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4.9 pm
Mr. Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove): The Liberal Democrats oppose the motion. We do so for two broad reasons--the nature of the Budget and the Finance Bill, and the process of setting the timetable in the motion.
Our opposition to the timetable motion on the Finance Bill is based not simply on a view of whether the Budget is good or bad, although we have clear views about that. We believe that there are some mistaken proposals in it--the windfall tax, heavily headlined and hyped, and the pension tax, which has stealthily crept into the Bill without a great deal of previous advertisement. We believe that some proposals are missing from the Budget and the Finance Bill--proper funding for education being the most obvious example. The Liberal Democrats will argue those points in detail on the Floor of the House and in Committee.
However, our vote against the motion is based, not on the merits of the Budget, but on its size and complexity. Originally, the Government made out a case--which seems not to have been sustained this afternoon--that this was a mini-Budget, a comparatively insignificant Budget, which would harm no one and which could pass through the House without difficulty or trouble.
In our view, it is not a mini-Budget, but a major Budget. It is not a minor piece of legislation even if it is, as Finance Bills go, a comparatively short piece of legislation. It is not simply a case of tidying up the law and improving the legislative background of taxation; we are considering a major Bill, containing significant proposals that go well beyond those in the Labour manifesto.
I do not believe that Liberal Democrat Members would suggest that the mere fact that a measure appeared in the Liberal Democrat--or, for that matter, Labour--manifesto justified its bypassing effective scrutiny. However, there is at least a case for saying, of measures that were heralded in the manifesto, that there has been an opportunity for public debate, for consultation and for outside interests to gather their arguments and make representations beforehand.
However, the Bill also contains new proposals of great significance, regarding which there has been no such opportunity. The thoughtful and professional inputs that are vital if we are to pass legislation have not been forthcoming for those proposals, and there will not be time for outside bodies to make such inputs effectively.
In the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons, we have devoted a good deal of attention to ways in which we can improve the law-making process and ensure that law is well drafted, error-free and capable of implementation. I noticed that, when the Minister introduced the motion, she repeatedly mentioned the need for certainty. Well, we shall have certainty. We can have the certainty that legislation will not be well drafted, will not be error-free and will not be capable of implementation without subsequent revision.
I am sure that many Labour Members will recognise that point. The biggest amender of Government legislation in the previous Parliament was the Government. Time
after time, they had to return to the House simply because they did not get it right the first time. To Labour Members who say, "We were guillotined often enough, so it is their turn now," I say from the security of the Liberal Democrat Benches that two wrongs do not make a right.
Our second broad reason for opposing the motion is to challenge the process that we are being asked to use this afternoon. Within the next fortnight, the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons, of which I am a member, will produce a report containing all-party proposals on how this issue can be dealt with during this Parliament. The report could be a landmark in improving procedures of the House and the quality and effectiveness of decisions.
It is at best clumsy and insensitive to bring a proposal of this sort before the House; at worst, it is cynical and disruptive, as it risks damaging the all-party consensus on progress. Ironically, as the shadow Leader of the House said, one of the events that may be delayed by this afternoon's debate is the next meeting, later this evening, of the Select Committee on modernisation of procedures. It brings into question just how committed the Government are to seeing genuine improvements in the House's effectiveness in dealing with legislation.
The Government should have forsworn the timetabling of legislation until the Select Committee's report was before the House, so that those newly agreed procedures could be brought into effect where needed. It is sad that on this occasion new Labour has not meant new procedures.
Mr. Peter Brooke (Cities of London and Westminster):
There have already been two eloquent speeches from the Opposition Benches on this matter; mine will not have the same characteristic, but some things badly need saying.
On the history of the matter, the Leader of the House, who is not in the Chamber, announced at business questions on 3 July that the six-day delay between publication of the Finance Bill and Second Reading would be consistent with precedent and that the gap would be the same as it was in 1983-84 and 1987-88. She said that the Bill would be published in draft, to ensure that there was a six-day delay on this occasion also. I am sorry that the Leader of the House is not here. I expected that she would be, so I did not warn her that I would allude to her speech. I would not remotely accuse her of suppressio veri, but there is a touch of suggestio falsi about her answer.
In 1983 and 1987, exactly the same party as had called the election was returned to office. The Finance Bill had been taken before the election; the parts that the then Opposition were prepared to accept had been taken beforehand. In June and July of those two years, we took after the election the two parts of the Finance Bill that the then Opposition had not been prepared to give us before the election. We thus returned to Parliament with the wording of the Finance Bill entirely familiar to the whole
House, because we had been debating it before the election. To treat those examples of six-day gaps as satisfactory precedents for a six-day gap on this occasion seems mildly improper.
I have given the respective dates. It so happens that in 1987, there were only five days between publication of the Finance Bill and Second Reading. I acknowledge that as a fair point, just to show that I am prepared to play by the rules.
I was not a Treasury Minister in 1983 but I was in 1987, and I recall extremely vividly the remaining stages of that year's Finance Bill, which were taken in their entirety by the present Prime Minister from the Opposition Benches. With the exception of one speech by the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) in the early part of the Bill's remaining stages, the present Prime Minister took the whole of the Committee stage alone. It was a remarkable tour de force. However, one could argue that the measure that we debated in the summer of 1987 was not as complicated or as controversial--in so far as the present Prime Minister felt able to carry the entire Opposition case by himself, clause after clause--as the one that we are considering today.
