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Dr. Norman A. Godman (Greenock and Inverclyde): Some of us who are much friendlier to the European Union than some Opposition Members have serious criticisms to voice, one of which concerns the common fisheries policy, which threatens the livelihood of many of our fishermen, especially in remoter communities in Scotland. Does my hon. Friend agree that the announcement by the Prime Minister that something will be done about the common fisheries policy was welcome?
Mr. Radice: Yes. It is good to have a sensible Government, who are not posturing on the issue for electoral purposes; there was some such posturing during the general election campaign.
I welcome the commitment in the Gracious Speech to parliamentary reform. Parliamentary reform goes in waves; I was part of the previous wave, in the Parliaments of the 1970s. In 1977-78, the Procedure Committee, of which I was a member, recommended the setting up of departmental Select Committees. The recommendation was implemented--I give them credit for that--by the first Thatcher Government. The present intake of many outstanding young Members of Parliament, including some exceptional women, gives us a wonderful opportunity to strengthen the role of Parliament and overhaul its workings.
There is a reform agenda: get the Select Committees up and running, give them more powers and responsibilities, and ensure that their reports are debated and that the Government actually take notice of their findings. The legislative process should be made more meaningful. In that regard, the Special Standing Committee procedure of taking evidence before the Committee stage of Bills, or indeed before their passage, would be very useful.
Our European scrutiny is still not effective; it should be better. We need more parliamentary time for Back-Bench initiative, and we need a more up-to-date and professional Parliament, equipped to do the job of making the Executive accountable in a modern age.
Mr. Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green):
If the hon. Gentleman wants to give Select Committees more responsibilities, will he urge not just his Back-Bench colleagues but Ministers to accept that every departmental Select Committee should shadow Britain's representatives going to Europe, and scrutinise what each Department head does when he or she goes to Europe?
Mr. Radice:
I agree that Ministers must be more accountable to Select Committees on European matters. There is not enough accountability, so I agree with the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. John Wilkinson (Ruislip-Northwood):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Wilkinson:
The hon. Gentleman has raised some important issues, and I want to comment on them.
Mr. Radice:
I am sorry; other Members want to speak, and I want to give them time. I am just concluding.
I believe that the new Labour Government will be a great reforming Government, and I hope that one of its achievements will be a comprehensive reform of Parliament.
Dr. Godman:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Have you been advised by Madam Speaker to introduce a 10-minute limit on speeches after 6 o'clock?
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst):
I have received no such instructions. It is a matter that must be determined at the beginning of business, so it will not apply today.
Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham):
Mr. Deputy Speaker, I congratulate you on your new office. I congratulate the new Government and Prime Minister on their election victory. I join in expressing the shared sorrow at the loss of former colleagues who have died in recent weeks; and I add to that my sense of loss and sadness that so many fine Conservative colleagues were defeated in the general election. We shall sorely miss their counsel and their debating skills. The nation will miss them. I hope that their absence will be temporary, and that we shall see them back ere long, when opportunity presents.
I want to express my gratitude to the electors of Wokingham. It was extremely reassuring on that awful night, only a few days ago, to be shown that I still had the trust of slightly more than half of my electors. I am very conscious that almost another half did not vote for me; I will represent their views as strongly as those of the half who did support me that night.
Like many colleagues and Members of the House, I have been listening carefully for months and years, and especially intensively in recent days and weeks, to the views of my electors. Only one in six of Wokingham electors bought the idea of new Labour, so I can speak with authority when I say that there are still many people in my constituency and throughout the country who need to be persuaded that the new Government will be new, that it will pursue the interests of the country, and that it will make Britain better.
My electors said that they wanted better schools and higher educational standards. During the general election campaign, many told me that they agreed with the Opposition parties that more money in the classrooms would help. I asked them why a Liberal-Labour county council had failed to pass the money on to schools. I worked with Conservative candidates for the local council to offer the electors a better deal for schools, and I am delighted to say that, as a result, the council candidates for the Conservative cause swept to victory in the new Wokingham unitary authority elections, promising the extra money. They will deliver on that promise.
I want to ask the leader of the Liberal party, who is unfortunately away from his place, "What is stopping Liberal councillors throughout the country offering that money now, today, to those schools?" They say so much about it; why cannot they back their words with the cheque book they control in so many local authorities?
