House of Commons Hansard Debates for 14 Dec 1993

Mr. Newton : My right hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security and Disabled People will say more about this when he winds up, but the point that the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire has made about small businesses--whatever representations may have been made to him--needs to be studied more carefully.

I have a table of the position of small firms with five employees, with an average sickness record, earning £90, £130, £190, £250 and £340. In each and every case, on average sickness records, those firms will be better off. Set against what they may have to find for the odd few weeks

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in particular sickness cases, there will be reductions for their employees' weekly national insurance contributions, week in and week out, for 52 weeks.

Mr. Kirkwood : That will come out in the wash. Those initial assessments may have been made on a false prospectus. Small business men have told me that they are worried about the losses they will incur, but they are more worried about the way they are being treated. That is something that the Government should attend to. If confidence in the partnership between small businesses and the Government is not maintained, it bodes ill for the future of our country.

The changes that have been introduced to statutory sick pay for small businesses are very difficult, if not impossible, to determine. It is not possible to work out the detailed effects of the Statutory Sick Pay Bill from its content, because of its enabling nature and because it increases the power of Ministers to table legislation. The House must be resistant, strong and robust in objecting to Ministers' coming to the House day after day, week after week, to ask for more powers. In many instances, negative resolutions are involved : hon. Members must pray against the orders involved, and sometimes even that does not enable us to debate them. Indeed, securing debates has become increasingly difficult recently. That is bad for the democratic process, and I believe that people outside are already becoming disillusioned with the way in which we do our business. As I have explained, I consider guillotine motions such as this unintelligible and inexplicable, and I believe that the Leader of the House has produced little justification for them in his rationale. Although such motions can be justified in certain circumstances, I consider this one completely unjustifiable. The House should reject it.

5.30 pm

Mr. Graham Riddick (Colne Valley) : It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood). As with most Liberal Democrats, butter would not melt in his mouth. At one point he cracked a little joke, saying that for a small fee he was anybody's ; the joke would have had a greater ring of truth had the hon. Gentleman said that he was anybody's--that he would do and say anything-- for a constituent's vote. As we know, the Liberal Democrats are happy to say one thing on one doorstep, and the opposite on the next. But you will be pleased to learn, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I shall say no more about the Liberal Democrats this evening.

Today's guillotine motion has an interesting backdrop--the first unified Budget. We should also bear in mind the fact that one of the Bills that we are discussing is very much part of the Government's overall economic policy. The motion has supposedly led to the suspension of cross-party co- operation in Parliament--the end of the so-called usual channels. I consider that something of a smokescreen : to some extent, I must take the blame for the ending of that cross-party co-operation.

Last Tuesday, I unveiled the incompetence of the Opposition by remarking, on a point of order, that they could have tabled an amendment to the Government's Budget motion, which would have allowed them to vote on the imposition of VAT on domestic fuel. Why did they not do that? Were they incompetent, or were they happy with the Chancellor's compensation package?

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Mr. Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton) : Both.

Mr. Riddick : That may be true. However, the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar), who is seated on the Opposition Front Bench, gave the Government a helpful steer before the Budget had even been announced : he told us that 50p a week on pensions would do the trick. That was very good of him, and the Chancellor offered exactly that--but only in the first year ; the compensation will become more generous in the second year. At the end of the process, single pensioners will be £1 a week better off than they would otherwise have been, and pensioner couples will be £1.40 a week better off.

Mr. Jim Dowd (Lewisham, West) rose --

Mr. Riddick : I am coming to the point ; I hope that the hon. Gentleman will bear with me.

In fact, the Opposition should be happy with the compensation package. Why, then, are they ending cross-party co-operation? They tell us that it is because of the guillotine motion, but I want to expose the real reason. I believe that we must return to the "incompetence" argument. As I have said, the Opposition could have tabled an amendment to the Government's Budget motion on Tuesday, whose wording was the same as motions tabled by a Labour Government in 1977 and 1988--and, indeed, motions tabled by the Conservative Government throughout the 1980s. Lord Jenkins actually tabled such an amendment in 1983. The truth is that this time the Opposition simply got it wrong.

