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therefore very pertinent because we do not want to have to come back here late at night because the Government discover another £1 billion that is not authorised.Mr. Skinner : It was only because I heard my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South discuss it in the first place that I realised what a total mess the Government have made of it. The Government have been involved in many scandals in the past 14 years, but I ask you--£4.6 billion, and they conveniently come and drop it across us just before Christmas. Is it not handy? I suppose that is the reason why we have got that tonight. It could all have been revealed and dealt with in the debate tomorrow.
Of course, the debate should have gone on anyway. We should not have been having this debate tomorrow. My hon. Friend and I and one or two others made a proposition some time ago in which we demanded that we carry on for several more days before Christmas. We could have examined the issue in that time. We could have had perhaps a three-hour debate or a full day's debate.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) could have been in and he could have taken account of it and then he could have set up his Select Committee. It could have examined the matter in detail and perhaps might have stopped the Government from doing this.
I think that the Government should still stop. They ought to have the decency to pull this legislation out because we do not know whether the sum is £4.6 billion ; they have plucked the figure out of the air. We are told that it will go on until 1994. Which element is the part from 1989 until today and how much continues after that? As far as I know, the Minister never explained all that, so we are in the dark about that sum of money, some of which is retrospective. I have a point, and if the Minister gets up to speak again, it could be the end of the debate.
Mr. Cryer : Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Peter Atkinson (Hexham) : Sit down.
Mr. Skinner : I am prepared to, provided that I will get the chance to speak again.
Mr. Cryer : Does my hon. Friend not agree that, first, the Minister only took a minute to introduce this ways and means resolution and, secondly, when Members on the Government Benches shout out that they want the debate to finish, it is because they do not want debate? They are the people who make proud boasts about controlling public expenditure, yet they do not want a debate. The Government have produced this back-to-front system, wherby we have to deal with the money resolution before the debate on the Bill, when they could have explained everything. Yet Government Back Benchers want to cut out debate entirely.
Mr. Skinner : My hon. Friend knows only too well that the Minister only took one minute and those Back Benchers seem to dismiss £4.6 billion because, after 14 years, the Government are full of arrogance and contempt, not just for people like us, but for the British people. They have been in power that long, they think that they can get away with anything. A gang behind them thinks that all they have to do is back the Minister and that is the end of it. It is a pity that no Members of Parliament from the Tory
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Benches have the guts to understand-- £4.6 billion has been plucked out of the sky. What could we do with that? Where should it have been spent? That is what I would like to know.Mr. Cryer : On the health service.
Mr. Skinner : Yes. It might have saved all those hospitals from being closed. I saw it announced today on the television that the Government are shutting Bart's. I wonder whether they were taking that into account when Golden Virginia was talking about shutting Bart's and all those other hospitals. I wonder whether she asked, "What about this £4.6 billion?"
As far as we know, money has been available. The Government cannot tell us ; they do not even know whether £4.6 billion is the correct figure and they have not told us how much will stretch over into 1994. The whole business is a can of worms--it stinks to high heaven. I am fed up with Ministers saying that the Labour party wants to spend money right, left and centre. They are spending money and they do not even know it. They sacked the Chancellor of the Exchequer because he lost £10 billion in an afternoon, and he was nowhere near a betting shop. Some of the Tories cheered because the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer had got the sack for losing £10 billion in an afternoon. No one held him up with a gun, did they? It just went. Some of the same Ministers are glorying in the fact that the ex-Chancellor now has to look after the safe at Rothschilds. I would not have him handling the safe if I were Rothschilds--not after losing £10 billion-- [Laughter.]
Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. I realise that the hon. Member has taken wing, so to speak, but I remind him of the narrow nature of the ways and means motion before us.
Mr. Skinner : I was just making an analogy. There has been a constant discussion on both sides of the House about the loss of £10 billion in an afternoon, after the demise of the exchange rate mechanism, which some of us had been trying to persuade the Government to withdraw from long before. Now we find, late at night, that £4.6 billion has suddenly been plucked out of the thin air before a debate takes place tomorrow, and no one seems to know how it has come about.
It is retrospective legislation. My hon. Friends the Members for Clydesdale (Mr. Hood), who has just come in, and for Liverpool, Garston (Mr. Loyden) know all about retrospective legislation, because they have been involved in trade unions which have been hammered by such legislation.
