House of Commons Hansard Debates for 12 Jul 1995

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later and which I specifically want to address to the Chief Secretary. First, I want to underline the point made by my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr. Davis) and for Ashfield (Mr. Hoon) and others, by saying how worrying it is that nearly all the key changes in the summer forecast compared with the autumn Red Book and Budget statement have been changes for the worse.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Monklands, East (Mrs. Liddell) said, no explanation is provided. We should be given one tonight. We know that forecasting is a precarious business--all those uncertainties multiplied together and all those small differences between large numbers. We must expect some variation. In so far as we have heard a Government explanation today, this is all there is to it: we should not worry about the summer forecast--things are pretty much all right, with only a few small differences here and there; the economy is basically on a sound footing.

For the sake of the country and for my party if we win the general election, I would like to think that the economy is on a sound footing. However, when one examines the story, judged against the evidence, one sees that it is far too complacent and self-serving. It presents a flawed analysis of what is going on in the country and reveals a poverty of ambition for what Britain can and must accomplish.

For the key indicators--investment, growth, inflation and the state of the public finances--to look so much worse than just last autumn should disturb the Conservatives every bit as much as it disturbs us. Indeed, one or two Conservative Back Benchers--the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Mr. Legg), for example--came close to recognising that.

The Government cannot escape the fact that the arithmetically small differences to which they point are proportionally very large. The summer forecast shows growth in the current year now expected to be down by nearly a tenth as compared with the Budget forecast; inflation to be higher by nearly 20 per cent. proportionately; the PSBR to be higher by 10 per cent.; and business investment to increase by less than half as much as the Government were expecting just eight months ago.

They are not the statistics of a successful economic policy. They are, as my hon. Friends have pointed out, another episode in the Government's persistent failure to modernise the economy in such a way that we achieve genuinely sustainable non-inflationary growth. That is clear from the summer forecast figures. Whereas last autumn they were predicting growth higher than inflation, they are now pointing to fourth quarter inflation higher than the volume level of growth.

Despite welcome falls in the unemployment claimant count, the summer forecast concedes that the rise in employment has been very much less. It puts that down to the expansion of further and higher education and increases in early retirement and in the number of people claiming invalidity and sickness benefits. On page 25, the forecast states:

"Unemployment therefore seems unlikely to go on falling faster than employment is rising."

That begs the crucial question whether the Government believe that the gap will be narrowed in future by unemployment falling more slowly or by employment rising more quickly.

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The first specific question that I direct to the Chief Secretary is, given the assertion in the summer forecast, does he now expect unemployment to fall more slowly or employment to increase more rapidly? We need to know, because it makes an awful lot of difference to the unemployed and to the social and economic cost to our whole community of that unemployment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Cunningham) spoke with passion about the unemployed in his constituency, as did other hon. Friends about unemployment in theirs. For this country still to have 836,000 people trapped in long-term unemployment and 619,000 young people without jobs is an obscenity that demands the urgent programme for jobs for which Labour has called, measures to stimulate the recruitment of the long- term unemployed and action to make it easier for people to move from welfare to work.

Equally worrying is Britain's position on investment, especially coming on top of the Government's poor historic record. Total investment in 1994 was still 10 per cent. below the level in 1989, before the recession, and investment as a proportion of GDP fell six years in a row, from 23 per cent. in 1989 to 17 per cent. last year. Given that record, to have to revise downwards, as the summer forecast does, predicted investment growth by more than a half--from 10.75 per cent. to 4.75 per cent., is an indictment not only of the Government's forecasting ability but of what they are doing to the real economy.

Of course, business investment has always proved to be one of the most difficult things to forecast. It is all very well to suppose that the fall in manufacturing investment that we witnessed in the first quarter of this year was, as the summer forecast put it, "erratic", but the forecast does not explain that deteriorating investment outlook. The country deserves an explanation. The second key question that I would like to direct to the Chief Secretary is this: will he tell the House why investment prospects are now so much worse than the Government claimed at the time of the Budget? My hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones) made a passionate case for investment in manufacturing on behalf of the steel and aircraft industries in his constituency. It is clearer than ever before that Britain needs the strategy for investment that Labour has set out--

Mr. Budgen: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Smith: In a moment.

