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The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Tony Newton) : As my hon. Friend the Member for DerbyNorth (Mr. Knight) who is part of what were the usual channel that his words were not, "We are in a mess," but, "They"--the Labour Government of which the hon. Gentleman was a member--"were in a mess." With that, I wholly concur.
Mr. Cryer : That just goes to show that Whips should not mutter under their breath : their remarks can be misinterpreted. It sounded to me as though the hon. Gentleman was saying that the Government were in a
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mess. By saying anything this morning, when the Government have been completely outmanoeuvred, the deputy Chief Whip is going beyond his remit.The Government should not press the motion. The Leader of the House ought to accept the view that it should be withdrawn, although I suppose that he will press it. As I have said, I regard it as an abuse of Parliament. I have never seen a motion couched in such terms before. We are talking about two important items of legislation involving a massive chunk of expenditure. Incidentally, I hope that the Government will not start talking about accountability as regards local authority expenditure because their behaviour shows clearly that they want merely to rubber-stamp the expenditure of huge sums. It is simply not good enough.
I hope that, having listened to our brief debate, the Leader of the House will decide not to go ahead. I hope that he will give us the usual amount of time, either extending our proceedings beyond 17 December, which we should be quite happy to accept, or deferring the Committee stage until we return on 11 January, which is only a few weeks off. We can then get down to the job of examining the whole thing properly and giving the legislation the sort of scrutiny that we are used to. It is a sad day when legislation is rushed through in such a manner and when Parliament is given such short shrift. 12.14 pm
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : What a difference a day makes. The Leader of the House was present and on time yesterday when he announced the business for next week. He wants to introduce a guillotine on a proposal that will rip off millions of people through extra taxation. That is what national insurance contributions are all about. They are a form of tax. The Government profess to be a low taxation Government, but they are not a low taxation Government at all. What they do is switch taxes ; it is either value added tax going up or, as in this case, national insurance contributions going up.
Let us be fair about it--tax increases are in the Budget. The Budget can have as many as five or six days of debate on the Floor of the House and the Bill then goes to Committee. Many years ago, debates on a Finance Bill could last for five, six or seven weeks. Most of its stages had to be completed by 20 July and, before then, extensive debate took place. We might not have liked the results, but at least we used to have major debates about tax increases.
The motion has been tabled today because of what the Leader of the House announced yesterday. It is not personal, but he is being pushed by others in the Cabinet who are so full of arrogance and contempt for the British people that they have decided to push through next week, without any proper debate, a tax increase which will affect all workers and employers.
I could understand it if the House did not have sufficient time for debate. I mentioned the other week, and yesterday, that 1993 has been a non- election year. I have calculated that the House of Commons will have been in session for only seven months by 17 December, the date of finishing for Christmas. It is an outrage. Why did not the Government accept the motion tabled by myself and my hon. Friends last week, when we proposed that Parliament should sit for an extra week up to 24 December? What is wrong with that? A lot of people out there have to work until Christmas eve ; they cannot pack up on 17 December.
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Mr. Don Dixon (Jarrow) : Santa Clause does not come down their chimney until 25 December.
Mr. Skinner : I packed up believing in Santa Clause at the same time that I packed up believing in the royal family, when I was about three. He did not do me much good, being in a family of 10 just before the war.
There is plenty of time. Anybody out there who watches "Westminster Live" would ask why Parliament is not sitting the week after next week. We have done it before. It is not as though Parliament has risen every year on 17 December. There have been a few odd occasions when we rose earlier, but generally we have gone on to 21 or 22 December and, on occasions, to 23 December.
The Government do not want anybody to oppose them. They have become used to power and they are contemptuous of anybody having the guts to take them on. They say, "We will get the Leader of the House to move the motion quickly. There will not be too many people there and nobody will notice." As it happened, it was spotted by my hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench, and we said, "We are not having it ; it is not playing the game to put up taxes in a day, without proper scrutiny."
Mr. Cryer : The Government say that they are short of time and that they must get the legislation through. My hon. Friend will recall that the Jopling report, which the Government back would close down Parliament even more. In that event, we would have no time at all and the Government would escape scot free from the scrutiny that they richly deserve.
Mr. Skinner : My hon. Friend has taken a strong position against the Jopling report, as I have, and one or two others, including my hon. Friend the Opposition Deputy Chief Whip--I do not know whether I can speak for him on this occasion, but I think that it is fair to say that he holds strong views on it.
