it.

I shall now move on--or back--to assets. The assets have shrunk and are getting smaller. They cannot be increased. What does one do with a balance sheet where the assets are going down and there are liabilities. One would have to start shrinking the liabilities. One cannot do anything else. That is all that public corporations can do. They might indulge in a bit of creative accounting--perhaps a lot in some of them--but at the end of the day one must shrink the liabilities if one cannot shrink the assets. That is the journey on which the Chancellor and the Government are embarked.

I am sorry to say that the liabilities that will bear the brunt of the shrinkage, or the jettison, will be the old, the infirm, the poor and the unemployed. They are on the liability side of the balance sheet and those liabilities will be diminished. That is the best that the Government can do.

There are three Ministers whose job it is to shrink those liabilities : the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, about whom my hon. Friend the Member for Garscadden made some interesting remarks, which I shall try to follow in a moment ; the Secretary of State for Social Security ; and, of course, Top Cat himself, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. They are embarked on a venture to try to shrink the liabilities and balance the budget, in a few years' time. That now seems to be the great goal, as was the European monetary system at one time. The Government apparently need something else. They need the absolutism of a balanced budget to work towards.

Those three Ministers are embarked on a journey to shrink the liabilities, get rid of the PSBR and balance the budget. Let us first take the Chief Secretary. I am sorry that he is not here, but I well understand that he has other duties. He will carry out his job--I watch him on television-- with considerable zeal ; the zeal of the righteous.

The Chief Secretary brings to the debate the kind of intellectual veneer that he acquired at a somewhat dotty college in the backwaters of Cambridge. But allied to that veneer of intellectualism he also brings--I see it again on television--the arrogant glint of the Castilian. He is the conquistador. He is the man who will lay about them. He will lay about them with his sword. No liability will be allowed alive on the battlefield so long as the Chief Secretary is around.

Then there is the second of the triumvirate : the Secretary of State for Social Security. He is a more complex individual. He also worships, as we have been reminded, at the shrine of the free market. That is his absolutism. In economic terms that is his totem pole. But he is no conquistador or Castilian. Perhaps he is some kind of Anglo-Catholic with a conscience and a concern. He has been left in a terrible problem. On the one hand he worships the marketplace, on the other he must try to deal with those who suffer as a result of the marketplace : the redundant ; the bankrupt business man ; or the unemployed.

I would say that the Secretary of State for Social Security is the priest and the Chief Secretary is the warrior philosopher. I do not know how he will cope with those contradictions.Perhaps he will remain to the end of the journey, or perhaps there will be problems for him. Perhaps we should wait for his speech at the next Conservative party conference to see whether somehow he can work out those contradictions.

Column 63

Now we come to the Chancellor himself. He has one thing in common with me--we are both Members of the class of 1970. He has done rather better than I have, but I genuinely congratulate hm on his success and his forensic triumph last Tuesday. I have admired the way in which, during the 1980s, he managed to survive, indeed prosper, as a left- wing Tory during the reign of the great dictator--a bit like those members of Stalin's politburo who kept out of the dictator's way, did good works and survived.

The good work that the Chancellor of the Exchequer carried out was that he laid about the pressure groups, which no doubt earned him points with the great dictator. Many of us felt some sympathy with him for doing that. He engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the British Medical Association, the National Union of Teachers and the Police Federation. As a result of his successes, eventually he ended up at the Treasury.

The trouble with the Treasury is that it is difficult to find those devils. One does not see the British Medical Association, the National Union of Teachers or the Police Federation. Because of the long corridors, one does not see any devils, but they are there. The devils are there ; the sorcerers are there. Looking at the Budget, I am sorry to say that the Chancellor has fallen for the oldest and one of the cleverest sorcerers around--the balanced budget. He has fallen for it immediately, hook line and sinker.

Now we find the Chancellor--the pragmatist ; the warrior philosopher--the Chief Secretary, and the priest--the Secretary of State for Social Security --all locked together on a journey towards a balanced budget, and to jettison the liabilities. They are all in the little truck known as no turning back : the left of centre--hard centre we are now told--Chancellor and the other two who are far to the right.

I am sorry for the Chancellor. He needs the Castilian more than the Castilian needs him. It is the Chief Secretary who, in the main, will deliver the balanced budget that he needs. He needs the right wing of the Conservative party in order to deliver on the basis of his Budget.