Britain needs greater incentives for long-term finance, more opportunities for small business to access capital and incentives for investment in skills, infrastructure and transferable technology. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Timms) said, we need to get research and development moving in this country if we are to confront the global competitive challenges.

Mr. Budgen: The hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones) did not just talk about investment in manufacturing, but made a specific request for grants for the aerospace industry. Is the Labour party in favour of that?

Mr. Smith: We are in favour of an industrial policy that rebuilds the strength of industries undermined by the

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Government's persistent mismanagement of this country's economy. We are in favour of getting industry moving through a partnership between Government and people and through training to raise the level of skills in our work force, to give people, like my hon. Friend's constituents, the opportunities which they have been denied under this Government and which they know that they can never expect from this Government.

The Government's record on investment is particularly serious given the evidence of high-capacity utilisation--at least in manufacturing industry-- to the point where it is generally agreed that the output gap has significantly narrowed, which the summer forecast recognised. Indeed, some analysts believe that the gap may have disappeared altogether. That can only lend further weight to the point made by the Bank of England in its May inflation report, which was stressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn). It said: "capacity utilisation in manufacturing"- -

in the first quarter of 1995--

"was at its highest level for almost six years, at about 18 percentage points above its long-run average".

That underlined the warning in the February report:

"Capacity constraints are becoming more widespread in industry . . . This will increase inflationary risks unless productive capacity increases".

That bears out Labour's argument, as several of my hon. Friends have pointed out, that the shortage of capacity--the failure to invest in plant, skills and infrastructure--limits Britain's growth and causes inflationary pressures to emerge even when there are more than 2 million people unemployed, consumer confidence and demand are very flat and, as some Conservative Members have pointed out, the construction industry has yet to struggle out of recession. The hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, South-West (Sir A. Grant) referred to the difficulties facing the construction industry and drew attention to the benefits of implementation of the Latham report. He should ask his right hon. and hon. Friends in government when they will find the time to implement the legislative provisions of that report.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) was characteristically wise when he drew the attention of the House to the danger of failing to take account of acting on the depreciation and degeneration of our public capital. People will ask why, given the state of Britain's infrastructure, with its rundown housing and transport systems, the Government are now proposing to cut public investment even further.

My third specific question for the Chief Secretary, if he will listen for a moment, is this: why, according to the summer forecast, is public investment in 1996 set to fall by 8 per cent.--nearly twice the 4.5 per cent. cut that the Government put forward in the Red Book in the autumn?

Mr. Legg: If, as the hon. Gentleman believes, public investment should increase--that is the case that he and his hon. Friends are putting forward--how high is he prepared to see the public sector borrowing requirement go?

Mr. Smith: We want to cut the PSBR by getting people back to work. That is the way to cut borrowing in this country.

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When we survey the state of the economy, we see that the Chancellor is in a difficult dilemma of his own making. Because of the underlying limits to productive capacity, he faces growth high enough to generate inflationary pressures above his target level but not high enough to lessen insecurity at work, to generate sufficient extra employment, or even to bring in tax revenues or to make people better off.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman's response to the dilemma is to go for greater short-term flexibility by loosening the targets that he has set himself on inflation and the public finances. In that way, he hopes to gain extra room for manoeuvre on both the monetary and the fiscal sides in the run-up to the general election. The Chancellor now says that inflation will be between 1 and 4 per cent. most of the time, when previously-- [Interruption.] I have here a letter signed by the Chancellor and addressed to the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Sir T. Arnold), the Chairman of the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee, which says:

"But setting interest rates consistently at the level judged necessary to achieve the inflation target of 2 per cent. or less should ensure that inflation remains in the range 1-4 per cent. most of the time."

It is no good the Chancellor saying that he did not say "most of the time", because he signed the letter.

Not only has the right hon. and learned Gentleman loosened his words there, but he now talks about bringing the public sector borrowing requirement back towards balance, whereas he used to say that it was his goal to achieve balance. In effect, he is admitting that his policy may be loosened in the pre-election period. This is my fourth specific question to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury--

Mr. Stephen: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Smith: No.

