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Mr. Peter Bottomley (Worthing, West): I am not sure that references to Northern Ireland should come under the heading of foreign policy.
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes). His is one of the speeches that is always well worth listening to. I hope that those on the Government Front Bench will pay attention to the practical points that he made. For those who are concerned about the purpose of politics, I should like to say that I strongly agree with him and commend his account of democracy and what I call well-being--a mixture of wealth and welfare. There are few occasions when fully democratic countries go to war with each other or have high-level civil wars. Democracy is important to allow all the other things that matter to happen.
That brings me to a point of dispute--that is a friendly way of putting it--with the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who spoke in a firmer tone than perhaps he should have done about the use of the Parliament Acts in establishing the system of elections to the European Parliament. The plain fact, confirmed on page 570 of "Erskine May", is that, if the House of Lords made a change to an open-list system which this House then accepted, or if this House added a "suggestion" by resolution to the Bill that did not pass in the previous Session, that could still allow the Parliament Act to apply.
In practice, if the Government could stop being quite so fixed on the closed-list system and accept the open-list system, which the Liberal Democrats and the Tories want, and which, as far as I can see, most Labour Back Benchers would prefer, the Bill could become an Act before the deadline and the problem would go away. That is a practical suggestion which I hope will be passed on to the Prime Minister.
Each time I challenged a Minister or Labour Back Benchers assembled to say who thought that the closed-list system was the best system, not a single one moved. Ministers could not name a single supporter who thought that the closed-list system was to be preferred.
There is no more that I want to say on that at the moment; but, if the leader of the Liberal Democrats has any influence at all with the Prime Minister, instead of saying that he will get his Liberal Democrats to vote for a closed-list system when they want an open-list system, he could ask the Prime Minister to change his mind and go for an open-list system.
Mr. Baker:
Even if the hon. Gentleman is right in suggesting that the Government should be more flexible, does he think it right for the other place to block the Bill five times?
Mr. Bottomley:
It is not the numbers that matter but whether the Bill is right or wrong. The other place has two functions, which I hope it will keep, one of which is to consider detail and the other of which is to protect the rights of voters.
In multi-councillor wards, I have never seen both elected councillors, or sometimes all three, obtain precisely the same number of votes. Voters want to pick and choose. The closed-list system, for which Liberal Democrats voted, does not give that opportunity. All the names should go on the ballot paper. Voters should be able to get the Government to agree with the Liberal Democrats policy. If the other place makes that possible, I will support it. In the same way, with regard to the age of consent, the other place wanted, in effect, the Bassetlaw amendment on positions of trust and responsibility. The Government did not agree then, but they do now. That seems perfectly reasonable.
The Queen's Speech does not refer to a privacy law. There are times when it is tempting for people in politics to argue for a privacy law. I am glad that the Government have not given way to that. The media can do great damage and publish many things that are wrong, but no privacy law that I have seen is workable. I would ask that the Government start paying more attention to the things that look wrong and may be wrong.
For example--I tabled an early-day motion on this--if the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry has regulatory responsibility over the media, as is illustrated
by the fact that he referred the Manchester United-Sky proposed link up for investigation, he is presumably the person who would have to say whether the Arsenal-United Media proposed link, if it came forward, should be referred.
Yet, in Stephen Glover's article in The Spectator on 21 November 1998, and in other articles in The Times and The Guardian, there is the suggestion that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, or his helpers, or the Prime Minister's chief press secretary put pressure on Lord Hollick to sack the editor of The Express on Sunday or to have some of the journalists changed.
The Prime Minister should ask the Cabinet Secretary to institute an inquiry into that. During that time, he should announce that any media reference involving Lord Hollick or United Media would require a decision by another Minister, perhaps the Leader of the House. That is the kind of issue where the Prime Minister wants to look squeaky clean.
The Prime Minister can stop people fearing that proprietors or editors are worried about a call from someone in the Government or on behalf of the Labour party asking for a journalist or editor to be sacked. Without making a threat or a promise, it might be feared that someone who was angry with a journalist or editor would make a marginally different decision over a reference on regulation in the media.
I support some things that the Government are doing. I support the Green Paper "Supporting Families: A Consultation Paper" if that is aimed at encouraging parents to have more competence and confidence in bringing up children and the more effective functioning of families with their shared responsibilities. I strongly support the increase in child benefit, something for which I have argued since I became a Member of the House about 23 years ago.
