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12.1 pm
Mr. Jeff Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr): Given the shortness of the past few speeches, which were models of their kind, there might have been an opportunity for one of the other hon. Members who were in the Chamber earlier to participate. We have not had an overly successful three hours, because the time has not been used as we intended. Three hon. Members--the hon. Members for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold), for Basildon (Mr. Amess) and for Castle Point (Dr. Spink)--took 55 minutes between them and raised matters that would be better raised in local government than in the House of Commons.
Having attended many of these debates in the past few years since we changed the procedure, I put it seriously to the Leader of the House that we might consider having a ballot the night before for a mixture of five and 10-minute slots, to be allocated to hon. Members by name, in which they could still raise any subject that they wanted. That would be far better than our current hit and miss procedure, with excessively long early speeches denying many hon. Members the opportunity to raise important matters.
I cannot touch on all the matters that have been raised; nor, I imagine, will the Leader of the House be able to do so. My hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) talked about the health service in London, saying that it was trolley time again in London hospitals. I suspect that we shall hear a good deal more about that in the early months of next year, as the winter starts to bite.
My hon. Friend also raised the important issue of Cyprus, mentioning the fact that the Foreign Secretary was able to visit for only 24 hours rather than the 48 hours planned. I am sure that the Leader of the House and his Cabinet colleagues will take note that overseas ministerial visits in 1997 will, of necessity, be a good deal shorter than originally planned. That is not good for the conduct of business or for British interests overseas, but it is a consequence of matters being dealt with in the House. That is the price to be paid. There is a net loss to the country as a whole, but, by and large, people will be prepared to pay that price.
My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes) raised the serious issue of opencast mining, particularly the health hazards of the planned and existing
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My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) and the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) mentioned the events in Peru overnight. We would appreciate any up-to-date information that the Leader of the House has.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr. Tipping) made the model speech of the morning. In five minutes, he raised one issue in a targeted way--the health service in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire and the effects on his constituents. I have no doubt that he will be back on that issue in 1997.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) raised the worrying issue of the accuracy of parliamentary answers. The Leader of the House is not responsible for the inaccurate answers, but the accuracy of answers should concern him more than it does most Cabinet Ministers, because he has a House of Commons role. I should be grateful if he would say something about that.
The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) talked about the BSE crisis--an issue that we shall keep coming back to in 1997, because the bill will fall to the incoming Government. In particular, he raised matters relating to the cull and the gravy train that is operating to the benefit of a few slaughterhouse owners. That has been alluded to in the past. I have been present for many of the statements in the House. The hon. Gentleman made specific allegations that the taxpayer is not getting value for money. It is clear that, if the rules of local government were applied, Ministers at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food would probably be surcharged for not obtaining value for money by proper competitive tendering arrangements.
Another worrying fact made clear by the hon. Member for North Cornwall--I was not aware of this--is that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who is in charge of the public face of the BSE cull, appears not to be accountable to the House for the management of the operations that he is conducting on behalf of the Government. I do not understand how he has escaped that--probably by offloading and transferring written questions. There ought to be some means of accountability to the House by the Minister responsible for the expenditure of more than £2 billion, rising to £3 billion. As I recall from a previous Red Book, that sum amounts to the entire contingency fund.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the worrying fact that only 21 of the 72 approved slaughterhouses were used for the work, with slightly more being used later. The big boys of the industry have clearly ripped off the taxpayer, with much of the hundreds of millions of pounds of public expenditure going to them in direct profit, while probably hundreds, if not thousands, of small businesses have been destroyed. Looking at the figures in detail, it does not make sense that so much of the public expenditure on dealing with the BSE crisis has lined the pockets of the wrong people, to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds, while so many small businesses have been destroyed. The issue cannot be dealt with in this morning's debate, but when the bills are picked up in
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My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) raised the issue of the British Rail pension fund robbery, which is what it amounts to, given that £8 billion of assets exceed the liabilities by £1 billion. Such "robbery" has been going on for a long time, and is related not only to privatised industries but to the private sector as a whole.
From some figures in the Financial Times this morning, it is clear that the proportion of surpluses being taken by companies is exceeding that returned in benefits to pensioners by a ratio of more than 10:1. If there is inside knowledge or good guesswork on pension fund surpluses, low offers can be submitted for companies--especially those in the public sector--that are put up for sale. Companies are queuing up to pay the Government for up to seven years for the franchise of rail companies, which on the surface does not seem to make sense, because they are laughing all the way to the bank by being able to exploit British Rail pension funds.
