| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Tony Newton): I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Lady, but her remarks are over the top. She must be aware that the United Kingdom has four Ministers with responsibility for agriculture. It is reasonable that each part of the UK should be represented.
Mrs. Taylor: During the whole fiasco throughout the summer, it has not been Government practice to send five Ministers to all these meetings. Nor has it been practice on all occasions for each of those Ministers to come back and spin a slightly different story. With all that happening, it is perhaps no wonder that no progress is being made in Brussels.
While those Ministers were keeping an eye on one another and trying to outdo one another, in Luxembourg on this occasion, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was saying on the radio in London that the Government
Confusion still exists in the Government. Consumers lack confidence and farmers face more hardship than ever. What has happened on bovine spongiform encephalopathy is typical of what happens when there is weak leadership and a Government with no sense of direction.
This Queen's Speech was never going to be ordinary, not just because it is the last one before the general election, but because this will be nowhere near a full Session of Parliament. The Prime Minister has gone on record as saying that the election will take place no later than 1 May, which would mean that Parliament would be dissolved close to Easter. Of course, it could be earlier. That means that the Government had to select issues that they felt should be a priority or that were not controversial.
I do not deny that some of the issues chosen should be given priority. I think that virtually all hon. Members agree, although I know that some Conservative Members do not, that there should be stricter controls on guns and that it is right that that should be in the Queen's Speech, but our constituents have many other concerns which have been totally ignored in the Queen's Speech that we have been debating for the past week.
For a start, job insecurity has not been touched on. We should all remember that since the Prime Minister took over--
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Raymond S. Robertson):
Hear, hear.
Mrs. Taylor:
The hon. Gentleman says, "Hear, hear," but he may not like it if I tell him that in Britain there are 1 million fewer jobs than when the Prime Minister took over.
Much needs to be done. Last week, on the first day of the debate, my right hon. Friend the leader of the Labour party gave a list of issues on which the Government should have been taking action. They included a ban on the sale of combat knives, ensuring that we halve the time that it takes for persistent young offenders to come to court, ensuring that we have statutory crime prevention bodies and introducing a statutory minimum wage to tackle the worst abuses of poverty pay and the abuse of taxpayers subsidising poor employers. He said that we should have a Bill to allow capital receipts held by local authorities to be used to build new homes and that we should have a windfall tax. He explained that devolution should be a priority. The Government have had a week to consider those measures, but we still await answers--to discover whether they will make further U-turns.
The simple fact is that 17 years should have been long enough to get more decisions right. The Queen's Speech contained yet another education Bill, correcting some of the mistakes of the past. The Government have produced 19 education Bills. The Queen's Speech contained another criminal justice Bill, correcting some of the mistakes of the past. The Government have produced 33 criminal justice measures. The Government simply will not listen. That is why they get so much of their legislation wrong.
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Tony Newton):
There is something slightly curious about the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor) placing such emphasis on legislation correcting the mistakes of the past, in circumstances in which much of the legislation that she and other Opposition Front Benchers now support was vigorously opposed by them when it was introduced. Each successive piece of legislation was accepted by them only when it had been proved that it was what the public wanted and that it was the right thing to do.
Mrs. Ann Taylor:
Does the Leader of the House acknowledge that that is not quite correct, and that it is certainly not correct on all occasions? Does he recall that, in June 1988, I moved an amendment banning the sale of knives to juveniles, and that it took some years for the Government to come round and agree that that was the right decision?
Mr. Newton:
Given that the hon. Lady had been the shadow education spokesperson for some time, and one of those who had persistently opposed the education measures that the Opposition now squirm and wriggle to accept, her point does not make her case. Moreover, in preparing for the final Queen's Speech of this Parliament, the hon. Lady has not taken the precaution of reading the speech of her predecessor, the right hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham), after the final Queen's Speech of the previous Parliament. I read it, however, because I had much fun with him in the year after the 1992 general election, after I had become the Leader of the House. Like the hon. Member for Dewsbury, he said:
As the hon. Member for Dewsbury rightly said--it is one matter that I do not dispute with her--we have had a debate in which many thoughtful and thought-provoking speeches have been made. I have not heard them all, but I heard, in particular, the speech early in today's debate by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), who very courteously apologised to me for the fact that he would not be able to be in the Chamber for the reply to the debate. I am sure that his speech, weighty as it was, will be carefully studied by my right hon. Friends the President of the Board of Trade and the Secretary of State for National Heritage.
We also heard a thought-provoking--I suppose that that is the right expression--speech from my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath), which I am sure will be widely studied.
I hope that I may be forgiven for adverting, as the hon. Member for Dewsbury did, to one other speech in the debate--that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins), which he prefaced by saying that it was his last speech on a Queen's Speech. He will be very much missed for the contributions that he has made on this and other occasions. His remarks, and his references to issues that are of concern to me as Leader of the House, lead me into observing a tradition for the Leader of the House on such occasions--saying something on matters of interest to the House. It may be
of interest not only to the House, however, as the workings and procedures of the House--although they can hardly yet be described as a daily talking point wherever people gather--undoubtedly have attracted growing public interest in recent years.
This is, of course, the last such debate in the present Parliament, so it is perhaps worth spending a moment or two on the very substantial changes that we have seen since it was elected in April 1992--changes which I think have contributed significantly to the further evolution of what, because of its capacity to evolve, is probably the most enduring political institution of its kind in the world.
Although the Jopling report goes back to the previous Parliament--and, as ever, I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling) and to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor), for the groundwork that they did--it is in this Parliament that we have carried through what I believe has proved a radical improvement in the way in which we conduct our parliamentary business.
