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The Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. John Prescott): I have got 77 White Paper proposals under way and five Bills out of the 22.
Mr. Hague: At least people with a Jaguar can breathe a sigh of relief that the right hon. Gentleman's crazy
anti-car proposals are stuck in a lay-by. Those with two Jags can breathe two sighs of relief. The right hon. Gentleman need not look so grumpy. He and the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) can always form a club of people who give unquestioning support to the Prime Minister but get precious little in return.
What happened to the freedom of information Bill that was to be in the Queen's Speech? It has been announced many times and it now appears as a promise of a draft Bill. In July, the Cabinet Minister in charge of the Bill said that we would have a draft Bill by September. We still do not have a draft Bill. Nothing seems more ridiculous now than freedom of information from the Government who gave us formula one, with its meetings that were never minuted; Sierra Leone, with its telegrams that never turned up; a junior Environment Minister, with his mysterious planning letters; and the Paymaster General, who has woven such a web of secrecy round his affairs that no one understands how he borrowed a fiver from Robert Maxwell and came back years later as a multi-millionaire. Where is the right hon. Gentleman, by the way? He seems not to have turned up. The Government are drafting a freedom of information Bill but they have a suppression of information culture.
The right hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) found that out the hard way. He spent months putting a freedom of information Bill together only to discover that the only information with which the Prime Minister was free with was that he was going to sack the right hon. Gentleman in the reshuffle. Last week, the right hon. Gentleman had to speak out against the Government lies that the Bill was not ready. He said that it was 90 per cent. drafted and about to be published when he got the boot from the Cabinet in the summer. The right hon. Gentleman is nodding and confirming what I have said. He said:
What happened to the Bill to implement the Neill Committee recommendations? It is now reduced to a draft Bill. Two weeks ago, the Home Secretary told us:
We promised support for the Neill package, so why is it not in the Queen's Speech? The Prime Minister can explain that in his speech in a moment. I suspect that it has something to do with Lord Neill's key recommendation that Governments should not spend taxpayers' money on referendum campaigns. Will the Prime Minister accept that central recommendation? He can get up now, if he likes, and tell us--yes or no. What is he afraid of? Why does he not want fair referendums? He is not so keen on cleaning up political funding now, is he?
Dr. Desmond Turner (Brighton, Kemptown):
The right hon. Gentleman is being a little conservative with the truth in suggesting that there are not measures in the Queen's Speech that he and his party will oppose root and branch. The only way in which they can oppose them in these Houses is by the use of the unelected votes of Tory
Mr. Hague:
The hon. Gentleman clearly has not read his party's manifesto if he thinks that there was a clearly expressed will to have closed lists in European elections campaigns. Where was the clearly expressed will from the people of the United Kingdom? Let him stand up again and tell us where the clearly expressed will of the people was. There was no clearly expressed will.
Speaking of referendums, what has happened to the referendum on proportional representation? The Prime Minister said of the Jenkins report that he was not persuaded by it. Does that mean that we shall have a referendum with three boxes--yes, no, and not persuaded, so that the Prime Minister can fill one in? There is no mention of such a referendum because the Cabinet cannot decide on its view. As the Prime Minister's press office put it,
Let us see how the Cabinet is getting on in the national debate. Let all those in the Cabinet who are in favourof proportional representation raise their hands. [Interruption.] None of them. It does not look as though the pact will get very far, does it?
The poor Liberals have been strung along again. The right hon. Member for Yeovil will be the first Liberal leader to say to his party, "Go back to your constituencies and prepare to give in to the Government."
Was the right hon. Gentleman listening carefully to the Queen's Speech? There was no mention of the European Elections Bill being reintroduced. The speech was obviously printed before he threw his tantrum on the telephone the other night. It does not look as though all those long-distance calls were worth it. I certainly hope that he reversed the charges.
Everybody can relax. There has been a stay of execution for the Lib-Lab pact. The European Elections Bill apparently will be part of the legislative programme. Once again, the Prime Minister will march his troops into the Division Lobby to try to force on the British people a voting system that denies voters their basic right to choose the candidates who represent them.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) rose--
Mr. Hague:
Still no arguments have been put in favour of the system, but if the hon. Lady wants to advance one, she may do so.
Fiona Mactaggart:
Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that it was his party that introduced the same form of proportional representation in Northern Ireland? Does he believe that under the present electoral system, where in relatively small constituencies only 7 per cent. of the British people can name their Member of the European Parliament, it is a fundamental democratic right to choose between candidates? Ninety-three people out of 100 do not even know who those candidates are.
Mr. Hague:
What extraordinary arrogance to assume that the electorate do not want to take an interest in who
To all independent opinion, this affair has made the strongest case possible for a second Chamber, with independence and integrity, which can stand up to the Prime Minister of the day, and which the Prime Minister wants to neuter.
Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed):
Let me get this clear. Does the right hon. Gentleman want to insist that the next European elections are fought on a system which hopelessly distorts the result of the votes cast by the British voters and in which the individual candidates are not chosen by an open list but are selected by the parties? That would at least be consistent with the fact that, when the issue of open lists came up in the other place in Committee, the Conservatives did not even support it.
Mr. Hague:
I am arguing for an amendment to the Bill which would have brought in open lists. The right hon. Gentleman had better remember that it is Liberal Democrat policy to support open lists, and the Liberal Democrats have spent their time voting against their own policy on a three-line whip. That is the heart of the matter.
The Queen's Speech has everything to do with the Labour party's priorities and nothing whatever to do with the priorities of the British people. There is no legislation that will make it easier for a single extra person to obtain a job. There is no legislation--
Mr. Hague:
No, I shall not give way. I want to make some progress. We know the position of the Liberal Democrats.
There is no legislation that will improve hospital treatment for a single extra patient, and there is no legislation that will improve education for a single child.
Now let us look in detail at what is in the Queen's Speech. Is giving more power to trade unions meant to be a priority for the British people? That is what the legislation that the Government propose will do. It will force companies against their will to recognise trade unions and it will pile burdens and extra costs on British business just when it is facing a severe economic slowdown created by the Government's incompetence. That is not a priority for the British people; it is a priority only for the Labour party.
Remember the sequence of events in the past few days. Thursday, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry
said that he was thinking again about the Bill. Sunday, the headline appears: "Unions to Blair: we'll stop your election funding". Tuesday, the Bill is a centrepiece of the programme. It is a simple and crude pay off. The unions pay the Prime Minister's bills and he passes theirs.
What about a Bill on the NHS which will increase NHS bureaucracy? When was that a people's priority?
"Number 10 is already in operation trying to blacken me."
Watch out--there were witnesses this time.
"We will act quickly to implement the main findings".--[Official Report, 9 November 1998; Vol. 319, c. 58.]
What he meant was that he would act slowly to draft legislation to leave out the bits that he did not like.
"The Cabinet is not split on PR. It has agreed a collective position. And the collective position is that we must have a national debate."
That was clever. Since then, we have heard nothing about it.
"great concern that"
closed lists
"would make it extremely difficult to vote with their consciences. Under a closed-list system, voters would be unable to distinguish between candidates' views on a range of important areas."
Why is the Prime Minister so anxious to have closedlists? Neither the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) nor the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan) are standing for the European Parliament. Why does he not just be honest and admit that he simply wants to gag his party and thinks that he can get away with it?
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