It is a scandal that the Government are carrying on in this cavalier fashion with other people's money. There are people in this country who do not have two ha'pennies to rub together. People are lying on the streets. Yet the Government come along and tell them that there is £4.6 billion --if it is £4.6 billion. Who knows--it could be £8.6 billion. It is high time the Government were held to account.
The sad thing is that Tory Members are attacking Labour authorities because they spent an extra couple of bob. The Government introduced the rate support grant, or the equivalent of it, the other week. They told local authorities that they would be capped if they did not stick
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to the levels set, and they said it again yesterday at the Welsh local government review. It is always the same. Yet the Government can lose money hand over fist.I should like to know what will happen to the £4.6 billion when it gets to the health service. Who will get the money? Will it be given to the management? We hear all these stories about the increase in the number of managers in the national health service. I should like to know precisely where the money will go. I do not want the Minister to tell me that he cannot explain it because he is not in the Department of Health. I am fed up with Ministers saying that they do not know the details.
The other day, I was flabbergasted when I heard Lady Thatcher speaking on television. She had the gall to tell us that she did not understand things in detail because she dealt with only the big issues. This is the same woman who followed the Belgrano in the Falklands war. She watched it every inch--
Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. The hon. Gentleman must stick to the point.
Mr. Skinner : I am sticking to the point. I am saying that the Government have plucked £4.6 billion out of thin air--they cannot explain it--and a former Prime Minister now has the gall to tell us that she did not follow things in detail. After a year-long miners' strike, who does she think she is kidding?
Mrs. Wise : My hon. Friend is asking where the £4.6 billion will go. I understand that some of the money has already gone, so we should be asking where it went. Will my hon. Friend ask the Minister--if my hon. Friend cannot supply an answer--about not only where the £4.6 billion or the amount that has already gone came from, but what it was spent on if it was taken without authority for the purpose descributions it should have been earmarked for some purpose. If some of it was taken without authority for the NHS, what went short which otherwise would have received money raised from people's contributions?
Mr. Skinner : Where has the money gone? Let us assume that £2 billion has gone. We do not know where it went. My hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mrs. Wise) is in a position to find out. Tonight, the Government should pull off this ways and means resolution in so far as it affects the £4.6 billion, or they should do it tomorrow. Tomorrow, there should be a manuscript amendment in which we call for that part which is included in the Bill to be taken out and then my hon. Friend, who is on the Select Committee for Health, together with her colleagues, should set up an investigation and find out where the money went.
One thing is certain : the people in my constituency have not seen that money spent, because waiting lists in the health authority in Derbyshire have spiralled. I can tell the House where some of the money might have gone. It might have gone to line the pockets of those Tory spivs who run the health authorities up and down Britain. That is a fair bet. We keep reading about massive wage increases for the spivs who run the health authorities, and some of them have been lining their pockets left, right and centre. When the Select Committee discusses the matter, I want my hon. Friend the Member for Preston to find out how much of the money has gone to finance the people
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running the health authorities, which ought in any case to be democratically controlled. That is another subject that I want to deal with ; I shall come to the quangos later.Mrs. Wise : In addition to the interesting points that my hon. Friend is making, would he care to reflect on the brass neck of Ministers who can deem things to have taken effect, although they should have been done four years ago, and to contrast that with the Government's rigidity on time limits for making benefits claims? People with excellent reasons for not having made a claim are told, "No, there is no statutory authority for any retrospective payment." Why do the Government not apply that reasoning to themselves?
Mr. Skinner : We all know that the money has not gone into the social fund. People used to have a chance to apply for some assistance, and various entitlements, and if they failed they could appeal against the decision. People have no chance to appeal now ; all that has been taken away. The Government have gone on in that way for the past 14 years, but now they have to learn the lesson that they no longer have a majority of 150 or 100. They are down to 17. Who knows, the majority may be even lower in 12 months' time. There are the Ulster Unionists, who, according to--
Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. I think that the hon. Gentleman knows what I am going to say. What he is talking about is not relevant to the matter under discussion.
Mr. Skinner : What I am trying to say is--
Madam Deputy Speaker : I know what the hon. Gentleman is trying to say ; I am telling him that he should not be saying it.