I welcome that increase, but--if I may niggle--it is quite clear to me that Ministers did not read the consultation paper, and those civil servants who read it did not pay enough attention to page 56, where there is a list of "Other Government publications". Top of the list is the Labour party manifesto. If Ministers do not read to the end of their own documents, they should. Any Minister who read that document would have said that the Labour party manifesto was not a Government publication. It might be "other interesting reading", but it should not have gone in with the productions paid for by the taxpayer.
When the Prime Minister noticed that--I brought it to his attention--it would have been better if he had apologised, but he should go a stage further and say, "As well as Ministers failing to read their own publication, what about the civil servants?" Have we reached a stage where our independent, impartial civil service--which serves Governments of any party with a majority--does not dare, or does not care, to say to Ministers, "Excuse me, you've got this wrong"?
I cannot believe that civil servants did not read page 56 of that Government publication. The Prime Minister--when he is speaking to senior civil servants, as he does on occasion--should say, "If any of your people think that we are doing something that is wrong, either by mistake or deliberately, tell the Minister. The second time, tell the permanent secretary and the third time tell The Guardian, if necessary."
There is a responsibility, which is shared by the Cabinet Secretary and the Prime Minister, to make sure that civil servants spot such things and take action. There should not be confusion between party interest and Government responsibilities.
I shall move on, to Northern Ireland and then to West Sussex. I strong believe that the Royal Ulster Constabulary has done valiant work and has carried much of the burden over the past 30 years. It has not been perfect, but it has been very good.
It is wrong that the only police service in the United Kingdom with the word "Royal" in its title is in Northern Ireland--it is not in Scotland, in Wales or in England. I do not want to throw away the RUC name or tradition, but I want to add to its title the words "Northern Ireland police service". In the same way that the Conservative party and the Labour party have alternative titles, it is perfectly reasonable for the Northern Ireland police service--the RUC--to have both titles available for people to use as they wish. We could add to the RUC's fine tradition a movement towards being like police services in other parts of the United Kingdom.
One of the dominant issues, which is referred to in passing in the spending sentences of the Queen's Speech, will be the Government's determination on the standard spending assessment. I think that West Sussex will be penalised; it also loses out in health allocations.
It is no coincidence that most of the West Sussex health authorities and hospitals have the worst waiting lists and waiting periods, partly because there are many elderly people on the south coast. Most of the illnesses for which people do not receive urgent or emergency treatment are ones that the elderly experience, and most of the problems experienced by young people are emergencies or urgent.
The pressure on resources in the Worthing and Southlands Hospitals NHS trust, and in others, is enormous. I hope that the Secretary of State for Health will come down to West Sussex, listen to the nurses, the auxiliaries in the hospitals, the doctors and the people on the health authorities and share with them his view of how they can manage on the resources that they have. Those resources are not adequate.
In education, there are also problems, but one of the biggest problems--this comes into casualty reduction--is money for roads. Although the Worthing bypass did not go through, money is still needed to give protection to local people, especially vulnerable road users. For example, on a county road--the A259 at Ferring--people on foot, on bikes or on horses are exposed to the daily risk of trying to cross a busy dual carriageway that carries virtually the same amount of traffic that motorways used to handle, before they grew even larger.
West Sussex will not have the money to put in the improvements, although extra money is being paid by motorists, and vulnerable road users--people outside cars and on foot--have environmental needs. Two weeks ago, a tragic crash killed Mr. Wallace at the site where I, a county councillor and other concerned local residents pointed out in January that action was needed. Cash control over West Sussex county council is in the hands of the Government. The strings need to be loosened.
There needs to be a source of funding so that casualty reduction measures can be taken. We must continue to reduce the number of road deaths because, at over 3,000 a year, 10 a day, it is still far too high.
I do not understand why the Deputy Prime Minister insists on an extra 12,000 homes in addition to the 38,000 that West Sussex must produce. It was agreed that West Sussex could take only 38,000, and the Deputy Prime Minister should have accepted that. I hope that his early success in the courts will be overturned. Even if it is not, he should tell West Sussex that it can get by without the extra 12,000, in the same way that Worthing local council decided to lift its threat on development of the Goring gap. Places such as West Sussex need protection from overdevelopment. They need people who are willing to enter local and national politics to stand up for them.
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