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Mr. John Wilkinson (Ruislip-Northwood): My right hon. Friend, who is making an important point, willknow that the discredited--in a collective sense--Commissioner van Miert seems to want to instigate an investigation of the disbursement of some £150 million of Government aid to BMW-Rover. Surely the United Kingdom has a pretty good record, or did have until the present Government came to power. Industrial subsidies to manufacturing industry in Italy are six times as high as those in the United Kingdom, and those in Germany are four times as high. Has not the European Union got a cheek?
Mr. Redwood: Of course I hope that the deal will go through and that jobs will be saved, but I condemn the level of support that has had to be given to secure those jobs. I blame the Government for that. I am delighted that we have a deal. Of course money had to be offered, because industry has been damaged so badly by the Government's policies; but if BMW-Rover had been making more money, retaining more profit and generating more cash in the United Kingdom, it would not have been necessary to offer so much money to secure the investment.
Now that this has been done, however, we want the jobs as much as the Secretary of State does, and we want no interference by the Secretary of State. My hon. Friend is right: there are massive industrial subsidies on the continent of Europe which are unfair, and which should be tackled before the rather lesser subsidies in Britain are subjected to scrutiny.
The Secretary of State does not like answering questions. I am almost tempted to ask for the return of the first Secretary of State, or President of the Board of Trade. She did not give away much at the time, but she was positively loquacious in comparison with the present Secretary of State. When I send him letters, either privately or publicly and politically--polite, or a little sharper--he says that he does not answer letters. I have never known a Secretary of State who refuses to answer letters from a parliamentary colleague speaking on behalf of the Opposition, but that is what this Secretary of State does, and I think that the public should know about it.
Mr. Byers:
For the record, what I have said to the right hon. Gentleman--as he knows--is that when Parliament is in recess I am more than happy to answer his letters, but when Parliament is sitting I think it a gross discourtesy to the House to put questions in private, in letters, which could be tabled as parliamentary questions. If such questions were tabled, every hon. Member could see them and read the responses.
Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough):
On a point of order, Mr. Martin. I seek your guidance, for the protection of Back Benchers. During my 16 years as a Member of Parliament I have written hundreds, maybe thousands, of letters to Ministers. Am I now to be prevented from doing
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. How the Secretary of State conducts his affairs is up to him. It is not a matter for the Chair.
Mr. Redwood:
I urge the Secretary of State to think again about this rather strange new constitutional doctrine. If I write him a letter, I write it because hundreds of thousands, or millions, or people out there share my point of view. I see it as a public duty to show that there is a different view, or a different way forward. There are times when I would like to write the Secretary of State a private letter, but, believe it or not, I care enough about business in this country to want occasionally to use my position, on behalf of business generally, to write to the Secretary of State privately to say, "If I were you, I would pay attention to this and do something about it."
When I was a Minister, if a Labour Member of Parliament--my opposite number, for instance--wrote a private letter, I respected that privacy. If it was a shadow Minister, I would invite him round for a cup of tea so that we could talk through what he had said. That is what the proper parliamentary process is about. If, on occasion, I write a private note and the Secretary of State thinks that I am being too cautious and that what I have said should be made public, I shall be happy for him to ring me up and say, "Let us publish the correspondence." When I write a general or political letter I will publish it anyway, so no discourtesy to the House of Commons is involved. Everyone will see it. I do not mind what the Secretary of State does with his letter, as long as I receive an answer myself.
Under the Conservatives, we followed the traditions of courtesy in this place. If a shadow Minister wrote a letter, it was treated as urgent. We took a personal interest in replying to such letters. If the letter was highly political, we sent a highly political answer; but at least we dealt with the letter there and then. If the letter was written in a different spirit and a different tone--we all know the different tones that are used in our job--it would be answered in a similar tone. We would accept that the shadow Minister had a point, and was speaking for his constituents or in the wider interest. [Hon. Members: "Get on with it."] Hon. Members should not order me to get on with it. This is about how industry should present its case, and about whether the Government will listen. [Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. Hon. Members should not get so excited.
Mr. Redwood:
The Secretary of State's new doctrine is that I must table all the more subtle points in my letters in parliamentary questions. I have tried that once or twice. Let me tell the House what happens in such cases. First, the Department sits on it for a bit. It misses the deadline. Then it decides to shuffle the question over to the Treasury, which decides that it is too difficult to answer--or the person concerned is not allowed to answer because, if he did, the Chancellor would beat him up, or at least
I asked the simple question: what will be the impact on unemployment of a 1 per cent. increase in labour costs? That is not a hugely difficult question that needs rocket science to answer: any Government economic model has such information built into it, and the Secretary of State must have considered such matters before he pushed through the remains of the Government's employment legislation designed to increase wage costs. The previous Government certainly looked into the issue when we considered the sort of ideas that the Government are now producing, and we decided that they would be damaging. The Government must have a view.
The Secretary of State shoved the matter over to the Chancellor. The Chancellor or one of his Ministers replied that it would depend on whether the 1 per cent. increase in wages was matched by productivity. Well, you don't say! That was well worked out. I then tabled a question saying that what I had in mind was a 1 per cent. increase not matched by productivity, which is exactly the type of increase that the Government are forcing on British business. The Government refused to answer. That is a disgrace. This is meant to be open government.
Are Labour's ideas helping to generate more jobs, or are they destroying jobs? That is the big issue. I asked a simple question that goes to the heart of the matter. The Government will not answer it in letters, and they will not answer it from either Department of State. How can they claim to believe in business or open government when they will not answer such a simple point? Perhaps they will argue that one cannot get the staff these days. We do not get much out of the Government for £330 billion: it is all spent on spinning--none of it is spent on answering questions or on proper policy analysis. The Secretary of State is paid money to answer questions. I look forward to getting value for that money when he has had time to reflect on these exchanges.
I enjoyed the recent spat between the Minister for Competition and Consumer Affairs and the Secretary of State over the decision on News International and its bid for Manchester United. We have had no opportunity to cross-examine the Secretary of State on that. There has been no statement, although it was a big issue that affected thousands of Manchester United fans and many media businesses in this country and elsewhere.
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