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10.23 pmMr. William Ross (Londonderry, East): Whenever our debate is held somewhat earlier than this one, usually several Members from Northern Ireland and several Labour and Conservative Members take part. This evening, we are confronted with acres of green leather with very few inhabitants.
Mr. Peter Bottomley (Eltham): It is the marching season.
Mr. Ross: The hon. Gentleman has experience in Northern Ireland. No doubt, whenever I sit down, he will express his point of view about what should be done, as he takes a keen interest in those matters.
There is one notable figure missing this evening: Jim Kilfedder is no longer with us. He was an assiduous attender at such debates and always fought his case well for the people of North Down. He is sadly missed in the House. Although we on this Bench did not always agree with Jim, we have always been prepared to admit that he was active in pursuing his constituents' interests, not least in debates such as tonight's. One hopes that his successor will, on future occasions, adopt the same approach. He has conspicuously failed to do so this evening. Jim Kilfedder defended the interests of the people of Northern Ireland with honour and he deserves a word of praise from this Bench in tonight's debate and I am glad of the opportunity to make a few remarks about him.
There are a number of subjects that we can talk about in the debate, which involves the second tranche of Northern Ireland expenditure. It is the second bite of the cherry that we have every year. The debate is important to Northern Ireland. It is the time when we bend the Minister's. We not only ask him about expenditure for the current year, but to look forward to succeeding years so that the mistakes and problems of expenditure, which we see appearing, and which have appeared, as they always do, can be attended to. The Minister can then take steps to alter course before he makes his decisions about who will receive the money and how much they will have to spend next year and the year after.
The Minister has already heard from this Bench this evening and on former occasions what our priorities are in each aspect. The priorities are sometimes party based--in relation to strategic spending in Northern Ireland--and, on many occasions, they are constituency based. The debate gives us the opportunity to make our case to the Minister.
There is deep concern on these Benches about the proposed reorganisation of the Department of the Environment. We see that as the continuing mushroom growth of quangoland. There are far too many quangos in Northern Ireland. It is no good the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, North-East (Mr. Moss), shaking his head. When he replies, he will probably say that that has to do with next steps agencies, but next steps are just that--only steps, one following the other. The next step invariably leads to a quango, if that creature can be created. We know where that has led: Northern Ireland is being run more and more by people who have never dared to put their name on the ballot paper, and never will because they know what the result would be. Such people are totally untouchable by the electorate; their activities and power in Northern Ireland are resented by the entire population of that place. It is no good the Minister shaking his head.
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Rev. Martin Smyth rose --Mr. Ross: Does my hon. Friend wish to intervene? I know that he has strong views on the subject and I am happy to give way to him.
Rev. Martin Smyth: I appreciate the hon. Member giving way. Does he accept that it is not a valid argument for a Minister to say that the Government are following through the pattern in this place when they regularly tell us that Northern Ireland is different and we must do other things there? Is it not time that they returned to accountable democracy so that civil servants are accountable to people who know about the issues?
Mr. Ross: I accept what my hon. Friend says--if he had let me continue for a minute or two I was about to say it myself. As it happens, I go further: we have seen the end result of such moves on this side of the Irish sea and we have no particular wish to feed the fat cats as there is not nearly as much cream in Northern Ireland as there is here. I fear that whenever they got the cream, there would be precious little left for the ordinary man or woman. I am surprised that we have not heard some hurrahs from the two Labour Members--no doubt they will get round to it when they think about it. Many of the matters that are in the hands of quangos would be far better and properly run by Government agencies. In Northern Ireland we have a long tradition of running such matters efficiently. If we had democratic control, we would be even more efficient.
My hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, East (Mr. Beggs) expressed regret that the right hon. Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler), who opened the debate for the Government, did not refer to the cost of electricity. I did not hear him talk at length about the Washington conference either and the benefits that will supposedly flow from it; nor about the money--the peace dividend--that was to come from the European Community. No doubt in his wind-up speech the Minister will tell us what advances have been made in that area and what inquiries have resulted from the conferences in Belfast and Washington.