My constituents said that, although they accepted that we had done much to pay for better health care and to expand the national health service, they would like it to be better still. Labour, Liberal and Conservative are united in saying, "We want a progressively better health service."
I shall watch carefully to discover whether Labour Ministers, devoid of extra money, can produce a better answer than the good answer that my right hon. and hon. Friends produced in recent years. They will find it difficult to switch the money from management to health care in the way they have suggested. I notice that their only ambition is to switch £100 million--a single day's spending in the great health service budget. There is no way in which our health service will be transformed by a day's additional money; it will need far more than that, and the Labour Government must ask where that money will come from and how they can run the service better.
I warn the Government that, if they try to unscramble all our reforms, many of which did considerable good, they will discover that that is expensive and unhelpful. Far from reducing managerial costs, they will discover that they have incurred more in unscrambling something that already works quite well.
The new Government's style is fascinating--the fixation with media appearances and with control of the spoken and written word of any Minister or Back-Bench Member who thinks that they might like to express a view. So far, they have been a Government of photo opportunities. I compliment them: some of their photo opportunities have been well judged--they looked good in the newspapers--but what a chapter of accidents we have had in the first few hectic days of the Administration. One Minister resigned in less than four days. That must be a record for the removal of a man from office in a new Administration. Another hon. Member was offered a job, and nine seconds later he lost it because the Government discovered that they had got the names muddled up and had made the offer to the wrong man.
Showing bold leadership, the Prime Minister decided to bring in a captain of industry--I trust that he was not one of the fat cats they had previously excoriated--to be Minister for Europe. He then discovered that his Foreign Secretary did not agree, so he back-pedalled, saying that the man would not be the proper Minister for Europe after all. The Foreign Secretary relaxed. A day later, we discovered that there was to be an alternative Minister for Europe, and that the gentleman from industry would go to the House of Lords and shadow the real Minister for Europe, to offer us two different versions on different days of the week.
It will be good to have two Ministers for Europe. On his first expedition to Brussels, the first one discovered that he could not put the microphone on, so his voice could not be heard in the important debates. What a symbol of new Labour in Brussels! They were not even heard, because they did not know how to work the microphone. It was a glimpse, in microcosm, of what will happen to the Government as they discover that smiling and being pleasant to our partners in Europe will not bring home the answers that we so desperately need.
Where is the better deal for our fishermen? There is no sign of it. Where is the lifting of the beef ban that the Labour party hinted at and promised before the election?
There is no sign of it. The two Ministers for Europe will be competing with each other, with different views of European issues, but they will not be heard, because they will be acting under instructions that control them too greatly.
The rift on Europe will go much higher than the contest between the two Ministers of State, interesting though it will be for us to follow their progress and their battles. The real rift on Europe in the new Labour Government is between the Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary. How wise of the Prime Minister to do a balancing act. He chooses on the one hand a Euro-sceptic Foreign Secretary and on the other a Euro-friendly Chancellor of the Exchequer, and leaves them to fight it out. I am sure that, in his usual way, one day he will be Euro-sceptic and the next he will be Euro-friendly, depending on the balance of forces in the Cabinet for the time being.
We have seen the Prime Minister at work with his ties. He has a good line in ties. Some days, when he is going to address business audiences, audiences in the south of England or audiences where Conservatives have been let in by mistake, he sports a good range of blue ties. On other days, when he is going to audiences who think that socialism should be mentioned, at least in private between consenting adults, he sports a good line in red ties. In masterly fashion, at the end of the election campaign he blended the two into royal purple before ascending the throne. He will find it considerably more difficult to blend the views of the right hon. Members for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) and for Livingston (Mr. Cook). We shall see many more disputes and scraps between those two ere we have a European policy that can work.
Conservative Members will take a great interest in the Minister without Portfolio, aptly named in the press the "Minister for meddling". He will sum up a meddling Government, meddling incessantly, and trying to orchestrate everything that is said, and quite a few of the things that are done, by the new Administration. I am sure that he will upset Labour Members all too often, because they will come to resent the undue power and influence that he, a rather junior Minister, has against that of his Cabinet colleagues and betters. We shall watch carefully.