If the Chancellor is not loosening his policy, why is he loosening his language? The public finances, another critical area in which the Government--

Mr. Kenneth Clarke: The hon. Gentleman's textual analysis is utterly ludicrous. The inflation target is 2.5 per cent. or lower. I said that we were moving towards balance in the medium term in the 1993 Red Book. It is absurd textual analysis to use a difference of one word between that and the 1994 Red Book. There has been a totally consistent policy. What is Labour's policy on public sector borrowing? What is Labour's policy on inflation targets? We have listened for another half an hour and still we have not heard a word of serious economic policy.

Mr. Smith: The Chancellor of the Exchequer is obviously in a serious difficulty that he cannot get out of. He could not tell my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) earlier which of his various targets he was following in practice--whether it was the 2.5 per cent. that he told the Governor about, the 3 per cent. that he said in an interview would be a triumph, the 1 per cent. to 4 per cent. range that he tells the public about, or the "most of the time, but we might go over 4 per cent." to which he put his name when he signed that letter. The Government's policy is in chaos.

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Not only is the PSBR now projected to be higher than the Government expected at the time of the Budget, but their own panel of independent forecasters has said that it will be 25 per cent. higher than they admit even now. That prompts my fifth question to the Chief Secretary. Does he regard the £16.1 billion in the summer forecast for 1996-97 as an acceptable level for the PSBR? Is it now a target for that year?

Sir Peter Hordern rose --

Mr. Smith: No, I am running out of time.

When does the Chief Secretary expect the public finances to reach balance? Let us have a date. The Chancellor would not give us one earlier.

The right hon. Member for Horsham (Sir P. Hordern) invited us earlier to consider what had happened to business taxation. I have news for Conservative Members about that. Not only have the Government clobbered individuals by breaking all their promises on tax and banging on that extra £800 a year from which people are suffering even now, but they have taken more tax from companies as well.

Figures from the Library show that the average share of company income taken by the Conservative Government during their years in office, in corporation tax and other taxes, is 15 per cent., compared with 11 per cent. for the years of the previous Labour Government. In 1994, the Government took 13 per cent. of company income, compared with 11 per cent. in Labour's last year in office.

We were invited by the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mr. Deva) to contrast the values and policies of the Conservative and Labour parties. I can tell the House that the choice before the country and the House is clear. The Conservative party breaks its promises on tax cutting and living standards, fails to invest for the future and leaves our productive capacity too small to generate the welfare that people need. The Government have divided the country, trapped millions in poverty and hit middle and lower-income Britain while they have failed to act to end excesses in the privatised utilities. The Government have surrendered their responsibilities to an unregulated market.

The Labour party stands for investment in people, industry and infrastructure, and wants to open up opportunities to enable everyone to make the most of their potential. We say that fairness is crucial to enable people to get on and to get the people of Britain pulling together for economic success. I remind Conservative Members of something that the country will not forget--that it was Labour who defeated the Government over the increase of VAT on fuel, while it was the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Conservative party who wanted to force through that unfair tax, just as they will extend VAT again if they have the chance.

The choice is between the parties, but which one can the public trust? The public can never trust the Conservatives again. Government Members have said, "No change is no chance." Labour will bring change and a new future for Britain, and I commend our amendment to the House.

9.41 pm

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. William Waldegrave): These economic debates are very different from debates on agriculture. They are much more fun, I

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have to say. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor will not find it offensive if I say that I found certain similarities between his speech and that of his shadow, the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown). They are both substantial figures who delivered speeches full of jokes. The only difference was that my right hon. and learned Friend had some substance between his jokes, while the hon. Gentleman just had jokes. They were good jokes, but there was no substance in his speech at all.

We did learn one or two things. The hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) said that he would have liked interest rates to be higher, and that was helpful. I think that the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East really wanted interest rates to be higher, too. He shifted around a bit, but the tenor of what he was saying in his debate with my right hon. and learned Friend about the Governor of the Bank of England suggested that the hon. Gentleman would have put interest rates up. There was also an announcement from the hon. Member for Dunfirmline, East of at least one new tax on business, for training. That is very admirable, and it is better that the hon. Gentleman should put that new tax forward firmly. It may be a good thing if he puts it forward and votes for it.

The problem for the Opposition today is a problem that I remember the late, great Keith Joseph explaining to me a long time ago when we were in opposition. He said that it was a miserable business being in opposition when the news is good--not that the news ever was good between 1974 and 1979--and added, "You have to emphasise as much as you can everything that is wrong."