During business questions on 10 July--a week after the original announcement by the Leader of the House about the gap between publication and Second Reading--I said that, until we saw the detail of the Government's guillotine motion, we were dealing with shadows. I pointed out also that, judging by the Leader of the House's general outline of the timing for the rest of the Bill, we would probably see a profound acceleration in lapsed time. That would necessitate the Finance Bill Committee's sitting, not on alternate days--as it has done historically--but day after day. That would create complications in terms of tabling amendments and for those hon. Members who were conducting the opposition to the Bill. They would have to attend throughout all Committee meetings, and therefore could not consult simultaneously.
The Leader of the House did not respond to my points--although she reiterated how much notice had been given between publication of the draft Bill and Second Reading. I am not complaining about the Government's treating the Opposition with arrogance--that is their business. Perhaps they will pay a price for it in the fulness of time: the laws of hubris and nemesis have not been prorogued simply because there is a new Labour Government. However, like several commentators over the weekend, I am concerned for the taxpayers: these are complex issues.
The Financial Secretary sought to justify the accelerated timetable by claiming that, as all the measures were in the manifesto, it was necessary to translate them into law at the earliest opportunity. I have said before in another context that, in 120 hours spent canvassing on the streets of my constituency, not a single person mentioned a new strategic authority for Greater London. No doubt the Financial Secretary will claim that, because the proposal is in the manifesto, the nation voted for it specifically, directly and consciously.
I shall not labour the point--it is often argued that, if proposals are in the party manifesto, they are part of the programme. However, the advance corporation tax
proposal was not in the manifesto and nor, to the best of my knowledge--the Paymaster General may correct me on this point--were foreign income dividends. Therefore, we must deal with matters that we first sighted when the Budget was introduced a short time ago. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) asked the Financial Secretary a specific question, which she has not answered. Therefore, I shall return to that subject before I sit down.
Taxpayers and their advisers frequently complained about complex legislation, such as the Finance Bill, when the Conservative party was in government. They were unhappy about the complexity of such legislation. I think that the Government will test the patience and the good will of those taxpayers and advisers if they adopt an accelerated programme for measures of this sort.
I shall give an example from the previous Government's Finance Bill of an appropriate legislative timetable. Those on the Government Front Bench will remember the proposition in clause 37 of the previous Finance Bill, regarding value added tax on property. In the early part of December, I was alerted to the fact that, although people understood the Government's intentions, the clause, as drafted, would be extremely cruel to those who were obeying the law and would not exact any penalty on those who were not. In the interests of natural justice, there was a case for redressing the balance.
I remember writing to major property companies about the problem before Christmas last year, and I embarked on consultation with them in January this year. The British Property Federation and I discussed the matter with the then Exchequer Secretary, Mr. Oppenheim. He assured us that the Government recognised the force of our arguments, but conceded that it was a complex matter, which would be extremely difficult to put right.
I had a further meeting with the Exchequer Secretary on 5 February--almost two months after the Budget itself--when he spoke words to this effect, "There is no way in which we can unravel this in time for Committee, but we are working on it. Customs and Excise is working with the advisers to the British Property Federation. If a satisfactory solution can be adopted, we shall adopt it, but we do not at the moment have such a solution. We are testing such solutions to destruction."
I was quite clear that the Government were not going to produce a solution in Committee. They did not even produce a solution on Report. They eventually produced an agreed solution, which was accepted in the House of Lords on 19 March--three months after the first correspondence that I had received from my constituents. Everybody agreed that the outcome was wholly satisfactory: that by patient unravelling work, we had come up with a solution that achieved what the Government wanted to achieve and which was not opposed by the then Opposition, who agreed that it was important that we should carry the proposal through. However, it took three months to find a form of words that everybody was satisfied would achieve the Government's objective without punishing innocent people. One could not accelerate that three-month period, but Ministers on the Treasury Bench are seeking to impose this Bill on us in a very short time.
After the election, there were rumours that the Budget would be announced on 10 June. For whatever reason, the Government were not able to have the Budget on that
date. That is their business, not mine or that of the House. If they had announced their Budget on 10 June, we would not have had the problem that we have today, because there would have been plenty of time. Therefore, the Government deserve some criticism for potential mismanagement of the timetable.
The Government's new timing for a Budget on 2 July was bound to create problems for everybody involved. I am talking not about the convenience of Members of Parliament--even Opposition Members of Parliament--but about taxpayers and their advisers. The Government are determined to get the Finance Bill through by the summer recess, and the Budget contains a new measure of which there had be no forewarning in the manifesto.
The Chief Secretary said on Second Reading that the previous Government had imposed 82 guillotines on 61 Bills. That is a perfectly reasonable statistic, but I notice that he did not identify how many had been imposed between the election victory in May 1979 and the House rising for the summer recess in July of that year, which is the best parallel case. I whipped one Bill in that period. We got it through in a perfectly amicable way. I remember whipping two more in 1979 and 1980, one of which was considered in Committee for 105 hours; the other was considered for 120 hours. There are problems of style in the way in which the Government are allocating time on a matter as complex as the one that we are addressing today.
The Financial Secretary, when replying during the Budget debate on 3 July, omitted to answer any of the reasonable, relevant and logical questions put to her by my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell). When my hon. Friend said that he sensed that the Financial Secretary was about to sit down, she said that she was not, but that she would come to his points. She said that the Government were very much in favour of debate on the Committee stage of the Finance Bill.
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