It may seem all right to get rid of another day or week spent in Parliament --it is organised truancy--but let us face it, the Opposition's job is to oppose. That is why I hope that all my hon. Friends, along with my hon. Friends the Members for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon) and for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer), will oppose the Jopling report. I do not know whether they will, but I hope that they understand that, although we might be in the minority in the House, we have a chance to stand up and speak and to vote on important issues.
I am pleased that we had a vote this morning--I say that en passant, Mr. Deputy Speaker--because the Government lost their majority. In fact, they did not have a quorum. Those Tory Members who are in favour of next week's guillotine, which will enable the Government to increase people's taxes, were not here to vote this morning. Only 20 of them voted and I did not see any members of the Cabinet, apart from the Chief Whip. The Leader of the House was missing.
Mr. Skinner : He had to be brought here, as well as others, but it was too late. The big vote today was just after 10 am. Tory Members are not used to being here at this time. Parliament starts at 2.30 pm Monday to Thursday and they do not realise that one has to get here for at least 10.30 am on Fridays.
The Leader of the House may be the innocent in all this. I will give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he was
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pushed into tabling the motion and, yesterday, he probably thought that no one would be here today. The Government's behaviour is outrageous. They tell the House that a guillotine will be imposed next week and they then say to all the Tory Members," Go on, pack up for the holidays. You are on a four-day week."Mr. John Marshall (Hendon, South) : That is what the Leader of the Opposition has signed up to.
Mr. Skinner : I believe in a four-day week for workers. When that is offered to every worker in Britain, Parliament can have it as well, but not until then. Four million people do not have a job and it would be a great idea to have a four-day for workers because that would give young lasses and lads the chance to have a job. Mr. Cryer rose--
Mr. Skinner : I am on a different tack and I know that I must keep in order, because this is a narrow procedural motion. Should my hon. Friend intervene, I hope that he will do so on a straightforward procedural basis.
The Government have a cheek to flaunt their power. We gave them the opportunity last Friday to extend the debate on the Bills when we tabled our amendment, which was voted on. The Tories only managed to muster 99 votes then. That was a few more than today. I wonder where they go to. It is pretty clear that the Government told them to pack up and come back on Monday to pass the guillotine motion. The Government told them to refresh themselves and then come back to attack the working-class people. The tax increase also represents an attack on the middle class--all those Tory voters who have got pampas grass in their gardens in Surrey and everywhere else. They will be hit as well.
The Tory Government have dealt with the miners, the steelworkers and the shipyard workers. Now they are attacking their own middle class. No wonder they will get clobbered at the next election. We should have that election now. Instead of debating the motion, we should be debating a resignation motion, because I believe that 90 per cent. of the electorate, or perhaps 80 per cent.--I do not want to over-egg the pudding--want this lot out. They are fed up with all the Government's attacks. The tax increases are yet another one, right at the end of the autumn part of the Session.
I do not know whether it would have been possible to discuss the legislation in January. The Government would still have got it through in time to fit in with the appropriate resolutions. So why have all the rush? I can only assume that they had a gathering of the Cabinet, and they said, "I will tell you what ; there will not be many there next week. Some of them will have gone--bobbied off. Let's slip it through in the week before Christmas." Well, some of us are not going to have it and that is why we call upon the Leader of the House. He got a bloody nose this morning and so did the Government--I am speaking metaphorically. The Government got a bloody nose this morning and the Leader of the House was not even here to carry through his business. Someone said to me that they lost a debate this morning. I said, "I did not lose a debate ; all I did was move a procedural motion." All that the Government had to do was to bring 40 people in.
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Mr. Skinner Thirty-five plus the Tellers and the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. The people who lost the business this morning were the Government. They have a duty to have 40 people here. I have heard them attack the Labour Government between 1974 and 1979, but whatever attacks have been made--I have made a few myself, as a matter of fact--during that period we were never in a position of not having a quorum. We always made sure that we had people here during 1974 and 1979, when we were living on the breadline. We made sure that we had the requisite number of people here.That is why we are debating this subject now. Why are we debating it now? We are debating it because the Government lost their business this morning. That shows that perhaps the Government, having attacked all those sections of the people, are getting weary. Perhaps it is the fag end of the Government. Perhaps they really have lost ; they have run out of steam and they have lost control. It does happen. There was a feeling like that in 1979, after those five years. I say that in a non-political fashion. It does happen.
Mr. Skinner : I think that the Government are running out of steam.
