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Mr. Skinner: What, in his wedding dress?
Mr. Ashdown: However, a week later, there he is, throwing overboard long-planned legislation on divorce and domestic violence and making the Lord Chancellor carry the can, to satisfy a tiny group of Conservative right wingers and the ramblings of a freelance journalist on the Daily Mail.
I predict that it will not be long before the Prime Minister is off again, blown on by a news headline or a minor revolt of Conservative Back Benchers or a Minister who has now become too weak to control. Behind him he will trail that sorry, bedraggled Armada that now passes for the Government of our country.
Mr. Skinner:
You can't drag an Armada.
Mr. Ashdown:
Oh, he can; that man can. He can drag them behind. The albatross of the past 16 years hung around their neck, weighed down by broken promises and political sleaze, paralysed by internal divisions and ministerial incompetence, they will limp on until they make their final rendezvous with the ballot box.
What drives the programme is fear--fear of what that ballot box will bring. But fear is not only the Government's stimulus; fear is the weapon that they intend to use--it is the only weapon that is left to them and it will be their chosen weapon at the next election.
The Government will raise fear over constitutional change--we heard it today. They will say that it will break up Britain. But the opposite is true. The Union is more likely to be broken by the arrogance and contempt with which the Government ride roughshod over opinion in Scotland and Wales and the communities of Britain. They will raise fear over the chaos which they say would follow any change to the way we are governed. But the opposite is true. Britain's democratic structures have become so out of date, so out of kilter with the needs of a modern, citizen-based, information-rich society, that
they are now just as much a block on progress as are the out-of-date machines in too many of our competitive industries.
Mr. David Nicholson (Taunton):
The right hon. Gentleman talks about changes in the structure of government. Over the past 18 months the right hon. Gentleman and I, and our colleagues in Somerset, have worked together with success to save the tier of Somerset county council; indeed, we have succeeded in saving the county council tier across most of the country. Given the two-tier structure of local government that we now retain in this country, does the right hon. Gentleman's party still intend to superimpose on top of it--under Westminster and under Europe and Strasbourg--the tier of regional assemblies?
Mr. Ashdown:
A tier of regional government already exists. The only difference is that it is not democratically accountable. The Government have gone round constructing it--there are people in Bristol who deal with Government Departments for the west country, but the people of the west country have no control over them. All we seek to do is to ensure that those people are democratically accountable to the areas that they serve.
The Government will raise the fear--we have already seen it today--that the nation is about to be swallowed up by Brussels. But the opposite is true. All that Brussels does, it does because the Government have agreed to it, in secret, in the Council of Ministers--and the only person who agreed to more than the Prime Minister was his predecessor.
Many of the things that we and everyone else want for our people in the years ahead--security, the right framework for a strong economy, a powerful voice in the world, a clean environment in which to live--can be achieved only if we work constructively with our European neighbours. But the Government would sacrifice all that to appease a few rabid anti-Europeans on their own Back Benches.
The Government will raise the fear that if we try to invest in education, we will become bankrupt. But the opposite is true: the one certain way to bankrupt Britain is to fail to invest in our people. For they are the most important resource that we have.
The Government will raise the fear that long-term investment in our infrastructure and a long-term programme to clean up our environment will mean short-term misery for us all. But the opposite is true. Unless this country starts taking the long-term view, it is bound to go on failing--in the short term and in the long term.
The Government will raise the fear that the country cannot be safely governed except by people who have had as much experience as they have had. I presume that they mean people like the Home Secretary, whose chief experience since his appointment two years ago is that of being found guilty eight times by the courts for breaking the laws which he is supposed to be there to protect.
Mr. Ashdown:
The hon. Gentleman says that it is nine--I am happy to accept that. Frankly, I have lost count.
If it is experience that the Government value so much, if it is experience that gave us the poll tax or the arms to Iraq scandal or sleaze on the Back Benches or economic bungling and mismanagement or the misappropriation of aid for the world's poor into the Pergau dam scandal or the timidity and failure of three years of fatal hesitation in Bosnia, then frankly I think we can do without it. It is not that sort of experience that Britain needs, but new ideas, new energy and some new policies to prepare it for the next century.
Mr. Gallie:
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Ashdown:
If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to make a little progress I shall happily give way later.
The Government's programme for the next year should have contained such measures. But it does not. There are some measures that we can welcome in the Queen's Speech, as I said earlier, but they are few in number and small in character.
If the Bill on asylum is designed to speed up the procedures for dealing with applicants and to weed out bogus applicants, we would welcome it. But that will not be its purpose. Instead, I believe that it will be a disgraceful attempt to play the race card by blacklisting certain countries' nationals and preventing them from even applying for asylum. I speak of countries such as Nigeria, from where there have been 9,000 applications for asylum since 1993, of which only four have been granted. I am happy to give way to the Prime Minister if he is prepared to answer the question. It would put many minds at rest.
The Leader of the Opposition quoted from an article-- which I saw also--by Mr. Andrew Lansley, who was the head of research for the Conservative party at the last election. Interestingly, it is an Observer essay that is targeted at the methods used to destroy Labour in 1992. It is entitled "Accentuate the negative to win again"--and we have seen quite a lot of that. In the article, Mr. Lansley, who is now a Conservative party candidate, says:
I believe passionately in the equal rights of everyone in this country--whether they be black, brown, yellow or white. That is my firm conviction and it has always been
my firm conviction. That will be the Government's policy for as long as I sit on the Front Bench. I hope that that is clear.
Mr. Ashdown:
The Prime Minister's emotions and his sincerity about the matter are not to be doubted; what must be doubted is his control of his party. The Prime Minister has not done what I asked him to do. Is he prepared to stand at the Dispatch Box and repudiate the words of his parliamentary candidate, Mr. Lansley? He is not prepared to do that, and therefore we must infer that at the next election Conservative candidates will be free to put forward that sort of policy.
The Prime Minister:
The right hon. Gentleman is doing exactly what I said earlier, and it is contemptible. I have set out the Government's policy, which is the policy of the Conservative party. It is the policy of every hon. Member and of every parliamentary candidate. Is that clear enough for the right hon. Gentleman?
Mr. Ashdown:
The Prime Minister is not prepared to repudiate Mr. Lansley's words: I think that the nation and the House will recognise and understand that deficiency.
"Immigration, an issue which we raised successfully in 1992 and again in the 1994 Euro-elections campaign, played particularly well in the tabloids and has more potential to hurt". They are the words of a Conservative candidate who was the Prime Minister's research director at the last election. I shall happily give way to the Prime Minister because I believe that he has a very good reputation on race issues. It is the Prime Minister, and not those on the Back Benches, who will run his party's policy on the matter while in government. Will he personally repudiate the sentiment expressed by Mr. Lansley and give an absolute undertaking that it will not recur during the next election campaign?
The Prime Minister:
I indicated earlier to the right hon. Gentleman that I grew up in a multiracial area.
[Interruption.] Will the right hon. Gentleman do me the courtesy of listening? I grew up in a multiracial area and, from time to time, I lived in a rented house with people of more than one race. While I lead it, the instincts of my party will not be to play race at any time, in any way, on any occasion or upon any provocation. That will not be our policy.
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