If the Conservative party wants a balanced budget, so be it, but it is a rather foolish enterprise in which to be engaged. Governments have tried it before and, in many countries, they usually fail. If a Conservative Government want to be so foolish as to go down the road and eventually try to get to a balanced budget, so be it, but there is a price to be paid for a balanced budget.

That price should be paid by the money changers and the share dealers in the City, who are now cheering the Chancellor as they go along to collect their £1 million bonuses, as we have seen in the Evening Standard. It should not be paid by the poor, the unemployed, the infirm and those least able to do so. They will get no bonus out of the Tory Budget.

6.19 pm

Sir Rhodes Boyson (Brent, North) : I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor on four points in his Budget. The first is help to the pensioners, about which we had arguments earlier today. It is morally right that we should cushion pensioners against the rise in the cost of fuel, for three reasons--they lived through the slump of the 193Os, they fought in the war and they have no expectation of increased incomes.

Column 64

Secondly, I am glad that the Budget did not impose VAT on books and printed material. Taxes on knowledge were removed over 100 years ago, under Gladstone. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education told us today of the increased number of people going on to higher education, and that will mean a shortage of books in libraries. People on constricted incomes cannot buy books for themselves, so it is vital that universities have the right books in their libraries. I would not want a tax on books.

Thirdly, I welcome the Chancellor's intention--I trust that it will be more than an intention--over the next three years, to cut from 45 to 42.5 per cent. the amount of GDP going to Government. In a free society, 40 per cent. should be the limit. Beyond that, one becomes a collective society, irrespective of the colour of the Government, because at that stage more money goes to the Government than is healthy for Government or people.

Fourthly, as a London Member of Parliament, I welcome the green light for the extension of the Docklands light railway, which will be helpful.

Let me return to the real problem--the growth of the Government sector. Under Gladstone, to whom I have already referred, 9 per cent. of GDP went to Government. That was 110 years ago. The percentage has increased throughout the century, until under the last Labour Government it was 49 per cent. At the beginning of their time in office, the Conservative Government got it down to about 40 per cent., but now it is back up to 45 per cent. That is £5,500 for every man, woman and child in the country. In Japan, it is held at 30 per cent. In countries such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, which have a far grea to give an historical lecture, but the facts must be considered. In 1900, when we were the largest colonial power and controlled one quarter of the world, the great Lord Salisbury was both Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, and he had to help him only one Minister, an Under-Secretary in the Commons.

Now that the Empire has disappeared, the Foreign Secretary has five Ministers to help him. They all seem to be busy travelling around the world, whatever it is that they are doing. In Lord Salisbury's time, there were only 17 Ministers outside the Cabinet--36 Ministers in all. Now, there are two to three times that number.

More Ministers means more offices. They will want to do more things, there will be more legislation and more money must be poured into Government. The best thing to do is cut the number of Ministers. Business has survived only by cutting costs. If the Government really intend to cut Government provision, they should, as an example to the country, dismiss some Ministers. It would be rash to suggest that 20 should go over the next month, but the number must be cut. The more Ministers we have, the more people there are in the Executive, the less that Back Benchers can challenge the Executive, and the more that the Government, irrespective of colour, can get away with what they are doing. That is unhealthy. The Chamber was created to challenge the Executive powers of the Crown. At the moment, there are few of us left to challenge the Executive. Too many are concerned about becoming a Minister at some point.

Column 65

The Government may ask my advice on how that should be done. I have a solution, which I am sure will appeal to hon. Members. I listened carefully to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education. He has invented league tables. I believe in them. There should be evidence of what is being done, so that the results from one school can be compared with those from another. One can then see what is happening and learn why.

The Government should have league tables for all Departments, and possibly a year without any legislation, which would be healthy, and instead have debates about what the House should be about and the way that the country should be going. Every three months, a league table could be published showing how much money had been saved in each Department, and by how many the staff numbers had been cut. Furthermore, now that civil servants are getting honours based on merit, a number of knighthoods in the honours list could depend on how many people each head of Department had been able to dispense with, and how much money had been saved. That could transform the country. I give that idea free to the Minister. The leap should come not from the bottom but from the top.

I am not asking for any more money for London. I just want money moved from one pocket to another, because the money is there. [Interruption.] I must not reply to seated interventions. I shall say only that I would expect even the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz), a non-London Member, to approve of and support me in the London matter with which I am dealing.