The Minister should also confirm whether a rush of people from the United Kingdom and the United States have inquired about the possibility of expanding their activities to Northern Ireland. Furthermore, will he assure the House that when investors appear they will be taken not only to West Belfast or Londonderry but to many locations in my constituency, East Antrim, South Antrim and to other parts of Northern Ireland which need more job opportunities, but which were largely ignored in the past 25 years whenever money and investment came to Northern Ireland?
There is a myth about rich Protestant areas. One has only to look at the unemployment figures in places such as Coleraine to realise that the people there face real hardship. There is migration out of those areas and, if we are to keep our best young people at home, we must provide investment and employment opportunities. We have seen precious little of that in recent years.
Do the Government recognise the need to support home-based industry? Home- based industry must receive treatment that is as generous as that given to foreign firms. When incoming firms seek skilled workers, will the Government ensure that there are training facilities available in Northern Ireland? We do not want to repeat
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the experience of the Benelux factory at Limavady, which recruited its first 10 or 12 highly skilled workers from Sligo.There is not much point spending British taxpayers' money building a factory in Limavady to provide employment for people from the Irish Republic. Many of my constituents would have been happy to seek training and obtain employment at the factory. It is interesting that the factory managers went to Sligo and that they did not recruit their highly skilled workers in England. I have also been informed that the factory advertised for shop floor workers in the Irish Republic before advertising in Northern Ireland. I hope that the Minister will inform the noble Baroness Denton, who has responsibility for that area, that I am totally dissatisfied with the civil service answer that I received from her a few weeks ago on the issue. I shall take up the matter with her in the near future. Will the Minister confirm that the purchase of the Apache helicopter from the United States will be accompanied by the most strenuous efforts to ensure not only that Starstreak is fitted to those helicopters destined for the United Kingdom armed forces but that every effort will be made to sell it to the Americans to be fitted to the 800 helicopters that the United States already has in service? That would be a tremendous boost to the Starstreak programme in Northern Ireland. The massive benefits that would accrue to Belfast and technological advances in the field that would flow to the United Kingdom would be very welcome indeed. We talked to people in the United States about that matter when we attended the conference. We did not spend all of our time wandering around and listening to others; we went out and did our best for the people of Northern Ireland and for our highly skilled work force at home. Over the years, we have seen the large-scale removal of civil service jobs from the provincial centres mainly to Londonderry. That is greatly resented. We hope that when civil service jobs are moved around the Province other places will again be given some consideration. There seems to be a definite effort to shift incoming employment to certain areas to keep the natives peaceful. The view is that Protestant areas are nice and quiet anyway, so they do not need to be given anything. There is rising anger about that, some of which boiled over in Portadown a week ago.
There has been reference to restoring to the people of Northern Ireland some measure of democratic responsibility. My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) mentioned that. We face the problem, however, of where any elected representatives might sit, since the Government were so good at looking after the Commons Chamber in Stormont that they let it burn down. Perhaps the Minister will be so kind as to tell us what progress has been made on the refurbishment of the Chamber, and whether it will be restored to its former glory. It was a very important public building in Northern Ireland, and there has been a remarkable silence about the whole affair for many months. We have waited long enough for firm decisions to have been taken, and I hope that the Minister will be able to make an announcement this evening. The next time water hydrants are checked over, and no water is found in them, perhaps someone will attempt to find out why.
Mr. Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock): And the Senate Chamber.
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Mr. Ross: I fully appreciate that; perhaps the hon. Gentleman will make his own speech when I sit down.As the House knows, I own a farm--although it is a long time since I turned a furrow with a plough. That is sad in some ways. The work is sometimes better than here: at least 76,000 constituents cannot ring one up and issue a telling off, six days a week. There is some concern in Northern Ireland about possible changes to tenancy law. Certainly, the Department of Agriculture was asking for people's views on it. What on earth are the Government trying to do? What is the intention behind such possible changes? The system that we have has worked perfectly well for many years. It is very flexible, and there have been no problems with it.