Mr. Skinner : Everybody should be aware of what is supposed to be a narrow ways and means resolution in connection with the Government's ability to carry through their legislation tomorrow. Normally that would be run of the mill. But it has been discovered that £4.6 billion, some of which is retrospective, is referred to in the Bill but not explained. You cannot tell me, Madam Deputy Speaker, that we can afford to turn a blind eye and allow what would normally be a technical resolution to slip through when my hon. Friends the Members for Preston and for Bradford, South have identified £4.6 billion that has suddenly been discovered by this tinpot Government.
Mr. Cryer : Would my hon. Friend care to comment on the blanket nature of the ways and means resolution? It simply asks for £4.6 billion. There is no account of how the money has been spent, and nothing in the Bill or in the explanatory and financial memorandum about how the balance of the money to be authorised under the resolution until next April is to be spent. In other words, the alleged guardians of the public purse have brought a generalised ways and means resolution to the House with no explanation. My hon. Friend will want to demand chapter and verse of all the expenditure covered by the £4.6billion.
Mr. Skinner : That is what I am demanding. The heading is : "Financial effects of the Bill",
and we had better get back to those, because I have been called to order. We have a narrow technical ways and means resolution which could mean anything, and the explanatory and financial memorandum says :
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"Clause 2 provides authority for the future payment of some £1 billion per year to the National Health Service out of National Insurance contributions."We are not complaining about that, because we understand that money raised in this way can be used for the national health service. However, clause 2 also authorises payments amounting to "some £4.6 billion". "Some"-- that is a fancy word in respect of large sums of money. What does it mean?
I challenge all the clever accountants and auditors among Conservative Members who work for all the posh City firms : if the word "some" was used in that context in a set of accounts, would they accept them? Would they accept the phrase "some £4.6 billion"? Why do not the Government state clearly what is meant by "some"? They do not because they do not know--it is another Lamont job. We could be talking about £14.6 billion.
This is the Government who constantly tell people at general elections not to vote Labour because Labour will borrow money, but they live in never- never land. The Government are living on tick and they have the cheek to include the word "some" under the heading "Financial effects of the Bill". They should say that the sum is exactly £4.6 billion, if that is the case. It is no wonder that the Government are in a hell of a mess.
Dr. Robert Spink (Castle Point) : Come on.
Mr. Skinner : I challenge the hon. Gentleman to tell his constituents next door to the Isle of Dogs--on Canvey Island--that he is voting with the Government to allow "some £4.6 billion" to be spent although he does not know on what, he is not even sure whether it is £4.6 billion and the people of Canvey Island are being ripped off left, right and centre. He should explain that to them.
Dr. Spink : The people of Benfleet and Canvey Island are interested in the fact that this year 115 patients are being treated under the national health service for every 100 who were treated just four years ago.
Mr. Skinner : The people of Benfleet and Canvey Island have seen the waiting lists increase and be fiddled. They understand only too well that they are part of the 1 million casualties who cannot be treated under the NHS. I had to respond to the hon. Gentleman, Madam Deputy Speaker, because he seems to think that this is a trivial matter. I am talking about "some £4.6 billion" and I want an exact figure to be included in the Bill. The Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, the hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) used to be the former Chancellor of the Exchequer's Parliamentary Private Secretary. He is reckoned to be an expert on money, so will he tell me what "some" means in this context ?
Mrs. Wise : I am disappointed in my hon. Friend because he is, uncharacteristically, being too kind to the Government. I am correct in my stricture because he has not yet commented on the fact that we are not discussing only one error. Anyone could make one error, although most of us do not make an error amounting to £4.6 billion. The Government are not only having to deem something to be effective from 1989 but having to deem something--something else, presumably--to be effective from 1992. That means that there are at least two errors.
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My hon. Friend should be very severe with the Government. They are treating the matter with levity and seem to regard it as a huge joke, but they are having to correct two errors. If I had spent money that I did not have, on no matter what worthy cause, no one would be sympathetic if I told the bank or the House that I was deeming that I had it four years ago.Mr. Skinner : I do not think that they are errors ; that is where my hon. Friend and I disagree. The phrase "some £4.6 billion" has been put in deliberately so that the Government can say, as they have done in the Scott inquiry, that the provision did not really constitute legislation or even an Order in Council. They needed to be able to pull the wool over people's eyes. My hon. Friend the Member for Preston accused me of being kind to the Government--I know that she did not mean it in this context-- but the Government are carrying on in a shady manner. It is all part of the Government's corrupt activity.