I do not think that Lady Thatcher would have allowed what has happened this morning to happen. She did some terrible things--she attacked working-class people left, right and centre--but I do not believe in my guts that she would have had fewer than 40 people here this morning. If they had not been here, there would have been blood on the carpet.
I do not know what will happen to the Government Whips. I see the Deputy Whip here now, the hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Knight). He was here this morning, along with the Chief Whip, but half his staff were missing. It is really coming to summat, is it not?
Mr. Cryer : They are collapsing.
Mr. Skinner : It is coming to something when the Lords Commissioners, as they call them, are not even present. That is why we are debating the subject now. The Government are losing control of the House.
Mr. Cryer : They get paid extra money.
Mr. Skinner : There is another reason why the Government are in trouble on a Friday morning, which is worth remembering. The hon. and learned Member for Burton (Sir I. Lawrence), who stands at the Bar of the House, has just prompted me to say it. The reason they are in trouble on a Friday--and they would like to get rid of Friday--is that on Friday we start at half-past 9 and the courts are still open. Hon. Members who are on a City board of directors as non-executive members, such as, say, the right hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell), who just left one that went bankrupt, Queen's Moat House--it is a real scandal, and he ran away just before the colloquial so-and-so hit the fan--cannot get here on a Friday. Those people, who come after half-past 2 on Monday to Thursday, obviously cannot get here on a Friday because they are in the courts, making money hand over fist. Guinness--
Mr. Ken Livingstone (Brent, East) will my hon. Friend give way?
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Mr. Skinner : I shall let my hon. Friend intervene because we have to get back to the narrow procedural motion.
Mr. Livingstone : Has my hon. Friend read Suetonius's "Twelve Caesars"? That describes an identical procedural position. When Julius Caesar was having trouble getting something through the senate, which was dominated by reactionaries, he always called a special meeting of the senate on Friday because so many of the rich reactionaries had gone home to their country estates and he could always get things through. There seems to be the same problem with the Government today. After 2000 years, the rich and the corrupt still have trouble working on a Friday.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse) : Let us now get back to the narrow motion.
Mr. Cryer : But Caesar did have a point.
Mr. Skinner : As a matter of fact, I do not want to stray, except to say, in passing, that Caesar got done by his own, did he not, just like Thatcher?
So history repeats itself. Look at them sitting on the Government Front Bench. They support this narrow procedural motion. There used to be a pair of knee pads in Mrs. Thatcher's office for when they got on their hands and knees to grovel to her. As soon as her back was turned it was--I was going to say it was, "Hail Major", but it was not really. Most of them would like to get rid of him now because he does not know whether he is on this earth or fuller's earth.
As you reminded us, Mr. Deputy Speaker, we are talking about why the Government should not have moved this narrow procedural motion today. It is worth remembering that if the Government had not lost their business today, we would not have debated the motion. If we had proceeded through the normal business, the motion would have been moved at 2.30 pm. We might have objected to it and that would have been the end of it. I am right, am I not ?
Mr. Dixon indicated assent .
Mr. Skinner : We are debating the motion because of what happened earlier today. The Government have had their chance. They could have debated the measure the week after next. They could have moved an amendment to our amendment which proposed that the House rise for the Christmas recess on 24 December. The Government could have moved a compromise amendment proposing that the House rise on 22 December and we could have had more time to debate the measure.
It is outrageous for the Government to table a motion which will allow a measure to raise taxes throughout Britain to be pushed through in one day. If this had happened in the Soviet Union 10 or 15 years ago, it would have been expected. People would have said, "Well, that's par for the course. That's what they do here."
The Government are so contemptuous in the use of their power and think that they are going to be here for ever that they believe that they can do what they like. What we have done today is to shove a locker in the tub wheel, as we say in the pit, to stop the train from moving further. At some point, the Government must understand that they are out of step with people outside.
The Government are out of step on the question of tax and also in relation to the health service and housing.
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People are living on the streets while others live in the lap of luxury. The Government are not building houses. Those are the kind of issues that we should be debating. We should not be debating this narrow procedural motion. We should be debating a motion to allow local authorities to build houses in every town and city in Britain to put roofs over people's heads. Why did not the Leader of the House table such a motion ?Why are we not talking today about education and the fact that we need to spend £4 billion on repairs to schools ? That shows the size of the problem. That spending would allow us to put people back to work. That is the kind of subject that we should be debating instead of this narrow procedural motion.