We also know that there has been an unholy row in the parliamentary Labour party, between the shadow Treasury team and the shadow Leader of the House, between the shadow Leader of the House and the Whips, and in the shadow Cabinet generally. Labour Members have tried to blame the Prime Minister for their own incompetence : I was able to expose that in my point of order last week.

Over the past few days, we have read a good deal in the press about how the Opposition will refuse to co-operate with the Government through the "usual channels". They say that that is because of the guillotine motion, but, as I have said, they are merely trying to cover up their own incompetence of last week. Moreover, there is a growing disenchantment on the Labour Back Benches with the performance of the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) as Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse) : Order. The hon. Gentleman is straying a little too wide of the subject, which is the guillotine motion. I should be grateful if he would confine his remarks to it.

Mr. Riddick : I thought that you might pull me up at some stage, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was intending to apologise to Labour Members--and, indeed, Conservative Members--who may be inconvenienced by the fact that the usual channels are no longer working properly. I believe that the guillotine motion could prove very helpful to Opposition Members. As we know, they do not have a very good voting record, and I think it will be beneficial for them to know when votes will take place : they will be able to ensure that they are in the House. Campaign Information Ltd. recently conducted a survey of hon. Members' voting records ; it found that Conservative Members voted in 75 per cent. of all Divisions, while

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Labour Members voted in 55 per cent. and Liberal Democrats in 62 per cent.--the record of the Liberal Democrats was slightly better than that of Labour.

As I pointed out today at Prime Minister's Question Time, the vast majority of Members of Parliament among the top 200 voters were Conservatives ; only six were Labour Members. Modesty forbids me to make a big deal about the fact that I was in the top 100, coming 84th in the league table.

Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. I hope that I shall not have to intervene again to remind the hon. Gentleman that the House is debating the guillotine motion. He must confine his remarks to that.

Mr. Riddick : I am grateful to you for making that clear, Mr. Deputy Speaker. My point is that the guillotine motion will not merely help Conservative Members ; it may help Opposition Members even more. It is they who seem to find difficulty in coming to the House to vote. I was going to congratulate the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) on coming first in the Division league table, but he is not present. Perhaps one reason why he can spend so much time voting in the House is that he never spends any time sitting on Committees.

Mr. Dickens : He has not done so for years.

Mr. Riddick : Not since 1988, I believe. The hon. Gentleman is very embarrassed about it, but as he is not present to defend himself, I shall not say much more.

We have two short, simple Bills in front of us. The national insurance changes were announced in March, and we had a long debate on the Budget speech at that time. We have had another lengthy debate on the recent unified Budget for about five or six days, during which the Statutory Sick Pay Bill could have been raised at any time. I do not want to see national insurance contributions increased at all. I do not want to see any taxes increased or see any tax allowances reduced, but we have a problem with the public sector borrowing requirement deficit. That is one crucial difference between Conservative and Labour Members--we do not like to increase taxation or national insurance contributions and Labour Members do. Every Labour Government, from the first one in the early 1920s, have increased the basic rate of income tax. As Conservatives, we do not like increasing taxation or national insurance contributions, but, at the same time, we recognise that we must have sound public finance, and that is what the Social Security (Contributions) Bill is all about.

We have a PSBR Security (Contributions) Bill was part of that process--and at the same time reduce public spending in a number of areas without harming the key services of health and education. The only message that I would like to get over to the Chancellor is that, now that we have a tighter fiscal situation, we need a looser monetary framework. I hope that we will achieve that in the near future, by a reduction in interest rates.

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley) intervened during the speech of the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) and made reference to me.

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Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough) : Was my hon. Friend referring to the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody)? It is important that we know to whom he is referring as he makes his way through his speech.

Mr. Riddick : I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but I was referring to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North who intervened during the speech of the right hon. Member for Derby, South, and accused me of not understanding what was in the Bill in relation to small businesses having to pay sick pay for the first four weeks. The Chancellor made it crystal clear that the increased contributions that both large and small employers will have to make towards statutory sick pay will be more than offset by the reduction in employers' national insurance contributions. The figures suggest that small businesses will be net gainers under that process.

The Government should be encouraging all companies, especially small companies, to improve the sickness record of their own employees. The Bill will provide an additional incentive to businesses to ensure that the health and fitness of employees is maintained. That is an important principle, which I entirely support. The Statutory Sick Pay Bill will also mean that administration of sick pay should be simplified. The other benefit, to which I have already referred, is that small businesses should face a smaller burden as a result of the Bill, not a larger burden, as the right hon. Member for Derby, South said.