We have another problem, too, related to agriculture. I wrote recently to the Minister about Ballinahone bog. I hope that he understood some of what I said in that letter. I hope that he realises that the matter will not rest there. I want to come and see him, as do others concerned with that area of scientific interest. It is an important bog, and there are important implications for those with peat-cutting rights in the bog. Their interests are being overridden, with no consideration given to their case. I hope, when I come to see the Minister, that those responsible for the decision will be present to defend what I regard as indefensible. People have cut peat there for centuries, and the small-scale cutting going on will never do that massive bog any harm at all.
When trees are cut down after about 35 years on bogs in the hills, a great deal of wreckage is left behind. That problem needs dealing with rather more carefully than it has been dealt with hitherto. I turn briefly to the system of Housing Executive grants, touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, East. Formerly, such grants were related to the condition of a house. The system has now changed from that sound Conservative principle to the much more socialist principle of means testing. Perhaps this is a case of the Tories stealing some unsuitable clothing from Labour--rather than the other way round, for a change. The consequence that flows from that change has been a grant system that is totally at variance with what is needed in Northern Ireland.
We had a good system but we now have a bad system. We must look at it carefully again and try to achieve a sensible system which gives a reasonable amount of help to a large number of people rather than, as is now happening, large amounts of help going to a relatively small number of people.
My hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, East referred to the long delay from initial application. I do not want the Minister to stand up at the Dispatch Box tonight and tell me that it takes only X months. If he does, I shall point out that that is not the time taken from the initial inquiry, which is where it should be, but from about two thirds of the way through the procedure. That is when the Housing Executive clock starts ticking in order to give a completely false impression of the speed with which all the applications for grant aid are being processed.
That is nonsense; we all know that it is nonsense. It is an abomination that any Minister should stand at the Dispatch Box and defend the indefensible in that matter. It is just not good enough. I hope that he will not start feeding me the nonsense that the Housing Executive has tried to feed me in the past over this matter.
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The Minister knows that since I came into the House 21 years ago, I was one of those who advocated a replacement grant as opposed to a repair or improvement grant. The hon. Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady) has advocated a similar policy since he entered the House. But we did not get that. We asked that whenever a dwelling was in bad condition the Housing Executive should have the choice of paying a repair grant or paying roughly the same grant to replace the dwelling. What we actually got was a means-tested grant, which can run up to £40,000 in some cases--a ridiculous sum. The end result of that is that many people now cannot get a grant at all because of the large sums that are going to individual houses.If a replacement grant on really poor-quality rural housing that should have been knocked down, for which we had asked, and equivalent to the grant paid towards repairing a house, had been implemented, the problems that we now face would never have come about. It is because of the way in which the Housing Executive has manipulated the whole thing over the years that we have the present dreadful situation.
Mr. Beggs: Is it not the case that to qualify for virtually the full cost of a replacement dwelling, individuals will ensure that they have no assets to declare and that they will contrive to be unemployed for a sufficiently long period in order to qualify for what is a full 100 per cent. gift from Government, more than could have been saved through a lifetime of hard work?
Mr. Ross: What my hon. Friend says may well be true in some cases, but I personally have not come across that. Anyone that I know who has applied for and been given a replacement grant has been in poor health and poor circumstances. But I can see that what my hon. Friend says could be done, and if it could be done we can rest assured that humanity will do it. Of that I have no doubt whatever.
My final point concerns the problem with Housing Executive allocations to pointed cases. In the town of Limavady one or two dwellings have gone to pointed cases in the last two or three years. All the others have gone to priority cases. That is quite a large number of houses every year. I feel sure that the situation in the rest of my constituency is very much the same, especially in urban areas. The largest percentage of those priority cases seems to be made up of young girls with babies.
A social problem is not being addressed. We are merely applying some ointment by giving those people houses and allowing the state to keep them. We are leaving young married couples who want to start a family in poor accommodation. Will the Minister examine the "points" and "priority" system of letting houses in Northern Ireland, and consider what can be done to give people a fairer crack of the whip than they have been given for many months and, in some cases, years? The non-fossil fuel obligation entered into by Her Majesty's Government has led to a messy situation. I have considered the matter in some detail, because of the hullabaloo surrounding hydro-electric schemes in Northern Ireland. I have spoken to the Minister's officials, and to officials in the Department of Economic Development. The Government seem to have signed up to produce a certain amount of electricity from renewable sources--wind, water and wave power, for instance--before anyone could quantify what was available from those sources on a sound economic basis.
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Having entered into that obligation, the Government are trying to produce a certain amount of electricity by some means, regardless of cost to the environment or financial cost. I believe that they have started from, as it were, the wrong end. We are probably trapped, but we should not allow that to run away with our common sense. I am talking not about windmills--although I hope to return to the subject in a future debate--but about the whole question of the generation for sale of hydro-electric power in Northern Ireland, which will have a wider application throughout the United Kingdom.Northern Ireland contains a good many rivers that are valuable fisheries for migratory salmon and sea trout. The fishermen, and the owners of the fisheries, have rights; they have economic assets that should be protected. Those who want to generate electricity also have rights, because they own the water-power rights on the river. They have a legal entitlement to develop such sites and make use of them. As it happens, I own such a site-- although it has not been in regular use for some years, for reasons that I need not go into. Until a few years ago I ran my own domestic electricity supply from it, and I hope to do so again in the future.
The Government must find a way through the problems involved in those interlocking rights and benefits. When I spoke to officials, I was gratified to discover how much work and thought had been expended. I hope to talk to the Minister and his officials again. I know something about the matter, as an angler who has netted migratory fish in his younger days on a commercial basis, who owns a water mill and whose family has used water mills for centuries. I want a proper balance to be established. If we do not find a solution now, the problem will create headaches for many years.
Mr. David Wilshire (Spelthorne): I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying about electricity generation. No doubt he is aware that the Northern Ireland Select Committee is considering electricity prices; has he submitted his views to the Committee? If not, would he be willing to do so? The Committee is anxious to find the cheapest way of generating electricity in Northern Ireland.
Mr. Ross: I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but most of the schemes that I am dealing with this evening and that are available in Northern Ireland are small, run of the river schemes. They are a tiny proportion of the whole. Of course, I would be happy to talk to the Select Committee about the matter at any time, but I want to get my own mind clear on what can and cannot be done on this issue because it is important, although small scale in the generality of electricity generation. It is important to all individual interests in each individual river and site involved. A number of different interlocking issues are to be addressed and resolved before we go on.
Rev. Martin Smyth: My hon. Friend raises the question of non-fossil fuels. Does he agree that the people of Northern Ireland are paying the ransom because the Government decided to ignore the advice against privatisation that we gave in Northern Ireland in the Northern Ireland Committee. Now no one can develop alternative sources of generation for some more years, and the cost of electricity prices rises. Belfast West power station could be turned to waste disposal and would be an amenity to the city, yet it cannot go down that road because of undertakings given to the purchasers of the generating stations.
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Mr. Ross: Of course the hon. Gentleman is correct in what he says, with regard not only to the possibility of generating electricity from waste, which has not been fully explored, although I know that some people are considering that, but to the fact that a huge quantity of lignite is sitting in the ground in Northern Ireland and could be used for generation. By doing that, instead of importing electricity from Scotland, England and Wales, we could export it down the line and make a bit of money out of it. I agree with what my hon. Friend says.The reality is that we could touch on an enormous number of subjects such as this in Northern Ireland in this debate. I am sorry to keep a number of hon. Members sitting around just in case there is a vote; we will not divide, so they can go home if they like.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North): I have the Adjournment debate to come.
Mr. Ross: I know that the hon. Gentleman has the Adjournment debate. Hon. Members will probably stay and listen to him as well. [Interruption.] I promise that I will read the debate.