We could also be debating about the pits and arguing that all the pits should be kept open. Instead of debating this narrow procedural motion, we should be debating the reasons why we are throwing thousands of miners and others out of work. What this Government have got away with is a scandal.
More than 1 million people are on NHS waiting lists. It used to be said that we had to have nuclear weapons to stop the Russians from invading Britain. I said then that I did not believe that the Russians would want to join NHS waiting lists. It is all crazy. At the fag end of this part of the Session we are talking about raising taxes once again, without any proper debate in Parliament. This is a debate about democracy and free speech. It is about gagging people who have the guts to stand up to this mob.
Mr. Livingstone : I wonder whether my hon. Friend is aware that it is being reported on the tapes that the Government have collapsed in Parliament today and have lost control of the agenda and that this is the first victory following the announcement by my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition of a policy of non-co-operation with the Government as a result of the way in which business is being managed. Does my hon. Friend believe that we may see further disasters for the Government, with more business lost, more incompetence and more mismanagement as signs of a Government who are beginning to lose their grip?
Mr. Skinner rose --
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) may believe that, but we are discussing a narrow motion. I have already pointed that out and I should be grateful if the hon. Member would address his remarks to the motion.
Mr. Skinner : I cannot follow my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) down that road because you have made it clear, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that we are considering a narrow procedural motion. I was about to say--this is in order--that, instead of having this narrow procedural motion, we should be talking about the problems of the people outside this place. [Interruption.] We could not do that because the Government had not got a majority here in order to keep it going. Tory Members should not blame Labour Members. None of my hon. Friends voted this morning, although they could have done so. They could have defeated the Government.
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I hear about the Common Market Commissioners and the way in which they do things and about the lack of democracy in the Common Market. Not only do I hear people talk about it ; I know that it is true. That is why I am against the Common Market. The Government are learning the methods of those commissars or commissioners in the Common Market--perhaps I was right the first time--by conducting business in this way. It is high time they understood that there are 651 Members of Parliament and about 270 represent the Labour party. The Tory party has about 230 Members of Parliament, so the Government should not assume that they can steamroller things through. They do not have a majority of 150 or 100, as they had in the past. They should understand that Parliament is more clearly divided now and they do not have that massive majority. The Government have been taught a lesson this morning. They have been shown that they do not have a majority all the time.The Government should allow debate to take place in a proper manner. We should not be putting taxes up in the course of one day. That is why I hope that, on reflection the Leader of the House will decide not to move the motion but accept that there should be more than one day's debate and that, if necessary, we should continue until 22, 23 or 24 December fully to debate the tax increases. 12.36 pm
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Tony Newton) : Before I make one or two observations about what has been said in the debate, I simply acknowledge that, with his usual courtesy, the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) told me that he was not able to stay very long after his speech from the Labour Front Bench because of long-standing commitments. Of course, I want to make it clear that I understand that and do not regard it as discourtesy.
If I am allowed to use rather less tempered language and fall into the vernacular, much of what the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) said is completely up the creek. It was not Government business this morning which the Government had a duty to protect ; it was private Members' business.
Mr. Skinner rose --
Mr. Newton : Perhaps I might just finish. There was a private Member's motion moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Sir D. Thompson) on a number of business and industry matters including the sort of issues that the hon. Gentleman said we should be discussing. As a result of the hon. Gentleman's manoeuvre, those matters have not been discussed and we are now discussing this procedural motion. There is no question of the Government's not being in control. The hon. Gentleman has wrecked private Members' business and demolished an opportunity to discuss the things that he said we should be talking about.
Mr. Skinner : Let us get this on the record. I agree that the first three items of business today were private Members' business. But the next series of items is Government business. We are now debating Government business because the Government put down their motion. Do not let the Leader of the House kid anyone outside the
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House and in the media that Friday is not about Government business. Government business is on this agenda.The truth is that the Government had a duty to protect the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Sir D. Thompson), who moved the original motion. Any decent Government would have had 40 Members here to protect him. The truth is that I did not lose any business, the hon. Gentleman did not lose any business and my hon. Friends did not lose any business. The Government shot the hon. Gentleman in the back.
Mr. Livingstone : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. When I entered the building this morning, I was told by a Tory Member that they had been told by their Whips to continue at sufficient length to ensure that my motion was not reached.
Mr. Deputy Speaker : That is not a point of order for the Chair, as the hon. Gentleman knows.