We have heard an awful lot of synthetic rage from Opposition Members, who say that they do not like the guillotine and that it is an outrage. They are deeply embarrassed by their own conduct, because they have made so little impact in the House for some time, and because they failed to table an amendment about VAT on fuel in the past week. That is why Labour Members have decided to cut off relations with the Government.

I do not expect that it will last long, because the Opposition will not be able to carry their own troops, judging from their poor voting record. That is the background to the debate, and that is why I am happy to support my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Lobby tonight.

5.45 pm

Mr. John Hutton (Barrow and Furness) : It has often been my responsibility to follow the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Riddick). I feel some sympathy for him on this occasion, because he obviously found himself without a prepared speech, but was nevertheless required to occupy an amount of time in the debate. It would be wrong to describe his remarks as anything resembling a speech. It was the familiar mumbo-jumbo and rhetoric that we often hear from Back-Bench Conservative Members who are instructed by their Whips to occupy time and speak in the Chamber.

Mr. Don Dixon (Jarrow) : That is not so on the Labour Benches.

Mr. Hutton : As my hon. Friend says, Opposition Members do not find themselves in that situation.

The hon. Member for Colne Valley failed to address some of the substantive arguments that are relevant to the debate. The guillotine motion is an abuse of the majority power of the Conservative party. As I said to the Leader of the House, when a parliamentary Session has only just

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begun, it is unprecedented for the Government to use their power to steamroller an allocation of time order through the House. We are only four weeks into the parliamentary Session, and some of the proposed changes will have a significant effect on millions of people and on millions of small and large businesses. It is entirely appropriate under those circumstances for the House to spend more time discussing the proposals than the Government are seemingly prepared to tolerate.

An allocation of time order leads to bad law-making, because it denies hon. Members the chance to explore the wider aspects of Bills. References have been made to occasions on which an allocation of time order has been imposed, and its consequences have been spelt out. I think especially of the recent legislation on the poll tax, which was an expensive fiasco that damaged the tax base, affected millions of people, and continues to do so, as there is some £2 billion unpaid poll tax still outstanding. That is the result of incompetence and poor management of business in the House, yet we are about to witness a further example of such mismanagement. We have also had time to reflect on the Criminal Justice Act 1991--another result of bad law-making.

The guillotine motion should be rejected also because it brings the House into some disrepute. We are elected as Members of the House of Commons to scrutinise legislation, especially legislation of tax-bearing dimension. The total money dealt with by these two Bills combined will run into billions of pounds--the money of ordinary taxpayers and small businesses.

I have been interested in the comments of Conservative Members about the effect of the Bill on small businesses. I do not believe that they have understood the full implications of the Bill in that area, and I hope that the debate will bring some of them out. We cannot justify passing legislation in such a cack-handed and slipshod fashion to our constituents. Both Bills require further and more detailed scrutiny. It is not a legitimate argument for Conservative Members to say that there are few clauses in either Bill. That misses the point.

It is clear that, with the Statutory Sick Pay Bill, a host of complex regulations will be introduced by statutory instruments between now and the end of April. Those regulations will require detailed scrutiny as well, but as hon. Members know, we have limited and diminishing opportunities to subject those instruments to the fullest scrutiny.

The argument that we need spend only a short time on these Bills because they are short stems from a complete misunderstanding of the legislative process. If we need any reminder of that, hon. Members might reflect on the equally short Maastricht Bill which, rightly and properly, occupied many months on the Floor of the House. The truth is that there is little constitutional propriety about presenting such a motion to the House at this time in the parliamentary Session. I asked the Leader of the House whether he could find a previous occasion when such an order had been presented. He failed to provide any illustration of such a motion, because there is none. That lack of information from the Leader of the House provides confirmation, if any is needed, of the inappropriate nature of this order.

As is often the case in our proceedings here, the reality is quite different. We are spending such a short time on the Bills because of their nature. Both are deeply unpopular. If

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the full implications of both were properly understood outside the House, they would have a damaging impact on the Government's already abysmal opinion poll rating. If the Budget is so popular, why are we not being allowed more time to discuss these Bills, which, as hon. Members on both sides have recognised, are central to the Chancellor's Budget strategy?