The hon. Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith) played some wonderful games with percentages, and stated that a revision from 3.25 per cent. down to 3 per cent. was a great disaster. My goodness, Labour would have been pleased with figures such as those when they had inflation of nearly 27 per cent. It reminds me of Oxford city council, which is run by the partisans of the hon. Member for Bristol, South (Ms Primarolo). It wanted to put up a barrier to stop shoppers crossing a road because the number of road accidents had doubled. I asked how many casualties there had been and was told two--there had been one the year before. One can do things like that with percentages, and the hon. Member for Oxford, East was doing it, but it was not very effective.

Mr. Stephen: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Waldegrave: I shall give way just once, as the hon. Member for Oxford, East did not keep to the agreement on time.

Mr. Stephen: I am much obliged to my right hon. Friend. When he reads Hansard tomorrow, he will see that the hon. Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith) took almost 22 minutes to wind up the debate, in the course of which he made one carping criticism after another of the Government, regaled us with figures of which we are all well aware and, apart from a few generalisations to which we can all say amen, gave no sign whatever of Labour's

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policy. Is the government of this country to be entrusted to a party whose economic policies are so incredible that it will not even state publicly what they are?

Mr. Waldegrave: In coming to these debates, I have learnt that there is no hope from Opposition speeches or papers on their position. One always hopes that an Opposition will give ideas that one can pinch and claim as one's own, and then say what admirable new ideas one has had. There is no chance of that from the Labour party. Alternatively, one can look at their ideas and rebut them because they are wrong. There is no chance of that either, because no ideas are forthcoming. It is inconvenient of them and I do not think that they are earning their pay on this matter.

The hon. Members for Dunfermline, East and for Oxford, East raised one important matter. They tried to manufacture confusion about our inflation target. There is no confusion about our inflation target, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Sir T. Arnold) said, and he understood it very well.

Surprisingly, the hon. Member for Gordon tried to contribute to that confusion. He of all people should know that there is no confusion, because he put a question to the Governor of the Bank of England when the Governor came to the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee. He asked the Governor whether the Government had relaxed their inflation target and the Governor said, "No, I think that that is absolute rubbish." So it seems odd that the hon. Gentleman did not listen to the answer, and neither did the Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen.

Let me give an example of what my right hon. and learned Friend means. Let us say that the last Labour Government had inflation moving between 7 per cent. and 27 per cent. If their target had been consistent with that, they would have said, "We shall set a target at 17 per cent. or downwards" and that is exactly what they would have achieved--an average of 16 per cent. inflation in that period. So the arithmetic is really quite simple.

In an eloquent speech, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Sir P. Hordern) made the fundamental point that a long-term commitment to low inflation is what produces investment, rather than clever tricks or, Lord help us, state direction. A long-term commitment to low inflation changes the culture of investment and produces long-term investments. Sustained, healthy economic growth at a strong rate, which is what we have now-- stronger than any other European country--will become a permanent feature of the landscape only if we keep inflation down and achieve those long-term investments.

Many hon. Members on both sides of the House welcome the fact that the recovery has been led by exports. That is surely to be welcomed. Every Government since the second world war have sought to achieve that, but this is genuinely the first time that a recovery has been export led. Exports have risen by more than 9 per cent. compared with a year ago. My hon. Friends the Members for Cambridgeshire, South-West (Sir A. Grant) and for Bosworth (Mr. Tredinnick) made that point eloquently.

Although manufacturing investment has risen in the past year, obviously we want it to increase further. The framework for that seems to be in place because investment is ultimately caused by profitability. The Opposition, even new Labour, are pretty uncomfortable

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with profits in private sector companies. They do not really like them. They nearly always describe profits as excessive and conduct a sort of vendetta against companies that make large profits. The fact that profitability has now returned to its highest since 1988 and is higher than at any time in the 1970s is a good indicator that we shall get that investment in the future.

The hon. Member for Monklands, East (Mrs. Liddell) made an uncharacteristically unfair point about inward investment. She complained that we were not obtaining enough inward investment. I do not know what figures the hon. Lady can have been reading. We have about a third of all inward investment into the European Union and 40 per cent. of the United States and Japanese investment into the European Union, and a recent Confederation of British Industry survey showed us as being the second favourite destination of mobile investment in the world, after the United States.