Mr. Newton : I repeat that what the hon. Member for Bolsover did today was effectively to wreck private Members' business, not Government business. He deprived the House of an opportunity to discuss exactly the sort of matters which he spent 10 minutes saying we should be talking about. His case simply does not stand up.
Mr. Cryer : Is the Leader of the House saying that if private Members' business had operated in the normal way, the important motion that the Government have tabled would not have been debated at all, and would have been put through on the nod?
Mr. Newton : That would have depended on the hon. Gentleman and on his hon. Friends. The hon. Member for Garscadden acknowledged that the motion is helpful in the context in which we are talking--and I emphasise "in the context"--by stating that he did not intend to oppose the motion. It allows amendments to be made in a more orderly and straightforward way than would otherwise be possible. If the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) had been here and had objected to it, the motion would not have been passed.
Mr. Dixon : Does the Leader of the House accept that the reason that the motion is down is that the Government are trying to put the Bill through in one day? Will not that allow amendments prior to Second Reading?
Mr. Newton : The hon. Gentleman is quite right on the background to the situation, which was why I emphasised that it was helpful in the context in which we are talking. We are talking about how the Bill should be dealt with next week. Such a motion would also have been required if the House had been dealing with the Bill in two days next week. There would still not have been a sufficient interval between day one and day two for the amendments to be unstarred. In those circumstances, the Government would have tabled a motion of this kind also.
Despite what was said earlier, there is nothing particularly unusual about the motion, although I accept that the situation more usually arises when there has been agreement in the usual channels to deal with such things rapidly. That is not the background in this case. Nevertheless, there is nothing unusual about the motion in the circumstances where the House is asked to deal with something in one day or a couple of days. A motion of this kind facilitates the tabling of amendments on that basis.
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The hon. Member for Garscadden suggested that he did not intend to oppose it, even though he did not like the background.Sir Ivan Lawrence (Burton) : I am intervening only because I have never heard such utter baloney as I have heard this morning from the maverick hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and his hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer).
Had this been a Government day and had the Labour party felt as strongly as the maverick hon. Gentleman pretends that it does, would the Opposition Benches be so empty? Clearly it is not a Government day, but a private Members' day. Will not the way in which the hon. Gentleman is behaving only prejudice the type of argument that he says we ought to be having?
Mr. Newton : My hon. and learned Friend makes a good point, and it links with one that I had been tempted to make myself. I had almost decided not to make the point, but I have been tempted back again. When the hon. Member for Bolsover spoke so vigorously in favour of the House sitting almost until it was time for Christmas lunch, the number of hon. Members that he could persuade to be here to vote against my proposal for the dates of the recess was precisely five, if I remember rightly. That was out of a total number of about 650 hon. Members, excluding the Chair.
Mr. Cryer : There were seven, including the Tellers. Mr. Newton : Well, all right. That takes the figure fractionally above 1 per cent. of the total number of Members of Parliament.
I will make two other points quickly, because I do not want to detain the House for too long. The hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) gave the impression that, as Leader of the House, I had been scattering guillotines about like confetti. This is only the fourth guillotine in well over 18 months during which I have been the Leader of the House. I suspect that that has been a more sparing record than most in recent times. The figure contrasts with the five in one day which were once announced by the former right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale--that is how I most clearly remember him--Michael Foot. I will make one other factual point quickly to the hon. Gentleman. I have been advised by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security and Disabled People that the type of secondary procedures that are involved in such Bills--that is to say negative rather than affirmative--mirrors the existing procedures. We shall look further at the point that the hon. Gentleman raised.
Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark and Bermondsey) rose
Mr. Skinner : He has just got out of bed.
Mr. Hughes : I was here earlier. Things have moved on since then. I apologise that I was not here for the beginning of the debate. I wish to ask the Leader of the House a simple factual question about the motion.
Mr. Greg Knight (Treasurer of Her Majesty's Household) : The hon. Gentleman has only just walked in.
Mr. Hughes : I apologised that I was not here for the beginning of the debate. I was here earlier. I have been away and come back. If the motion is defeated, will it be possible to go through the proceedings on the Bill? The normal procedure
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is that hon. Members can table amendments and so on only after Second Reading. If no motion has been passed to change that procedure, would the Government be unable to complete the proceedings in a day, irrespective of amendments?Mr. Newton : Such guidance more properly belongs to the Chair. If I may venture into this delicate field--unless the Chair wishes to venture into it--I think that under those circumstances there would be many requests for the Chair to accept manuscript amendments between Second Reading and the Committee stage. I see that you are about to be helpful to me, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Yes, all amendments would become manuscript amendments.