Mr. Tony Marlow (Northampton, North) : May I illustrate a point to strengthen the case? Like me, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have received a great deal of correspondence and been involved in contact with fathers concerned about the activities of the Child Support Agency. Does the hon. Gentleman realise that the detail of the activities of that agency was decided by order on the last day of the parliamentary Session, when hardly any Members of Parliament were present? These things should be debated and discussed and should be open for public debate. We get into a mess by passing measures quickly.

Mr. Hutton : Not for the first time, I agree with the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow). He has made a telling point, and I hope that the Minister for Social Security and Disabled People, who is on the Treasury Bench, has heard some of his comments. There is no doubt that that is a further illustration of some of the mistakes that we are making in our approach to law-making.

I believe that the real purpose of the guillotine motion is to silence debate, not to encourage it. The Government hope that, by doing that, they will ensure as few people as possible outside the House will understand and appreciate the damage they are doing to small businesses and ordinary taxpayers.

As I have said, the Bills are central to the Government's Budget strategy. The leader of the House confirmed that. The national insurance contributions Bill will hike up direct taxes. I wonder how many people who voted Conservative at the general election fully appreciated that they would be asked to pay an extra 1 per cent. on their national insurance contributions.

In that context, we must remember that the hike in the contributions in the form proposed by the Government is a regressive way of raising some extra revenue they need to cover the hole in the Government's public borrowing.

Mr. Duncan : Will the hon. Gentleman admit that the requirement for the national insurance fund to balance, at least in part, is a long- established principle? Will he admit that that fund has no borrowing ability, and that therefore the Government have a duty to introduce the measures in the Bill?

Mr. Hutton : I do not accept any of the hon. Gentleman's points. He is trying to camouflage the real scale of the Government's financial incompetence by giving the national insurance hike a bogus rationality. None of his arguments stands up to close scrutiny. The Government are in a deep hole on public spending, and they are using the national insurance contributions hike to close that down. As I have said, it is a regressive way to close that gap in the Government's public sector borrowing. It will particularly affect those on low incomes, and will result in an increase of £3.20 a week in national insurance contributions for all taxpayers.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) drew attention to the fact that the increase will be regressive. It will raise £300 million more than a

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penny rise in income tax, precisely because national insurance contributions bite at a lower earnings level than income tax. If we look at the Bill in that context, it is clear that the guillotine motion has been introduced because of the Government's broken election promises.

The Statutory Sick Pay Bill reflects the other central strategy in the Government's Budget. In the national insurance Bill we have seen a hike in direct taxes--something that the Government said they would never do. The Bill is a further attack on the sick and disabled in our community. It is clear that it will have an adverse impact on small employers.

It is interesting to note that, when the Government last changed the rules on statutory sick pay in 1991, they did so with little or no consultation with the business community. When the National Audit Office looked into the effects of the last round of changes, it identified the fact that the Government were conducting an independent assessment of the impact of those changes.

That independently commissioned report has not yet been published. It would be interesting to know whether the Minister is prepared to let us know its findings. Opposition Members do not believe the Government's argument that the changes to statutory sick pay will have no impact on small employers. We believe that they will have a substantial and damaging impact.

The guillotine motion should be resisted, precisely because of the points to which the hon. Member for Northampton, North drew attention, and because it brings the House into disrepute. At this stage in the parliamentary cycle, there is no justification for this motion. It damages our credibility as effective law makers, and we should reject it.

Mr. Garnier : Given the line that the hon. Gentleman is taking, does he agree that the conduct of his colleagues during the final stages of the Railways Bill, when they blocked the Lobbies and so on, also brought the House into disrepute, and that those in glasshouses should not throw stones ?

Mr. Hutton : I believe that on that occasion Opposition Members used tactics which were perfectly legitimate for a loyal Opposition, and I stick to that assessment. There was nothing improper or in breach of the Standing Orders of the House in the behaviour of Opposition Members on that occasion. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's point. I am trying to finish my remarks, but I am finding it difficult because of the interventions.

This motion is unacceptable ; hon. Members who care about the reputation of the House as a law-making institution should think carefully before supporting it.