The financial memorandum also includes another sum. It states : "Clause 1 will increase contributions to the National Insurance Fund by some £1.9 billion in a full year."
What are the Government coming to ? What sort of shop are they running ? Imagine someone going into a shop and asking, "How much is it ?" and being told, "It is some £3." It is the same procedure as used for museums : people can decide whether or not to pay when they go into museums--some pay, some do not.
The Bill associated with the ways and means resolution
Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. We are dealing with clause 2 only.
Mr. Skinner : I am talking on clause 2 : I just mentioned the sum of £1.9 billion because it is another deliberate error designed to make the matter vague.
Let us forget about clause 1 for a minute. In fact, according to Madam Deputy Speaker, we must forget it for ever.
Mr. Skinner : Yes, clause 1 can be debated tomorrow, which is, in fact, today. Parliament has a cock-eyed system--it is tomorrow now, but the debate is taking place today.
Clause 2 mentions "some £4.6 billion", but only a few days ago, the Government made lots of mistakes over the Northern Ireland business. What happened? The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland said that he was conscientious and so went to the Prime Minister and said, "I am awfully sorry. I offer my resignation because of the Government errors, whether or not they are deliberate."
The Ministers should do the same over the Social Security (Contributions) Bill. Why have they not got the guts to go to the Prime Minister and say, "Here we are--we have made another series of mistakes. We are not sure on the amount of money, we do not know what it is for, where it has come from and where it has been spent." Ministers should have the guts to resign instead of coming to the Chamber and laughing like Cheshire cats as though it does not matter. There are people outside lying on the stones who have not got a roof over their heads, while the Government try to say that they cannot account for the £4.6 billion.
Mr. Cryer : My hon. Friend is right to call for the Ministers' resignation. Will he bear in mind that the
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retrospective provision under the ways and means resolution goes back to 1989? The current Chancellor of the Exchequer has wreaked a wrecking path through several Departments, one of which was the Department of Health, and he may be responsible for the error. Will my hon Friend enlarge on that subject, because it worries a number of people, both inside and outside the House, to think that a man who may have been responsible for a serious error and the illegal payment of perhaps £3 billion or £4 billion is now in charge of the nation's finances?Mr. Skinner : My hon. Friend has told only half the story. He is right about the then Secretary of State for Health--the blue suede shoes man. In fact, his shoes are not blue--except when he has spilled ale on them. The other half of the story is that the current Prime Minister was in the Exchequer at about that time. He came from the belly of the banking establishment. He could not do a bus conductor's job, but finished up with Standard Chartered bank. It was a gigantic leap, as we all understand. Most Tory Members come from the belly of the banking establishment. Then they find out that £4.6 billion has gone missing--
Mr. Cryer : Some £4.6 billion.
Mr. Skinner : Yes, some £4.6 billion. They find out that that sum has gone missing and they expect to pull the wool over my eyes. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South is right : in view of what has happened, they ought to pack their clogs and get off out of it. The number of times that the Government tell us that we cannot handle money. I am fed up to the back teeth with coming in here and finding that this tin-pot Government have lost money again. And whose money is it? It is not theirs. They put taxes up left, right and centre. They do it in a different fashion, of course. "VAT is not tax," they say. "Insurance contributions such as those under discussion today are not really tax." Of course they are. Tax has gone up by the equivalent of about 7p in the pound in the past few years. That money belongs to people out there who are slogging for a living--those of them who have a job--or who are among the 4 million who are out on the stones. Those people would like to know where the money is going. Why has not Mr. Andrew Neil of The Sunday Times --the Tories' friend --exposed this scandal in his paper, which reckons to discover all these things? What has happened to all the BBC documentaries? From 1974 to 1979 we had a Labour Government ; I know that it is a long time ago, but I remember it.
Mr. Skinner : My hon. Friend and I remember those days. My hon. Friend remembers them particularly well because he was running the country then. I will give my hon. Friend credit : I cannot remember a single ways and means or money resolution that was incorrect during my hon. Friend's time.
Mr. Skinner : My hon. Friend never stood up on a money or ways and means resolution in all that year and a half.
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Mr. Cryer : I assure my hon. Friend that the last Labour Government never lost £46, let alone £4.6 billion. We never had to put a motion such as this before the House in order to make up for illegal expenditure.