Mr. Newton : As I suspected, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you have confirmed in your ever-helpful way what I could not say so definitely. I am grateful to you for stating that, in those circumstances, the Chair would accept manuscript amendments. So rejection of the motion would not prevent proceedings on the Bill.
I accept that people do not like what I have said that I shall propose next week. In that context, it has been acknowledged in various quarters that the motion is designed to be helpful to the House. It is designed to facilitate the drafting and tabling of amendments in a sensible way.
I do not need to make a huge number of further points, but I wish to make a few. I do not wish to stray out of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. A fair number of points have been made which perhaps relate more properly to the timetable motion that we shall table than to today's motion. I accept that the motions are a little difficult to disentangle.
It has been suggested that there has been hardly any time to reflect on or discuss the proposal on national insurance contributions. The proposal was announced in the March Budget this year. That was followed by five days of Budget debate. The proposal has been referred to in a variety of other debates by Opposition spokesmen in the intervening period. The proposal was also an integral part of the judgment in the latest Budget, on which we had a six-day debate.
The proposal was also in the Queen's Speech, so one could say that that was another four or five days of opportunity for debate on national insurance contributions. There have been at least 15 days on which hon. Members had the opportunity to debate the national insurance contributions proposal announced last March.
I accept that there has not been such an extensive opportunity to debate the proposal on statutory sick pay. Nevertheless, it is a public expenditure proposal produced in the context of the first unified Budget. At the request of the Opposition, we had an extra day of Budget debate. It was increased from five to six days specifically to allow further discussion of the public expenditure proposals. Not only has there been the opportunity to debate the national insurance proposal, but many references were made to the statutory sick pay proposal.
It has been suggested that the reason for today's motion is the convenience of the Government. That is not the case. The position is this. The national insurance proposals taken broadly--not specifically the proposals for which the Bill is required but the other proposals on employers'
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contributions--and the SSP proposals go hand in hand. If they are to be implemented in an orderly and sensible way as part of the Budget judgment, which is designed to ensure the continued economic recovery, they must be implemented at the beginning of the next financial year, in April.We are talking about proposals which affect every firm in Britain, including many with massive payroll systems. Implementation needs to start by March at the latest. Before implementation, extensive secondary legislation needs to be prepared and passed, with the details discussed in the House. Unless we proceed in such a way, we shall not be able to carry through important ingredients of our policy, which are essential to the economic interests of the nation, and to do so in a manner with which businesses could be expected to cope sensibly. That is the basis for our actions.
As I have said, there will be many opportunities for debate. The Bills are very short--although I accept that the Maastricht Bill was also short--and are effectively only one clause, which will have the major effect that we are discussing. One Bill will increase national insurance contributions and the other will change the reimbursement for statutory sick pay. Those are the key clauses and they are basically simple propositions. The detail will come later, in secondary legislation. The national insurance re-rating exercise will be further debated in the House when the necessary instruments are introduced.
Against that background, it is not reasonable to suggest that the Government are somehow trying to steamroller things through. They are trying to achieve a sensible basis on which to proceed with the detail, which can be the subject of further examination and discussion.
In order not to trespass further on the time of the House, I shall conclude on the following two matters that did not seem to be fully understood, judging from some of the contributions to the debate. Repeated references have been made to the changes to national insurance contributions as if they were the same as a variety of other tax increases. Hon. Members know perfectly well that the national insurance fund operates on the basis that this year's contributions pay for this year's benefits, which are overwhelmingly retirement pensions. The money is required to ensure that the fund has a sound basis from which it can continue to pay those benefits and against a background in which, in line with something that the hon. Member for Garscadden is reported to have said in the papers, the Government have announced a significant increase, over and above the normal, in retirement pensions--the increase in relation to value added tax on fuel, which has to be paid out of the fund.
The national insurance proposal is not the same as any other tax increase, but is related to the need to meet the Government's and the country's commitments to retired people and to many others who are dependent on payments out of the national insurance fund. The hon. Member for Garscadden said that he was not sure of the effects of the changes in statutory sick pay on industry and that there had been talk of some compensation package. The effects are very clear. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the proposal will reduce public spending by about £700 million a year, but the Government are also proposing to reduce the main rates of employers' national insurance contributions by 0.2 per cent. from next April and the lower rates by one percentage point. Those reductions in employers' contributions, which are the other
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