Therefore, it was a little unfair of the hon. Lady to make that criticism, and she well knows that Scotland has rightly been a great beneficiary of that inward investment, with a good work force and plenty of good opportunities for investment. That leads to the creation of jobs, not only in Scotland but throughout the United Kingdom.

As many Opposition Members and all Conservative Members who spoke have said, we are talking about the creation of long-term stable jobs in the only way possible--660,000 new jobs in the past two and a half years and, on either measure, unemployment has decreased during that time. Let us hope that that continues.

Living standards are now increasing after inflation and tax. Real personal disposal income is expected to increase by about 1.5 per cent. this year, and that should mean an extra £5 a week for households on average. We expect to keep that going next year and beyond.

Unjustifiably, several Opposition Members accused my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of complacency. One person, the hon. Member for Oxford, East, accused him of loose language. My right hon. and learned Friend could never be accused of any manner of loose language, and he certainly could not be accused of complacency. If we are to be accused of complacency, let us stand, not on our forecast, which we believe, but on the forecasts of outside organisations. The hon. Member for Oxford, East, who is learned in those matters, will have studied those forecasts and he will know that our forecast lies about in the middle of the range of forecasts by outside organisations. Therefore, by saying that that pattern is likely to come about in the next year and the next year or two we are not being complacent; we are simply predicting what is the best advice that can be given to us from inside and from outside. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, for example, expects the United Kingdom economy to grow faster than any other major European country again this year. That is not complacency; it is a fact of which we should be proud, and which we should take the necessary steps to maintain in future.

Many of my hon. Friends mentioned the subject that dominates my mind, and will dominate my mind while I hold this job, which I am delighted to hold-- public spending.

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As I take on what is a crucial job in Government, described to me by Leon Brittan as the most fascinating job in Government, it is legitimate for my hon. Friends to ask me, in the phraseology of my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen), what my prejudice or instinct is.

I have sometimes been described as a one-nation Tory or, if one wants to be offensive, a wet Tory--the type of person who admires Rab Butler and people of that kind. I do admire Rab Butler; I plead guilty to admiring Rab Butler.

Let me remind the House what Rab Butler did when he was one of the most distinguished holders of my right hon. and learned Friend's office--he was also Deputy Prime Minister--and in that great office he reduced Government spending from 37.75 per cent. of gross domestic product to 33.5 per cent. of GDP between 1952 and 1955. If that is being a Tory wet, I could probably bring my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bridlington (Mr. Townend) with me. My hon. Friend would put up with wetness of that type, I believe, if we reduced public spending to 33.5 per cent. of GDP.

I do not believe that I shall be able to do that, but I believe that I shall have to work, and shall work, extremely hard to continue the Government's commitment to bringing down the proportion of public spending in GDP. That will be the principal target of my efforts and of the efforts of the Treasury in the next spending round. I believe that that is something that unites all Conservative Members. It is one of the things that fundamentally divide us from the Labour party. The Labour party will not give us targets and so on. It is uncomfortable with that because, as we decrease the percentage of GDP that is spent by the public sector, it will find it more and more difficult not to give an answer. Labour Members will make the debating points that the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East has made--"You just put it up." Yes, it did go up in the recession, but we shall bring it down to the point where the hon. Gentleman must, in the end, be smoked out into agreeing with us, or he will be shown to believe in nothing.

The two most eloquent speeches today were made by the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. The right hon. Member for Chesterfield raised the tone of the debate by offering a real and philosophically coherent alternative. The conventions of the House do not permit me to refer to an amendment that was not chosen, but the right hon. Member's speech reminds us that, although Labour Members tease us about the divisions in our party, the divisions in the Labour party are much deeper, because they are based on a complete difference in philosophy.

The amendment appearing in the name of the right hon. Member for Chesterfield contains a reference to the philosophy of Her Majesty's Government--a belief in markets and so on. I think that that is what used to be called code; he was really referring to Her Majesty's loyal Opposition. It must hurt the right hon. Gentleman that the Labour Front Bench now professes a commitment to market economics which must be anathema to him and to his colleagues who signed the amendment.