Mr. Keith Vaz (Leicester, East) : I live in London, in Brent.

Sir Rhodes Boyson : I am astonished and honoured. I shall expect support for what I am saying from at least one Labour Front Bencher.

Mr. Vaz : I live in the London borough of Brent. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman can tell me how it is that the Conservative-controlled borough finds so much difficulty in emptying the dustbins in Teignmouth road.

Sir Rhodes Boyson : I have a simple solution for the hon. Gentleman. If he moves to Brent, North, I will ensure that the dustbins are emptied night and day. At 3 o'clock in the morning, the cart will rattle along. The offer is there to the hon. Gentleman if he wishes to take it up.

I am concerned about the state of the London Underground. It has become dangerous, difficult and a threat to safety. Some parts are 100 years old. The cables on the Central line, which caused so much trouble recently, are 70 years old. Some of the signals are 40 years old. Travelling today on a route that I had travelled last week at the same time, I saw that an escalator had still not been repaired. That is not far from here. One sees old people trying to struggle up escalators that are not working. This is the capital of the country. This is one of the five great cities of the world.

Having lived more of my life in London than in my native Lancashire, I can say on behalf of myself and of my constituents that there is a desperate need for investment in the underground system. I prefer that to concreting over the country, with county after county being destroyed by road building. If £2 billion or £3 billion of the money for roads

Column 66

were put into London, much could be improved. Without it, London will not be the capital we want it to be, with tourists coming in all the time. That is an important point.

I have three points with which to end--three is a good number ; it is like the holy trinity, so no doubt I will get the support of the House for what I have to say--two of which are non-party political. This afternoon, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education mentioned the need to reintroduce apprenticeships. Germany has 700,000 apprentices, one third of whom complete their apprenticeships before they enter university. They can therefore both manufacture and design. We have no equivalent.

The strength of an apprenticeship was that the pupil was linked to a craftsman, who served as a father figure. The problem with a boy in a one- parent family is the lack of a mature male figure as a model. If apprenticeships are reintroduced, they must involve fine journeymen, and apprentices will take their patterns of behaviour from their tutors-- whereas, at present, many young people adopt the behaviour patterns of the running gang. I commend to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State apprenticeships that assign the apprentice to an individual. That will do more for law and order among young people than anything else.

I am not over-excited about the immediate improvement in the number of young people entering higher education. I believe that a lot of that is because young people cannot get jobs. In any event, much of it is not higher education but longer education. One can keep people in schools until they are 60. A more important question is what education is provided and the speed with which it is accomplished. I am not against a loans system, but we must be fair and ensure that students have enough money to complete their education. If not, there will be an aggrieved minority in universities who may prove troublesome--not while they are there but when they leave--irrespective of the Government.

Twenty per cent. of students should be given a full higher education grant- -those with starred As.

Ms Hilary Armstrong (Durham, North-West) indicated dissent.

Sir Rhodes Boyson : They are the students who keep learning alive. There is no point to long-term education of the kind that the hon. Lady favours.

Such university students would do something for the country, as well as for themselves. The top 10 per cent. or 20 per cent. of students should receive full scholarships.

Mr. Vaz : State scholarships?

Sir Rhodes Boyson : Yes, state scholarships--a full grant, with all the costs of teaching paid. That was done in the 1930s, with a mixture of the two. Such students could read whatever they wanted, because they are the students who keep learning alive.

The other 80 or 90 per cent. could be subject to a full loan system. They should be asked, "Do you really want to go, or is it that you cannot get off that escalator? You had better go for something that will pay for your bread and butter later, so that you can pay back that loan." I refer to students on vocational courses, for which there is a desperate need thoughout the country. Men and women sit on a three-legged stool. If one leg falls off, something goes wrong with society. One leg is

Column 67

religion. One does not need to be religious, but one must have a view of life and what it is about. The second leg is social--the ability to work with people as a unit. The third is economic. If one gets those three legs right, society is right.

One element of the Budget knocks one of those legs away, with the cut in the married couple's allowance. The family is under desperate attack, and we must revive it. It may make economic sense to cut that allowance, but it does not make sense in terms of society. Unless we rebuild the family structure, the future will be worse, whatever we may do in material terms.

It should be the policy of any Government to check whether their future actions help the family. I appeal to the Government to change their mind and to ensure that the family is helped in every possible way.

6.34 pm

Next Section

Home Page