Mr. Skinner : Now my hon. Friend tells me that he was not there in 1976 ; he must have joined a bit later, at the time of the Lib-Lab pact. They were dark days indeed.
Mr. Cryer : I ought to correct my hon. Friend in case his irony is lost in the record of our proceedings, which may show that I joined at some time during the Lib-Lab pact. I assure my hon. Friend that I joined before that, in order to revive small industries and co-operatives, which enjoyed an unprecedented period of prosperity and happiness during my two years.
Mr. Skinner : Let me make a quick comment in answer to my hon. Friend. We had a manufacturing base then. Now we are down to a manufacturing base of about 4 million, yet the Government talk about GATT and how we will suddenly jump off the springboard. We do not have a springboard to jump off--I will finish with that point, Madam Deputy Speaker.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South talked about ways and means resolutions then ; and he talked about the fact that we never lost £4.6 billion--or, at least, the Government did not ; I did not lose any. It is true that the IMF came in. Is it not odd that we hear all the talk about the IMF in 1976 and 1977, given that, although that should never have happened, it pales into insignificance compared with the £4.6 billion, and the £10 billion that the last Chancellor of the Exchequer lost in one afternoon? I took a principled position, along with some of my hon. Friends, on the IMF. North sea oil was round the corner. They should have told that Mr. Witteveen that they had the oil money. That is what they should have said to him. They caved in, but the money involved was peanuts compared to the £4.6 billion.
It is 2.10 am and suddenly we have discovered that the Government do not know where the £4.6 billion has come from. Is it any wonder that the Minister for Social Security and Disabled People has to apologise about that backlog of disability claims every time he answers parliamentary questions? It is all part of the Government's approach to affairs.
The Government are riddled with the idea that they need not care about ordinary people as long as they can sluther legislation through. We are coming to reckoning day, so Ministers had better be looking around for directorships in privatised industries before they are all swallowed up. When they are in opposition, they will need them. We will pass a Bill if I get my manifesto accepted--one Member of Parliament, one job. That will be one of the things that we shall do straight away.
I have got to get back to "some £4.6 billion". Where will that money go? We shall pick up the papers in a week or two and read that the Department of Health is having new carpets fitted at Richmond house, which as just been decorated again. The Government will spend money like water, and perhaps we have alerted them to the need to stop it. Perhaps tonight's debate has put the mockers on it. I do not think that the Minister will understand that.
Mr. Cryer : My hon. Friend has raised a nagging doubt in my mind about the resolution. He may well be right. Bradford hospital trust, which was established by the
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Tories and is run by business men not for the national health service but as a first stage to privatisation, spent £250,000 on a new entrance hall to Bradford royal infirmary. It decided that it would create a better atmosphere. When someone who is bleeding to death is admitted to Bradford royal infirmary, he will have a better atmosphere as he passes through the doors and passes out. By authorising this resolution, we might be authorising that sort of payment, which was made a year or two ago--just as this some £4.6 billion was.Mr. Skinner : Yes, the Government spend money on such things and if they get their way--I suppose that they will, because Conservative Members will trot through the Lobby at the appropriate moment--we know what will happen. I could think of a thousand and one things that the money could be spent on in Bolsover. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South mentioned spending money on insignificant things, but just think what we could do with this money. We should tell the Minister of the various ways in which we could help people in hospitals with that money.
Mrs. Wise : Does my hon. Friend accept that, although it may be wrong to spend money on, for instance, Richmond house and new entrance halls, funding should be devoted to some aspects of accommodation? Is he aware that, in many parts of the country, including Preston, nurses are being turned out of nurses' homes for reasons that are by no means clear? The decision fails to reflect the value of having nurses on site and available on call to deal with emergencies or disasters. Nurses in Preston were given notive to quit two weeks ago and will be leaving just after Christmas. If some of the money were made available to prevent that from happening, it would be extremely well spent.
Mr. Skinner : Of course it would.
Apparently Westminster hospital has been closed, or is in the process of being closed--
Mr. Terry Lewis (Worsley) : They have closed it.
Mr. Skinner : So they have already closed it. I saw a march on television : people were marching through the streets to try to save the Royal Marsden, which is a cancer hospital. Yet here we are, having suddenly found £4.6 billion. We are talking about posh areas of London. I wonder what people think when they find out that the Government have misplaced £4.6 billion, or perhaps even more. I wonder what my hon. Friends' constituents think : all my hon. Friends know of people who want operations. They could have had those operations if we had known about this money.