I enjoyed the deft touch that the Minister without Portfolio showed by banning the ministerial lunch for journalists. The unattributable briefing over lunch is one of the important highlights of the British constitution. It encapsulates our freedoms. How can the press and public know what is going on behind closed doors in the secrecy of Whitehall unless a Minister can go to lunch and brief journalists to get his side of the story across?
Journalists will come to resent the banning of the ministerial lunch. I look forward to Ministers nipping out for unattributable briefings over tea. The Government may be able to ban lunch, but we shall undoubtedly find that they cannot ban tea or dinner or drinks or walks round the park or meetings in a chosen pub in a nearby constituency. That is bound to happen.
We shall also keep a careful watch on the difficulties that the right hon. Lady allegedly in charge of the Department of Social Security will have with her rather over-mighty subject, her Minister of State. I enjoyed reading the press comments that the Minister of State spent half an hour arguing with the Prime Minister, saying that, because he was the brains behind welfare reform and the man who could capture the media and gain the attention of the public, he ought to be the boss.
I look forward to seeing the right hon. Lady trying to exert her discipline over the Minister of State. The battle of Peckham and the battle of Birkenhead will mean that we shall have little progress on welfare reform, but a great deal to keep us amused on the Opposition Benches.
There are already some serious problems in the Government's approach to their task. Together with many of my right hon. and hon. Friends, I object to the systematic attack on democracy that the Government have already unleashed. We have seen it from the Chancellor, who said just a few days after gaining that important office that he would give half his job away. After 18 years of struggle to have a Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, they gave half the job away in less than 18 days, because the task was too much for them.
Conservative Members will hold the Chancellor of the Exchequer responsible and accountable for what the Governor of the Bank of England and his monetary committee do. We believe that interest rates are one of the most important ways of controlling the economy, and we shall regard the Chancellor as having the ultimate responsibility for making the right judgments. The Government cannot give away so much democratic power and expect to get away with it. The House will consider the Chancellor the man who has to answer.
The Foreign Secretary, who is usually more reticent about surrendering powers to Brussels, has been equally busy undermining the democratic rights of the House and the British nation. He is one of the architects of the signing of the social chapter.
As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said so well today, if the Labour Government want to change our social and employment laws, why do they not bring measures forward to the House in the usual way? I predict that, with their majority, they might even get such measures through, but we want the right to debate them, and we want the British people to have the right to amend them, improve them or repeal them if they do not work.
The Prime Minister must accept that some of the measures that will come forward may be against Britain's interests. He and his Ministers may try to vote them down. They may destroy jobs for young people in the constituencies of Labour Members, but the Government will have given away the right to do anything about it. We shall hold them accountable for that gross mistake.
When I saw the Foreign Secretary's television launch of his new mission statement--an unusual thing for a Foreign Secretary to launch--I wondered whether the sum of his ambition was to turn the fine Locarno room of the Foreign Office into a Fred Karno cinema. It was a terrible sight. I hope that the Foreign Secretary will rise to the dignity of his office, rather than undermining the grand architecture and the important status that a Foreign Secretary should enjoy.
I noticed the Prime Minister moving quickly today to try to cover up the Foreign Secretary's mistake in leaving out of his mission statement any mention of the United States of America and NATO. How can anyone hold that high office for our great country and not understand the importance of the American alliance? How can anyone understand this country and not realise that the defence of
our freedom rests on NATO? I am delighted that the Prime Minister has learnt about that after reading it in the newspapers, but I wish that the Foreign Secretary would come to the House of Commons to make a statement--this time getting it right--showing that he understands the importance of NATO and the American friendship.
The Prime Minister has been busily trying to undermine our democracy. I read reports of his remarks to Labour Members assembled in a building near this Palace only recently. He is alleged to have said that their duty is not to represent their constituents' worries and grievances to the Government, but to represent new Labour to the nation. I trust that that was a mistaken report, but it seemed to fit with the images that were coming across--the celebrations, and the idea that new Labour had all the answers and was now going to govern in a new and more controlled way.
All Members of this House must understand that we are here to perform our duties first and foremost for our constituents. It is the obligation of all new Labour Members to represent the views of their constituents to this House and to the Government they support. We will make sure that they do so, although we hope that they will do so of their own accord.
5.4 pm
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