5.57 pm

Mr. Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) : I must congratulate my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House on the way in which he has pursued this measure. He has selected a constitutional innovation which was introduced by the Government under the present premiership--to guillotine Bills before we have even had Second Reading. It is an extraordinary development. It is to be deeply deplored and it is odious because it reduces the House to nothing.

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I came here, having been elected by the citizens of

Aldridge-Brownhills, with the thought that, when they had cause to be anxious about something, I might be able to contribute to the process of debate--the detailed scrutiny of legislation where appropriate. I do not know why my right hon. Friend has chosen to guillotine a Bill before Second Reading and before we have heard where, in the detail of the Bill, the argument may lie. That develops in Committee. A great former Home Secretary, the Luther of Mole Valley, now Lord Baker, was confronted with a real menace when he introduced his famous appendum to British constitutional history. If the House recalls, the nation was assaulted by ravaging dogs on every street corner that threatened our welfare, life and liberty, and emergency action was required. The Luther of Mole Valley did not hesitate. The Churchill of our Front Bench required action this day. At the behest of the popular newspapers, the House scampered along, citing something that was not so--that the danger was so great that the House should consider all stages. He allowed some 11 or 12 hours to discuss that important measure.

When the motion is passed, as I have no doubt it will be, it will be the fifth time that the Government have used this constitutional innovation. It is outrageous. The purpose of the House, and its lifestream, is to consider legislation. I remind some of my hon. Friends that Second Reading is about principle. We may agree on the principle of, for instance, driving to Birmingham. Most of us would assume that we may argue about whether to take the M1 and M6 or the M40 and M6, but when I find that we go via Cornwall and Wales and end up in Dublin, having gone via Edinburgh, I may want to move an amendment suggesting that it would be more practical, expedient and economical to go down the M1 and M40. Those are legitimate reasons. I object greatly to the Bills. The Statutory Sick Pay Bill introduces a massive change of principle and will have great consequences for many small businesses which, with their backs against the wall, see no sign of recovery. Their staff will be taxed and they will have to fund sick pay for the first four weeks. I have a view on that.

However, this constitutional outrage of always insisting on guillotines has become an instrument of the Executive. Will the House reflect on the figures, which I have gone through before? Between 1945 and 1975, 30 Bills were guillotined. That is an average of one a year, if it is worth while averaging such things.

Under the Labour Administration, there were five guillotines in an afternoon. I thought that that was wrong and I still think that it is wrong. I listened to Michael Foot, whose fundamental argument was that, because Labour had no majority, it was appropriate to impose a guillotine motion. I always found that argument to be fatuous. If a Government have not carried the sentiments of the country with them, they have no right to impose a guillotine motion. In any event, Labour introduced some 14 guillotine motions--the House will understand that I cite those figures from memory--but a transformation came in 1979. I believe that the fault lies in the Whips Office rather than at the heart of Government, but it has become a habit. The guillotine has been introduced as an instrument of the Executive to bludgeon through legislation.

With a majority of 100 in the second of her two Parliaments and a majority of 40 in her first, it took Mrs. Thatcher--or her business managers--58 guillotines to push through her business. That is an average of five a year.

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We now have a nation at peace with itself, no less, and the Prime Minister's business managers require 18 guillotine motions in three years, thus increasing the average. That means that the Executive need not trouble itself overly with the House of Commons. I remind my hon. Friends of the difference between examining principle and examining detail, which are fundamental duties of the House. I watched Mrs. Thatcher's premiership come to an end. The poll tax was driven through with guillotine motions in this place, including on the Lords amendments. Had Mrs. Thatcher's Government listened to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young), we might have been able to overcome the principle. We might have been able to make the Bill work. But no, no--off with our heads. We were told that Parliament had had enough time on it. The matter so destabilised public opinion, and, eventually, the views of my friends and colleagues in the Tea Room, that Mrs. Thatcher's premiership came to an end.

It is important that the House discharges its constitutional responsibilities, because we are not just an agent of Executive wish and whim. I may have overstated the case about my right hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley with his Dangerous Dogs Bill, but I have seen it before. On the football spectators legislation, the House was bludgeoned to create an Act of Parliament, no less, with all the nonsense associated with that. It hung on the say-so of a third party--a judge outside the House. Although the House was cranked up to push the legislation through, ultimately the measure was snuffed out, not particularly by the wish of the House but by the judge's decision.