Mr. Lewis : My hon. Friend mentioned Westminster hospital, only a few hundred yards from here. It is now boarded up. Is my hon. Friend aware that the hospital that was built to replace it--and two or three others-- was nearly £200 million over budget? Is it not possible, given the amount of overspending involved in the £4.6 billion, that that is part of the money that has been lost?
Mr. Skinner : That is a relatively small sum compared with £4.6 billion.
I was talking to a friend of one of my constituents today. Apparently, my constituent is in hospital. The hospital
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wants to get him out, because it has not enough money and beds--although he is not well enough to leave. It is trying to sort things out at the local authority end to get him out sooner rather than later ; and here we are, talking about £4.6 billion that has gone missing. It is the same all over the country.The Government should pull the business off the Order Paper, and give us a proper explanation. We should be able to deal with the measure later, after January. Why should we allow it to slip through? All the Tories can get the majority, but if they had any decency in their hearts they would not allow it to go through now ; they would put it to one side, so that we could deal with it later, when we know precisely how much money there is.
Mrs. Wise : I think that one point has escaped my hon. Friend. There is an increasingly close and important interface between NHS provision for the population's health needs and community provision, which is dealt with via local government. Is my hon. Friend sure that it would not be better for the £4.6 billion--or however much of it remains to be spent--to go to local government, allowing it to remedy some of the faults in community care, rather than being spent for other purposes, however worthy?
Mr. Skinner : I have no doubt of it, but we are living in the real world. We are talking about a Government who have been fiddling community care allowances. They reckon to have spent more money on that, but we know what they were up to : they were shifting the money, so that local authorities now have to find more money than is coming in. My hon. Friend makes an idealistic point--she is idealistic about these matters ; I do not expect this lot to take any notice. Of course some of the money should go to local government. I can think of lots of ways in which we could spend it. We could improve the social fund allowances, instead of losing all the money somewhere in the ether.
Mr. Cryer : My hon. Friend believes that the Government should pull the motion off the Order Paper and bring it back in January. I would like it to be brought back in January so that the Government can explain to us in detail where the part of the £4.6 billion which has already been spent has gone and where the balance of that money is going to be spent. Does not my hon. Friend agree that those who claim that they want to control public expenditure should tell Parliament where they have gone wrong, how much they have spent illegally and where they are going to go right in future?
Mr. Skinner : My hon. Friend was obviously not listening to me earlier. We all suffer from that from time to time. We make our speeches and then we switch off. However, I will reiterate the point for my hon. Friend's benefit, because he is on the right track. We know that the figure is "some £4.6 billion". We do not know whether it is precisely £4.6 billion. I suspect that the figure is "some £4.6 billion" because the Government want to leave a little leeway. However, that little bit of leeway could be £5.6 billion. The Government should take the motion away. They should not bring it back to the House tomorrow as that would be to quick. There must be proper examination. The motion should be returned to Parliament after the Christmas recess.
We also want a breakdown of precisely what the £4.6billion means and the information should be placed in
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the Library. We want to know how much has already been spent--if it has been spent. We want to know how much should be allocated for the next financial year. That information should also be placed in the Library. We want to know precisely where in the health service the money has gone ; if it has gone there and where it is going in future.We want to know what projects the money is going to be spent on. It is not good enough for the Government to simply say that it is being spent on the national health service. My Opposition colleagues and I want to know exactly where the money is being spent. How much is going to the Tory spivs who run the health authorities? There should be a register--
Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. We are cantering around the course yet again.
Mr. Skinner : There are some hon. Members in the Chamber who have not heard this before. I can tell by their eyes and body language that they are hearing this for the first time.
Madam Deputy Speaker : Yes, but I am not hearing it for the first time.
Mr. Skinner : No, you are not and I will tell you something else. I think that you have understood everything that I have said because you have been very quick to point out that you have heard it already. That means that, unlike some of my hon. Friends, you have been listening. Do not get me wrong. That is important for a Deputy Speaker or a Speaker. I have been in the Chair. You have to listen. To sit in the Chair and listen is one of the most irksome duties.
Mr. Ian Bruce (South Dorset) : Especially to have to listen to someone like you.
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