Such activity occurs in the private sector, too. Many of my constituents have been affected by Lucas Industries plc raiding the company's pension fund surplus. That company has not paid a penny piece in employers' contributions for years. That is exactly what will happen in the railway industry as companies seek to take a pensions holiday. It is no good anyone saying that the matter rests with the trustees: many of them are quite weak, some turn out to be in the company's pocket and not truly independent, and, although most represent current members who are paying into the fund, they certainly do not represent current pensioners.
The matter will have to be dealt with. I understand that the pensions ombudsman has ordered National Grid to pay £44 million back into the pension fund, which may happen in the rest of the privatised sector. Nevertheless, Ministers should address the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich. If the Leader of the House cannot do so, he should ensure that we get an early and full response from Ministers. There will obviously be investigations--I suspect by the National Audit Office--which will take a long time. It would be very convenient if we could have answers well before the date of the general election is announced so that Ministers can be brought to book for their incompetence in the privatisation of our great national assets.
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Tony Newton):
In the light of some of the remarks of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) and the frustrations expressed earlier in the debate, it is rather ironic that the hon. Gentleman had some minutes more in which to speak than he had asked for and that I shall have nearly 10 minutes more than I had asked for, which should enable me to do more justice than would otherwise have been possible to some of the speeches. I had expected the
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One point raised in several of the early speeches, which I hoped would have been made more often, concerns today's unquestionable seasonal good news about unemployment. Seasonally adjusted claimant unemployment fell today by a record 95,800--down to just over 1.9 million, which is just under 7 per cent. of the work force. I should record that that is the largest monthly fall for 20 years, which brings unemployment down to below 2 million and the total fall since recovery began to more than 1 million.
It is right to make the point that the good news ties in with the outstandingly good report that we received yesterday from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which confirmed that unemployment in the United Kingdom is expected to decline further, and that its unemployment rate over the next two years is expected to be by far the lowest of any major European country and to remain well below the EU average. That is associated with the fact that the OECD expects the United Kingdom to be the fastest growing major European economy this year, next year and in 1998. I was grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Castle Point (Dr. Spink) and for Basildon (Mr. Amess) for adverting to those points.
I turn to the speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Castle Point and for Basildon, partly because they referred to the recent good news and partly because they went on to give the House a fairly extensive political and geographical tour of Essex--the county in which I was born and educated and now partly represent. Despite my long association with the county, I learned even more about its geography this morning.
I am obviously tempted, because I am an Essex Member of Parliament, to join in with the comments of my hon. Friends the Members for Castle Point and for Basildon. I can certainly confirm that there are many tensions between the Labour and Liberal Democrat groups on Essex county council, as both my hon. Friends said, and that much of the county council's policy seems to leave a lot to be desired. I draw particular attention to some of the actions that it has taken in respect of school transport. I shall not go further down that line, because I would prefer to concentrate on joining both my hon. Friends in expressing pleasure at the grants that were announced this week by the national lottery's charities arm.
I have experienced the very great pleasure of awards being granted to the Halstead day centre, which is not in my constituency but which I know well, and the Tabor centre for physically handicapped adults, in Braintree, with which I have a quite close association. I know how much pleasure has been given by the awards.
I hope that my hon. Friends the Members for Castle Point and for Basildon will forgive me for picking up on their remarks about proposals concerning the fire services in Essex. I should make it clear that, if a fire authority wants to reduce the number of its fire stations, appliances or firefighting posts, it needs the approval of the Home Secretary. So far, my right hon. and learned Friend has not received any application from Essex county council in respect of Canvey Island fire station, and I assure my
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I return to the more logical way of replying to the debate--going through it in order and making such comments as I can. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Porter) referred to something for which I have my own enthusiasm: the benefits that his part of the country has experienced from the single regeneration budget announcements earlier this week and from the capital challenge. I was aware of the Lowestoft and the Suffolk Prosper bids to which he referred, because I act as a sort of honorary Minister for eastern England when such announcements are made. Indeed, I gave interviews on them to Radio Norfolk and Radio Suffolk and know how much encouragement they will have given the area. I hope that my hon. Friend will be encouraged to know that east Braintree's regeneration plans were the subject of a successful bid in round 1 of the SRB, and one can already see the transformation on the ground of what was an old industrial part of the town.
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