Finally, I wish to utter a note of caution. One of the major flags of the present Session is to be a deregulation Bill. We shall deregulate Acts of Parliament--matters that have been considered by the House--in a way that some of us will find deeply distasteful. I never wish to give, nor do I wish to see my fellow countrymen give, into the hands of any Minister of the Crown the ability to decide what is legislation and what is not. That is our business, transacted on behalf of the people of this country and our constituents. We may soon have handed over that opportunity because we have

over-legislated and legislated too casually.

The record of the 15 years in which I have been a Member has become worse and worse. I beg the House to reject the concept that the guillotine motion is the instrument of Executive whim. The latest fantasy, whether it is a Dangerous Dogs Bill or a Football Spectators Bill, must not be driven through the House merely on the nod, in a truncated sitting, the duration of which can be added up in minutes. Small businesses and people whom I represent will be condemned in six hours to funding sick pay in a major change of principle and policy. That is worth proper scrutiny of the Bill's detail.

Ultimately, this country's check and balance are no longer here. They are in our courts and are called judicial review. We must stir ourselves up, remember who we are and what this House is. We wish all our Governments well because our prosperity, well-being and fate are in their hands, but that does not mean that we should abdicate our responsibilities and accept such absurdities. We have time to look at the matter properly.

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6.6 pm

Mr. John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) : It is disconcerting to sit through such a debate hoping to do some damage to the Government and then hear far more damage done to their reputation by a Conservative Member. The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) has spoken with great conviction, not just on this issue but on abuses, spanning many years, of the ability of the House to scrutinise legislation properly. As a much newer Member, I find that there are lessons in what he has to say to this and any Government about how to handle our affairs.

I have listened with interest to the debate, but my mind has been dominated by a picture that flashed into it early in the proceedings. It was a picture of the office of the Leader of the House on the morning of 1 December, just as the champagne bubbles were finally beginning to pop after what was regarded as a successful Budget, which had not yet begun to come apart. It was the first unified Budget, which had been in preparation for 18 months, in which the machinery of government, the responsibilities of civil servants and the timetable of their work had all been changed.

The Leader of the House is asking us to believe that he was in his office on that morning when a civil servant put his head round the door and said, "Minister, we have suddenly realised that, to implement the Budget, you must guillotine the two key Bills before Christmas." I am sorry but I do not believe that, after 18 months' preparation for a unified Budget, it was not until the day after the Chancellor's speech that someone discovered that it would be difficult to get the Budget through the House in time for April. I do not believe that the problem was not anticipated well before the Budget. I asked the Leader of the House earlier whether this would be an annual occurrence, but I shall have to look at the Official Report and read his answer, because I did not understand a word of it. He said neither yes nor no--he would have to look at it. All those problems, however, must have been anticipated in the planning stages of the first unified Budget.

No one could believe that, with the great weight of legal advice and procedural advice available to the Government, possible difficulties with implementing Budget legislation in time for April were not anticipated. The Government must have known that this problem might arise, and they consciously chose to approach the legislation in this draconian fashion, leaving hon. Members with far too little time to discuss the problems and issues properly. It is interesting to note how, after the first euphoric 24 hours, the Budget has begun to unravel. I remember the Chancellor of the Exchequer claiming to be receiving support from business interests : from the Federation of Small Businesses, the Institute of Directors, the CBI and the National Farmers Union--the very organisations that have written to hon. Members in the past 24 hours opposing the guillotine and the measure that we are debating.

Some Conservative Members tried to have some fun at our expense earlier, asking why Front-Bench Opposition spokesmen did not raise these issues during the Budget debate. Why, those Members asked, did they not seize on them and highlight them? The hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) informed me that the impact on small businesses, which will have to pay 100 per cent. of

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statutory sick pay for the first four weeks, was perfectly clear from the statement made to the House on the uprating of benefits by the Secretary of State for Social Security. The hon. Gentleman referred me to column 1037. That column contains nothing relevant, but I assume that he meant 1038. There, the Secretary of State told the House :

"From April next year, I propose to abolish reimbursement" of statutory sick pay

"except to small employers So far, we have been reimbursing 100 per cent. of statutory sick pay for absences of longer than six weeks. I shall start giving 100 per cent. help after four weeks."--[ Official Report , 1 December 1993 ; Vol. 233, c. 1038.]

So that was it--nothing about employers beginning to have to make contributions in the first four weeks, when they pay only 20 per cent. now.

It is therefore surprising that business lobbies, most of the press and many Opposition Members did not realise that the right hon. Gentleman's weasel words would hammer small employers with charges that they do not pay at the moment? Of course it is not surprising. Conservative Members who pray in aid this statement in defence of the Government are being outrageous. Having studied the Secretary of State's words, I have no doubt that, should he lose his current job, he would have no difficulty in securing another--selling personal pension plans to members of occupational pension schemes. That is what I think of the degree of integrity exhibited by his statement. It was simply more evidence that every attempt has been made to obscure from the House and from the people outside it what the Government have in mind.

I have no doubt that the way in which the legislation would be taken through the House was planned well before hon. Members had had a chance to hear the Budget statement. These are serious matters, and not only for the small businesses that will be badly hit. The hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Riddick) talked about the average costs to small businesses, but that is not the point. If a business employs only five people and two of them are ill for a long time, that is not an average cost. It is a devastating cost--one that the business will not be able to meet.

Vital though they are, small businesses will not be the only ones affected. Millions of people who are looking for work will be equally affected. By coincidence, I received a letter in today's post from a constituent, a former shipyard worker aged 58 who cannot find employment. He suffers from a heart condition, but not badly enough to qualify for invalidity benefit under the current rules, let alone for incapacity benefit under the rules to be introduced in a year's time. His prospects of finding work are bad enough at the moment ; what are his chances of getting a job when every employer who will ever interview him will look at his health record and decide that he is going to become, at some point, a 100 per cent. cost to the wages bill?

Three million other people are looking for work, and such employers will obviously take on those who have not been ill recently. The legislation will mean that thousands of people who are capable of work but who are not in perfect health will fall into the limbo between invalidity benefit and work : they cannot get work because they have poor health, but they cannot get benefits because they are

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not judged sick enough to be unable to work. Yet the Government want to push this measure through in six hours.

A Conservative description of the Bill was that it was a mundane measure. Will it be a mundane measure for my 58-year-old constituent, who has had enough doors slammed in his face without this one being slammed in it, too?

Our insurance salesman, the Secretary of State for Social Security, spoke touchingly to the House in his benefits statement. Describing the impact of the legislation on employers, he said :

"those who respond to the incentive to improve staff health will benefit even more."--[ Official Report, 1 December 1993 ; Vol. 233, c. 1038.]

What a wonderful image that conjures up. One thinks of employers, in response to the new legislation, deciding to expand their occupational health service--perhaps installing a gym, like the one in the House, to keep members of staff fit. One imagines them screening all their employees to make sure that they never get sick, thereby reducing their sick pay bills. The House can believe that if it chooses, but it is not how employers will see the measure. It will not be an incentive to improving the health of their staff. Over time, they will merely begin screening out those whose health poses a danger of an increased pay bill.

For smaller businesses to which staff sickness can represent a crippling cost, the legislation will mean being caught both ways. They will not want to turn people away or to get rid of staff who have been unfortunate enough to be ill, but when they are looking at their balance sheets and deciding between that and bankruptcy, some will decide to shed staff. The Government are pushing such companies into this position in a matter of six hours. That is an abuse of Parliament. I have been here only a short time, but I cannot believe that that is a way to run the country.

6.18 pm

Mr. Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton) : I listened closely to the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) and before that to my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd). Like the latter, I have a lasting faith in the paramount importance of parliamentary procedure, of Parliament itself and of the manner in which we scrutinise legislation. I suggest that my hon. Friend's impassioned pleas, although well directed in general, were misdirected in the context of the measures that we are debating today.

I have watched the proceedings of the House for well over 20 years. As a young teenager, spurred on by politics and wanting to be in this Chamber, I became interested in how the House of Commons works. When I was n fought tooth and nail against the then Labour Government. I recall the battles in Committee led by my right hon. Friends the Members for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) and for Bridgwater (Mr. King). The Conservative Opposition kept the Labour Government on a knife edge. The then Opposition fought against that guillotine for good reason. It was a good reason not only because they believed in what they were doing but because

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