This debate is a chance for the representatives of the people of Northern Ireland to put forward the concerns that each of them has, and we have tried to make use of that this evening.
I finish by asking one simple question of the Minister. We recently had a letter from his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security telling us about the huge amount of social security fraud that has been detected, and what steps have been taken to detect even more of it. Will the Minister assure us that similar steps are being taken in all parts of Northern Ireland, and will he quantify the level of fraud that has been detected and stopped? 10.52 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Malcolm Moss): This has been a wide-ranging debate. I shall attempt to answer as many as possible of the questions posed to me this evening, but, for the vast majority, I shall be writing to the hon. Members concerned.
I should like to take the opportunity, as did the hon. Member for Warley, West (Mr. Spellar), to consider the Province's economic prospects. The distortion and dislocation that the local economy has undoubtedly suffered in the past 25 years or so may never fully be measured, but, despite the terrorist campaign, the Northern Ireland economy has performed remarkably well, especially in recent years. The recent news on the economy is extremely encouraging. It is growing relatively faster than the national economy. The seasonally adjusted unemployment figure has fallen in 11 of the past 12 months and, in the year to December 1994, the output level of Northern Ireland production industries has risen by 5.8 per cent. In manufacturing industries, it has risen by 6.8 per cent. That optimistic picture contrasts sharply with that painted by the hon. Member for Warley, West.
As on a number of other occasions, the hon. Gentleman raised the subject of the so-called plight of the construction industry. In the first quarter of 1995, some reductions have taken place in construction output compared with 1994, but the main factor in the decrease
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was a drop in the private category of construction work--the category that includes retail and office developments--and not a drop in construction work funded from public expenditure. In fact, the estimated value of construction work from planned public expenditure in 1995-96 is £861 million, some £18 million higher than in the previous year. The redevelopment of the Royal Victoria hospital, at a cost of more than £64 million, which I announced recently, is only one example of how public sector projects are benefiting the construction industry.We are, of course, helping the industry in appropriate ways by, for example, promoting a training ethos and improving skill levels among the employed and the unemployed. I am glad to be able to report that the number of unemployed construction workers in the Province has fallen by 2,058 over the year to May 1995.
The hon. Members for Warley, West and for Londonderry, East (Mr. Ross) continued to mislead the House and themselves with regard to the process of agentisation. Agencies will remain accountable through their chief executives to Ministers, and Ministers in turn are responsible to Parliament. The relationship between agencies, Departments and Ministers will be governed by a published framework document, which a future national or local administration would be able to amend. Agentisation does not prejudice how a devolved administration would exercise its responsibilities. Some time ago, I wrote to all Northern Ireland Members inviting them to meet me to discuss agentisation but, as yet, I have not had the pleasure of a reply from them.
The hon. Member for Warley, West also mentioned policy appraisal and fair treatment, or PAFT. He alluded to a dispute--
Rev. Martin Smyth: Will the Minister give way?
Rev. Martin Smyth: I wonder whether the Minister misunderstood the letter that was sent to us asking us to discuss development in Belfast, because we have not received any information about an agency.
Mr. Moss: I was referring to the process of agentisation in the Department of the Environment, which I know exercises the minds of hon. Members. I repeat the invitation for hon. Members to come and talk to me about it, because they seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that agencies are non-departmental bodies. They are not; everyone working in an agency within the DOE will be a civil servant.
The hon. Member for Warley, West spoke of a dispute in the Down Lisburn trust. I must tell him that the dispute was engineered by Unison to further its campaign against the Government's market-testing policy. Unison took the matter to court and lost the case. However, in the absence of a written judgment, I do not feel that it is appropriate to comment on the details of that case at this juncture, other than to say that I fully support the Down Lisburn trust in its competitive processes.
The current situation is likely to release some £700,000 each year over the next five years, a total of some £3.5 million. That is in addition to the £500,000 a year already being saved in that trust as a result of the first round of
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market testing, which began five years ago. To put the figures in context, let me tell the House that the £700,000 a year of savings from competitive tendering equates to a total of more than 450 elective surgery cases each and every year.The question of water privatisation--
Mr. Spellar rose --
Mr. Moss: I must press on. Time is short.
The hon. Members for Warley, West and for Antrim, South (Mr. Forsythe) mentioned water privatisation. I am happy to confirm once again from the Dispatch Box that there will be no water privatisation in the lifetime of this Parliament. I see that the hon. Member for Antrim, East (Mr. Beggs) knows the words and can repeat them. If we are to make progress, however, we need to facilitate a more commercial approach to the provision of water and sewerage services, by establishing more direct customer billing to separate funding from the overall local taxation arrangements. While detailed proposals have yet to be produced, a consultation document will be issued in advance of any change to existing arrangements. I again confirm that routine metering of purely domestic water supplies is not under consideration.
Mr. Spellar: Does the Minister believe that it is appropriate and right that health trusts should apply the PAFT guidelines in considering bids for compulsory competitive tendering?
Mr. Moss: I am happy to confirm that we have written to the trusts to say that they should consider the PAFT guidelines, but initially, because it was policy appraisal, we deemed it appropriate that those guidelines should be the responsibility of the health boards and the management executive, and not at the operational level of trusts. The hon. Member for Warley, West also raised the question of sulphur quotas. We are looking carefully at that, but at the end of the day, there is no guarantee that it will lead to lower electricity prices. It will depend on the relevant price movements of the sulphur oil, as he well knows, but we are looking into it.
On electricity, raised by the hon. Members for Warley, West and for Antrim, East, prices in Northern Ireland have in real terms been fairly stable since privatisation. The problem we face is that prices appear to be rising rapidly because they are falling in Great Britain. Price regulation is really a matter for the industry and the regulator, but the Government are certainly prepared to help by, for example, allocating large amounts out of the European programme to the cost of the gas and electricity interconnectors. Indeed, my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State recently announced the provision of additional assistance, to ensure that Northern Ireland consumers will enjoy equivalent benefits to their counterparts in Great Britain when the nuclear levy is abolished in 1996. The hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) mentioned Orlit dwellings. I repeat what I have said in correspondence to him and his hon. Friends, that we could not justify new legislation or any spending of public money to help people who purchased Orlit dwellings in the private sector. He also mentioned the cross-harbour bridge, and I am happy to say that work has recently commenced on the first part of the direct link
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between the M3 Lagan bridge and the Sydenham bypass and is scheduled for completion in April 1996. That will be followed by a second contract to reconstruct the Ballymacarrett flyover and complete the link to the Sydenham bypass before the end of 1997. The reorganisation of education boards was raised by the hon. Member for Belfast, South and others, including--I think--the hon. Member for Antrim, East. We announced proposals for changes on 10 April. The two-month consultation period ended on 9 June and the Government are now considering the various representations received before the final decisions are made. It is important to say that any proposals made for such changes were based on sound educational reasons and not the reasons that the hon. Member for Belfast, South inferred.The hon. Member for Antrim, South referred to the Child Support Agency and the attendance allowance, which he has already written to me about. I shall write to him on that and on the Pensions Bill and implications for Nolan.
The hon. Members for Antrim, East and for Londonderry, East raised with me issues relating to the Housing Executive and grants. There were some teething problems with the introduction of the 1992 grant schemes, which resulted in a slower uptake of processing than had originally been anticipated. However, those difficulties have now been overcome and the grant approval rate increased significantly, with expenditure in 1994-95 exceeding the allocation of £32.5 million. An additional £1.6 million funding was approved. Faced with increasing demands on grant expenditure, the allocation for 1995-96 has been increased yet again to £38 million.
The hon. Member the Antrim, East mentioned some problems with flooding on a housing estate. I ask him to write to me with details of that, and I shall certainly look into it. The issue raised on nursery education and the construction of new schools is another matter that I can take up with my right hon. Friend the Minister of State.
Mr. William Ross: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Minister seems to be in a desperate rush, yet he has until 11.51 pm to speak, so he has plenty of time.
