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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. The hon. Lady is running out of time. Could she please bring her remarks to a conclusion?
Miss Johnson: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Young children should be tested, initially through targeting and sampling. Most of all, I want to ensure that people are aware of the risks. Lead in paint need not be a major health hazard, if we act sensibly and make information available.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Miss Melanie Johnson, Mr. Charles Clarke, Dr. Lynda Clark, Mr. John Gunnell, Mr. John Healey, Ms Oona King, Mr. Tom Levitt, Mr. Chris Pond, Dr. Phyllis Starkey, Ms Dari Taylor and Mr. Michael Wills.
Miss Melanie Johnson accordingly presented a Bill to require the manufacturers and retailers of paint stripping equipment and fluids to provide consumers with information about lead in paint manufactured before 1960; to require the Secretary of State to provide information to the general public about the dangers of lead in older paint; and to provide for the testing of children under the age of three years living in older housing to determine whether they are at risk from lead in older paintwork: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 6 February, and to be printed [Bill 85].
Considered in Committee.
Ordered,
Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark, North and Bermondsey):
I beg to move amendment No. 2, in page 1, line 7, at beginning insert
The Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Alan Haselhurst):
With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 13, in page 1, line 7, leave out
and insert 'such'.
No. 14, in page 1, line 8, after 'prescribe', insert
No. 4, in page 1, line 10, at end insert--
Mr. Hughes:
I shall also speak to amendment No. 4. The other two amendments have been tabled by those on the Conservative Front Bench.
Two issues to do with the Bill's preparation and the timetable are matters of procedure. There is nothing novel about them--Ministers have heard me make the point before--but we Liberal Democrats think that they are of constitutional and practical importance.
It is important that the House gets its procedures in the right order. I understand that the Government, having only recently come to office, are trying to get this part of the constitution agenda through as quickly as possible--which I welcome--but they are not proceeding in a logical order. They put out a Green Paper, set a target date for the conclusion of the consultation period--the end of October--and collected in the conclusions. I had hoped that the Minister would beaver a little harder. I asked him to supply me with a list of all the responses and publications by today so that we would know what was involved. The answer was that they would be ready by 1 December. That is not the most useful date, as it does not enable us to have the material for today's debate. I regret that.
Not long ago, the Minister said that there were more than 1,000 responses. As I have told him, that is not very many. During the general election campaign I surveyed my constituents and received 6,000 responses. I do not think that people in Southwark, North and Bermondsey, although very good at communicating, are unrepresentative.
Following the conclusion of the consultation period, we should have had the Government's response so that we would have knowledge of the White Paper and the proposals--not a Green Paper, in draft. If we are legislating to put on to the statute book a provision for a referendum--either on a specific date, 7 May, or another date--we need to know on what the people will be asked to vote. Ministers may say, "They will vote on this question or that question," but we know that people will vote on what is behind the questions--for example, what does an assembly mean, what does an authority mean, what does a mayor mean and what will they do?
Ministers should not take the House for granted--it is not a matter in which the public are generally interested--and say, "We want a blank cheque. We want the power to hold a referendum before we know what we are asking people to vote on." The same point was made about the Welsh and Scottish legislation. I made an offer to the Government, and I do not understand why they did not accept it. I said that, if they published the responses to the consultation in November and then produced, even at the beginning of February, a White Paper, we would co-operate in getting a short Bill through this House and the other place in a matter of weeks. After all, as Ministers have said, the Bill deals with a limited number of points. It should have been done in that order and I regret the fact that we are now being asked to give the Government a blank cheque on the referendum.
Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst):
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way so early in his speech. Is he not being a little tender with the Minister, for reasons that I cannot begin to imagine? Only today during Question Time we had lectures from the Government about open government, transparency and sharing with the people. During the modernisation debates we have heard about pre-legislative openness and the Government's desire to consult openly before legislation is introduced. Is not the Minister's behaviour quite extraordinary in the light of what his colleagues have been telling us just this afternoon about open government and the cracklings that we have heard about modernisation?
Mr. Hughes:
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to the band of London Members, following his move from somewhere further north and west. One can exaggerate matters, and I think that he has exaggerated a little. I should be happy to be firmer, harsher or angrier with Ministers--
Mr. Hughes:
Indeed, I am happy to be less tender with Ministers when the need arises, but I also believe that debates in Committee, albeit a Committee of the whole House, should be about trying to win the argument. I am hopeful, although with little reason to be so, that the Minister may respond positively and accept some amendments. That is the test.
This is the Bill's Committee stage. In good Committees, the Government will say, "Yes, that's a good idea; we agree with you." Next week, at the end of the Bill's consideration in Committee, if Ministers say, "No, we can't possibly do that or that, and that's a bad idea," they will be showing not only a lack of generosity of mind and spirit but a lack of willingness to reach the most agreeable solution. I shall be extremely disappointed, as will voters, if the Government produce a consultative Green Paper and then a White Paper and a Bill that they will not consider amending.
If Ministers hear good arguments, I hope that they will put away the briefs from civil servants in the Box--who, it has been confirmed, can communicate only with Ministers and their parliamentary private secretaries--and accept them.
The Bill deals with a matter that is both constitutional and practical. Amendment No. 4 suggests that the referendum should not be held until two months after the Government have published their proposals. Our stance is different from that of the Conservatives, who propose that, if necessary, the date could be moved from 7 May 1998. We do not argue about the date; we are quite happy that the referendum should be held on 7 May 1998, which is the logical time to hold it, because we do not want to delay London's annual voting cycle.
That the Bill be considered in the following order, Clause 1, Schedule, Clauses 2 to 13, new Clauses, new Schedules.--[Mr. Raynsford.]
4.43 pm
'Subject to subsection (1A) below,'.
'7th May 1998 or such later'
'(being a date not earlier than one month after the publication of the Government's bill for the establishment of that Authority)'.
'(1A) The referendum shall not be held until a period of two months has elapsed after the publication of the Government's proposals, save that the details of the electoral arrangements may be published at a later date.'.
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