There are, I know--there are one or two in sight at the moment--those who hanker for what they regard as the good old days when Members, especially Back-Bench Members, were hardly ever away before midnight and rarely before the small hours. I must frankly say that I do not, and I think that the great majority of Members share my view that the House has gained from more sensible and predictable sitting hours; from the better balance between what we do in the Chamber and what we do in Committee; from the development of voluntary agreements--I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Dewsbury and her colleagues for this--between the parties about how business is to be handled; from the greatly increased number of opportunities for individual Members to raise topics of their choice; and from the arrangements for Thursdays and Fridays, which have made it easier for Members to combine their parliamentary duties with their duties elsewhere. I once again express my gratitude to the hon. Member for Dewsbury for her part in that and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery), the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, for the part that he, too, has played.
If I can claim particular credit for anything, it is for the associated move--not carried out without difficulty--to give the House greater notice of forthcoming business and of recesses. I hope that that is now firmly established, and I am glad to confirm tonight that I shall continue to do everything I can to consolidate that. In saying that, I am conscious that in the equivalent debate last year, I was able to announce dates for the Christmas and Easter recesses. The House will realise that our debate this year is taking a place a month earlier than its equivalent last year. It would be a little premature, especially when we have so recently returned from the recess, to attempt to predict those dates with exact precision. There are also, of course, a number of other uncertainties about the position next spring, which will have to be taken into account. However, I assure the House that as soon as I sensibly can, I shall give it details of the proposals for the Christmas recess although they will, of course, have to be subject to the progress of business.
Alongside the Jopling reforms there have been a number of other changes, which deserve at least a mention. Prominent among them is the enhanced role that we have given, or are seeking to give, to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland Grand Committees.
The Scottish Grand Committee has met regularly in Scotland, not just in Glasgow and Edinburgh, but in a range of other locations, from Inverness to Dumfries. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor have taken part in the Committee's proceedings and have vigorously defended and explained the Government's policies to Scottish Members before a Scottish audience. That has been widely welcomed.
We have also made it possible for the Second and Third Readings of Scottish Bills to be debated in the Scottish Grand Committee, which in turn, as I hope will be demonstrated again within the next couple of days, makes it easier to find room in the legislative programme for worthwhile but non-contentious Scottish Bills. We have improved the procedures in a number of other ways as well.
We have also introduced improved procedures for the Welsh Grand Committee, with the additional ingredient that Welsh Members will be able to conduct parliamentary proceedings in Wales in the Welsh language. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales is anxious to hold Welsh Grand Committee meetings under the Standing Orders agreed in the House earlier this year. Without entering the controversy between the Government and Opposition Front-Bench Members, I can say only that I hope that it will not be too long before it proves possible to secure an agreement that enables that to happen. It is very much what my right hon. Friend wants.
In addition, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister told the House at the start of the debate--I look to the Benches towards the back--the Government are consulting on developing the role of the Northern Ireland Grand Committee so as to give Northern Ireland Members better opportunities to scrutinise Government policy and draft legislation and to call Ministers to account, and that, too, will be welcomed.
On another front altogether, on which I touch only briefly for reasons that are perhaps obvious, as the result of the work of the Nolan committee, the Select Committee on Standards in Public Life and now the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges, we have put in place in the course of this Parliament a much clearer and stronger framework of rules in relation to Members' interests and to what can properly be expected of those of us elected to serve here.
The matters on which I have touched so far have been primarily for the House itself. But if I might put on what I sometimes think of as the other half of my hat, more strictly in my role as a Minister, the Government, too, can claim credit for a number of steps that they have taken to assist the House in various ways.
For example, five years ago, the document known as "Questions of Procedure for Ministers" and the existence, membership and terms of reference of Cabinet Committees, were either secret or supposed to be secret. Now they are all in the public domain and very much part of the landscape of our debates and of political discussion generally.
Similarly, the "Code of Practice on Access to Government Information", introduced in April 1994--I realise that there are always people who want to go further in those areas--set out for the first time clear and detailed commitments to provide information to the public and the House. That has been welcomed by the Select Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey), who concluded that
In that context, I should also mention the equally thorough report from the new Select Committee on Public Service, on the subject of ministerial accountability and responsibility. Again, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will be submitting the Government's response to that report shortly. I am obviously not in a position to pre-empt his response today, but I can say that much common ground has been established between the Committee and the Government on those important issues and I hope that the Select Committee will find the response positive.
Of no less importance in strengthening the work of the Executive and the legislature are the steps that we have taken to improve the planning of the legislative programme and the opportunities for scrutiny in the House and among those who will be affected by the measures that we pass.
During the past three years, we have steadily developed the practice of publishing Bills in draft in advance of bringing them before the House, and I think that it is generally accepted that that has contributed materially to the quality of our legislation. In this Queen's Speech, we have carried that a further step forward by including in it not only the Bills that we intend to bring forward in this Session, but a number of those that we intend to publish in draft.
"may have to implement the Florence agreement".
That is a long way from the Prime Minister's statement:
"We aim to be in a position to tell the Commission by October that we have met the necessary conditions for decisions to lift the ban on two of the five stages".--[Official Report, 24 June 1996; Vol. 280, c. 21.]
He also said that he expected the ban on the fourth stage to be lifted by November--within two days from now. No progress has been made on that, although we are nearly at the point by which the Prime Minister said that the ban would be lifted.
"We look forward to the next Gracious Speech, because we shall write it."--[Official Report, 7 November 1991; Vol. 198, c. 662.]
I think that she will find that she is as wrong as her predecessor was five years ago.
"the code has been an important and valuable contribution to more open Government."
It has certainly been helpful to the House. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will shortly be submitting a second report to the Committee.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |