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Madam Speaker: I remind the hon. Gentleman, and all those who might want to touch on this subject, that there was ample time before 12 o'clock today to make an application under Standing Order No. 24. I have made my views known on the matter. I want no further points of order on the issue; I have dealt with it as far as it is my responsibility to do so.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Vale of York): On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I fear that there may have been a misunderstanding in the reply of the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) to my question during Question Time.
I have put the same question to the Prime Minister. He has been asked about the costs of refurbishing Canary Wharf for the Anglo-French summit. To my knowledge, he has not replied. The point that I was trying to make in Question 35 was that we are obliged, under European law--
Madam Speaker:
Order. The hon. Lady is trying to extend Question Time. She asked how many lawyers are employed by the National Audit Office. I cannot extend Question Time.
Mr. Damian Green (Ashford):
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Has the Chancellor of the Exchequer given you any indication that he wants to make a statement on the tax-avoidance schemes of the Paymaster General, especially since the Chancellor appears to have changed Government policy on the issue without informing the House? At last year's Labour party conference, the Chancellor said:
Mr. Bernard Jenkin (North Essex):
Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker.
Madam Speaker:
Yes, I will hear a further point of order. I want to deal with this matter.
Mr. Jenkin:
Do you agree, Madam Speaker, that, if a matter is of sufficient importance that it requires a Minister to rush out a statement clarifying why there has been a change of Government policy, that statement should be read out in the House by the Minister? Therefore, should not either the Paymaster General or the Chancellor of the Exchequer come to the House to clarify Government policy?
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)
rose--
Madam Speaker:
No, I can deal with this, thank you very much, Mr. Skinner.
Mr. Skinner:
Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker.
Madam Speaker:
All right. It is fair enough to hear one from the Government Benches.
Mr. Skinner:
I remember that, in years gone by, when the Tories were in power, I used to try might and main to find out just what had happened to the £65 million concerning the then Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine)--where he had got it, where he had put it, who was in charge of it. I got the brush-off from the Speaker at the time.
What is more, I saw in the papers at the weekend that the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley), was to ask a question about the matter. Well, he is not present. I can only assume that he is still in his French investment over the channel.
Madam Speaker:
I assure the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) that he is not likely to get the brush-off from me.
On the very serious point, any hon. Member on either side of the House who believes that a Minister hasacted outside Government guidelines should make representations to the Prime Minister, who is responsible for ministerial guidelines covering all Ministers. I hope that, if there is any thought of that in relation to this issue, hon. Members who are concerned will make proper representations, with evidence, to the Prime Minister.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 107 (Welsh Grand Committee),
Madam Speaker:
I should inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.
Mr. Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green):
I beg to move,
Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham):
What rows?
Mr. Duncan Smith:
The real rows come from among the hon. Gentleman's friends and all those sitting on the Back Benches behind him.
With briefing, counter-briefing and leaks, the Department for Social Security is developing a sense of confusion which bodes ill. The Secretary of State and her party came to power on a promise--among many promises--of large-scale pension and welfare reform. The Prime Minister established that as one of his main priorities. He said that his Ministers would "think the unthinkable" and
Expectations were underlined by the appointment in May of the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who is in his place. He was the Prime Minister's personal appointment and carries the unprecedented title of Minister for Welfare Reform. Given the amount that he has written on the subject in
the recent past, the country would have been forgiven for expecting an early Green Paper on pensions. After all, the very phrase "stakeholder pension" is one which he coined in his pamphlet "How to pay for stakeholder welfare".
Mr. MacShane:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He was the author of a notorious pamphlet in 1993, which struck a chill into the heart of every pensioner in the country, for the No Turning Back group, that ultra-right- wing, reactionary Thatcherite group. [Hon. Members: "He is reading."] I am reading because I am quoting. In that pamphlet, the hon. Gentleman proposed that people be allowed to opt out of their basic state pension. Is that still his policy--yes or no?
Mr. Duncan Smith:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point and I am pleased that he has bothered to read my pamphlet. I have been waiting some time for him to get round to it. The Secretary of State for Social Security might do well to read it herself. The answer to the hon. Gentleman's question is that pension reform requires one to consider all aspects--
Mr. MacShane:
Answer the question.
Mr. Duncan Smith:
The hon. Gentleman should listen to the answer. I do not resile for one moment from the idea that, as the Prime Minister said, pension reform requires one to think the unthinkable. Ministers are doing very little thinking, unthinkable or otherwise. What I wrote in 1993 went further towards pension reform than anything that Ministers have produced.
The pamphlet by the Minister for Welfare Reform is very interesting, and the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) should read it. He might be interested to find out what the Minister's opinions are. The pamphlet was the product of a number of years' thought on how to provide second pensions for all, and such thought was also evident in other pamphlets such as "Private pensions for all: squaring the circle" and "A national savings plan", which was about universalising private pension provision.
Those pamphlets emerged before the election, but, instead of the expected early Green Paper, which the hon. Member for Rotherham is so keen on, a pensions review was announced in July. Instead of being actively led by the Minister for Welfare Reform, it was run by the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham). It took him until September to announce the members of the review panel and on 31 October the review was closed, only to be reopened until May 1998. We still have no sense of what basic policy the Government will pursue.
Even the review is confused. After 1,800 responses, the Under-Secretary announced on 3 November in a written answer:
It is worth reminding ourselves what the Minister for Welfare Reform said just before the election. Speaking about his party leader--now the Prime Minister--on 18 October 1996, the right hon. Gentleman said:
"A Labour Chancellor will not permit tax relief to millionaires in offshore tax havens."
He should tell the House whether that still applies to all millionaires or only to millionaire Treasury Ministers.
That the matter of government expenditure in Wales in 1998-99, being a matter relating exclusively to Wales, be referred to the Welsh Grand Committee for its consideration--[Mr. Clelland.]
Question agreed to.
3.38 pm
That this House deeply regrets the unnecessary delay to proposals on pension and welfare reform; finds it inconceivable that having attacked reductions to lone parent benefits proposed by the previous Government this Government now plans to implement the same reductions; and urges the Government to take this opportunity to reassure people with disabilities that they will not tax Disability Living Allowance or transfer disability benefits from disabled individuals to bureaucracies such as local government's social services departments.
The debate is timely not only because of the internal Labour rows over cuts to lone parent benefit but because, after seven months in office, it affords us an opportunity--
"end welfare as we know it."
In office, the Prime Minister reaffirmed that commitment as recently as October. He said:
"We need to invest more as a country in savings and pensions. But Government's role is going to be to organise provision--like new stakeholder pensions--not fund it all through ever higher taxes."
He was equally explicit about welfare. He said:
"it means fundamental reform of our welfare state, of the deal between citizen and society".
I shall deal with pensions first. After the Labour party's scurrilous attack during the general election campaign on basic pension plus--which was essentially a proposal for discussion, not dissimilar to a Green Paper--it was legitimate to expect that the new Government were ready to move fast on pensions. One would think that they had an alternative, but apparently they did not.
"The Government intends to publish its initial framework for change in the first part of 1998. There will then be a further period of consultation before firm proposals are developed."--[Official Report, 3 November 1997; Vol. 300, c. 90.]
On 19 November, the Under-Secretary opened another, separate review, before he had read and digested all the responses from what he called the stakeholder
consultation. What was the purpose of the first review? I was not aware that it left out stakeholder provision; indeed, various people commented on that subject in their submissions. The Government seem to be making policy by procrastination.
"His aim is for Labour to enter Government with a sufficiently well created plan that it can be part of the first Queen's speech and a draft Bill in the first year, allowing for a year for debate."
He went further, saying that it was
"crucial to avoid the mistakes of Dick Crossman and Harold Wilson who spent four years consulting and lost their plan in the 1970 election".
I heard the right hon. Gentleman say earlier from a sedentary position, "It will be." We are already reaching the end of the year and no Green Paper is even evident. As he knows, the review process is stretching out to the latter part of next year. He says that there will be something, but we see nothing coming up.
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