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Madam Deputy Speaker: That is not a matter for the Chair until we reach that time.Mr. Moss: So many questions have been fired at me in the past 20 minutes that I could not possibly have detected the answers in my brief. I promise, as I said at the beginning of my speech, to write to hon. Members on the matters that I do not cover.
The time taken to process renovation grant applications was also raised and I shall be happy to write to the hon. Member for Antrim, East showing him that, in fact, our performance in that area has greatly improved.
I now come to the contribution by the hon. Member for Londonderry, East. I have here a long list of questions that he posed to me. I know that he endeavoured on the trip to Washington with his colleagues to talk to the American counterparts on Starstreak. It may well be that some of his work there has borne fruit. I take on board his comments about speaking to our colleagues in the Ministry of Defence to ensure that the Americans are apprised of the value of that piece of equipment.
The Stormont Parliament rebuilding and refurbishment is well under way. I shall issue a statement in the near future on the matter. The hon. Gentleman is due to come to visit me to discuss Ballinahone bog and I look forward to seeing him in the near future.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved ,
That the draft Appropriation (No. 2) (Northern Ireland) Order 1995, which was laid before this House on 8th June, be approved.
CRIMINAL EVIDENCE BILL [Lords]
Order for Second Reading read.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 90(6) , That the Bill be read a Second time.
Question agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee, pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committal of Bills).
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Statutory Instruments, &c.11.6 pm
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): We now come to motion 6.
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover): On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You may have been made aware of the exchanges that took place earlier between Back-Bench Members on both sides and Madam Speaker in respect of the next two orders and in respect of the fact that the Daily Mail and other bidders are engaged in mopping up the radio stations in the Chilterns and elsewhere. Madam Speaker said that she might be able to make a statement on the question of privilege in view of the fact that, although the matter has been spoken about in the House of Lords, apparently Members of the House of Commons have not had a chance to debate it. The only way in which hon. Members can do anything at all tonight is to make an attempt to challenge the payroll vote. Did Madam Speaker convey anything for us to hear in respect of the two motions? Will the Minister of State, Department of National Heritage withdraw them?
Madam Deputy Speaker: I was aware of the situation. Madam Speaker has not given me any information on the matter.
Mr. John Carlisle (Luton, North): Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It may help the House if I tell hon. Members that I have received a reply from Madam Speaker about whether there was a breach of privilege by the takeover panel on the basis of the lobbying of Members. Her reply was that in her view, there was no breach of privilege by that body.
Mr. Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield): Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am not concerned with the privilege issue. It has come to my knowledge, since the comments by Madam Speaker this afternoon, that there is a serious constitutional matter. We have been discussing with Members of the House of Lords the fact that a precedent has been set in the past few days. A motion that went before a Standing Committee of the House of Commons and was defeated, rather than coming to the Chamber for scrutiny, was then tabled in the House of Lords, very unusually, for debate last night on a motion that, as you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, was not contested by the Opposition, so it had a relatively clear run. It is now back this evening, but not to be discussed. Not many Members would know, if we had not raised the matter today, that the motion had been defeated in Standing Committee--
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. This is turning into a debate. Hon. Members will be aware that this matter has to be decided forthwith. It is, of course, open to hon. Members to vote either for or against, according to their choice.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North): On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Is this a different point of order?
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Mr. Corbyn: My point of order is this. How did this statutory instrument ever get to the House of Lords if it had not been to the House of Commons first?Madam Deputy Speaker: It can go to either.
Mr. Sheerman: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Is it a different point of order?
Mr. Sheerman: I have been in the House since 1979. I have never seen such evidence of obvious chicanery. Hon. Members are being prevented from discussing an issue. This influences your constituency, Madam Deputy Speaker, as well as others. A monopoly run by the Daily Mail will take over the franchises--
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I can operate only according to the rules in this House at this moment. I have told hon. Members that if they wish to vote against the motion, they can do so. I am now going to put the Question.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(5) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.),
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