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Are they trying to tell us something? Are we to assume that Labour Members have become pink Conservatives after all? My right hon. Friend--I beg his pardon: he should be right hon.--the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West said that we should not allow the country to be fooled by that. [Interruption.] My colleagues on the Front Bench are saying, "Steady on." My hon. Friend made his point very eloquently.

What are the gut feelings of Labour Members about those matters? I do not believe that they have become pink Conservatives; I believe that they have listened to the PR men and the pollsters, and they do not think that they will be elected if they allow their true colours to show. I believe fundamentally--it is obvious from every debate in this place and in our constituencies and from the hon. Member for Bristol, South (Ms Corston), who is a redoubtable fighter for socialism but who is very quiet nowadays-- that Labour Members believe in higher spending and higher taxing. If they do not believe in that, they do not believe in anything.

Mr. Andrew Smith: Will the Chief Secretary tell the House whether it is Government policy to abolish capital gains tax and inheritance tax?

Mr. Waldegrave: That is a nice easy question to answer: yes. When we can afford to do it, we shall do it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West should be interested in my next point. Labour Members' commitment to a belief in market economics does not go as far as believing in rewarding the winners in a market system. We believe that the abolition of those taxes will make capital markets work better so that everyone will be better off. Labour Members cannot stomach that, so they fall off the train. At that stage, they do the populist bit and say, "It's going to make some people richer, so we're against it."

That is also their reaction to privatisation. We did not hear anything about the fact that the privatised industries now contribute £55 million a week to the Exchequer, when they cost £50 million a week when they were left to us by Labour. We hear only persistent attacks on a few individuals whom Labour Members allege are overpaid. They go for the cheap populist vote in order to disguise the fact that they have no belief in privatisation.

My hon. Friend's point was eloquently reinforced by a number of Labour Members, a few of whom referred to more spending. They have been house trained to the point where they do not state any figures; they have been told to disguise the fact that their spending pledges are real. That is what so offends the honest socialists on the Opposition Benches who want to spend money and who believe in spending money. That is what so offended the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley). He recently wrote in The Guardian newspaper that Labour now has a clear choice: it can be either the party of high taxation and proud of it, or the party of higher taxes which it is ashamed to describe.

The Labour party has now become the party that is ashamed to mention its own name--the party that dare not speak its name. It is really the party of high spending and high taxation, but it will not be brave enough to say so.

Question put, That the amendment be made:--

The House divided: Ayes 233, Noes 300.

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Division No. 203] [10.00 pm

AYES

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Abbott, Ms Diane

Adams, Mrs Irene

Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)

Allen, Graham

Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)

Armstrong, Hilary

Austin-Walker, John

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Barnes, Harry

Barron, Kevin

Battle, John

Bayley, Hugh

Beckett, Rt Hon Margaret

Bell, Stuart

Benn, Rt Hon Tony

Bennett, Andrew F

Bermingham, Gerald

Berry, Roger

Betts, Clive

Blunkett, David

Boateng, Paul

Bray, Dr Jeremy

Brown, Gordon (Dunfermline E)

Brown, N (N'c'tle upon Tyne E)

Burden, Richard

Byers, Stephen

Caborn, Richard

Callaghan, Jim

Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)

Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)

Campbell-Savours, D N

Cann, Jamie

Chisholm, Malcolm

Church, Judith

Clapham, Michael

Clark, Dr David (South Shields)

Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)

Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

Clwyd, Mrs Ann

Coffey, Ann

Cohen, Harry

Connarty, Michael

Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

Corbett, Robin

Corbyn, Jeremy

Corston, Jean

Cousins, Jim

Cox, Tom

Cummings, John

Cunliffe, Lawrence

Cunningham, Jim (Covy SE)

Cunningham, Roseanna

Dafis, Cynog

Dalyell, Tam

Darling, Alistair

Davidson, Ian

Davies, Bryan (Oldham C'tral)

Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'dge H'l)

Denham, John

Dewar, Donald

Dixon, Don

Dobson, Frank

Donohoe, Brian H

Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth

Eagle, Ms Angela

Eastham, Ken

Etherington, Bill

Evans, John (St Helens N)

Fatchett, Derek

Faulds, Andrew

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