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Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst): The Leader of the House will of course be aware that yesterday, in response to a question from the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), the Prime Minister said:

"My view is that, in the modern world as we move closer together, there will be a pooling of national sovereignty."--[Official Report, 16 June 1999; Vol. 333, c. 391.]

He said not that there has been but that there will be, a pooling of national sovereignty, so he obviously envisages further pooling of national sovereignty.

Does the right hon. Lady share my view that the Prime Minister's pronouncement is sufficiently momentous to justify an urgent debate so that we may hear from him what he meant by those words? I hope that the Leader of the House recognises the significance of the Prime Minister's statement and that we deserve to learn a lot more about it very soon, so that we can all make up our minds what on earth he was talking about.

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover): He went to Brussels and took the money.

Mrs. Beckett: I am sorry to disappoint the right hon. Gentleman, who was indeed himself an MEP, no doubt in times when it was less unpopular in the Conservative party to be at all involved with Europe. However, I am afraid that I do not share his view that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said anything momentous or with an unknown meaning. Our membership of the European Union, or the Common Market as it then was, has involved a pooling of national sovereignty over the years. We have all known that since 1972, and most of those steps were, for good or ill, taken by Conservative Governments. The right hon. Gentleman's view that the idea is astonishing and new is not borne out by the facts.

Mr. David Atkinson (Bournemouth, East): Anticipating the right hon. Lady's statement on the millennium bug, which is to follow, and with 198 days to go before it hits us, will she arrange for an early, full debate on that threat to our public services and the private sector and on the consequent disruption to our daily lives?

Mrs. Beckett: I have no plans to stage a debate in the near future, although if, over time, there is a demand for such a debate, I shall take it into account, as I try to take into account all other such demands. I know the hon. Gentleman's keen interest in the subject. May I remind him that we have been making quarterly statements, as I shall do shortly, and that we intend to give a progress update monthly from now on? Unless there is some dramatic new development, the House may find that that meets the demand for information--in fact, it may over-egg it.

Mr. David Chaytor (Bury, North): In the next couple of weeks, we understand, the Government will publish

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their long-awaited and important White Paper on post-16 education and training. In the previous Session, the Government provided in their own time a debate on further education and training. As I recall, the then Minister gave an assurance that he would do everything possible to ensure that each year in Government time there was a formal debate on the subject. Will my right hon. Friend ensure not only that when the White Paper is published, probably within the next two weeks, there will be a Government statement to go with it, but that this important subject will be debated in Government time?

Mrs. Beckett: I will certainly take on board and draw to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment my hon. Friend's request for a statement on what he rightly says is an important subject. I am glad to know that Ministers at the DfEE are giving away time on the Floor of the House and saying how many formal debates there should be. That is a bad habit that Ministers in several Departments are getting into. I understand of course that Ministers in every Department think that their Department's business is so important that it should dominate the House.

I assure my hon. Friend that I shall bear in mind his request, and that I recognise the importance of his remarks, but the debates for which we can find time on the Floor are an issue for a wider range of responsibilities, including the usual channels.

Mr. Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale, West): I wonder whether the Secretary of State for Health could be encouraged to make a statement on the serious problem of growing waiting lists for heart bypass surgery, as was highlighted in the Daily Mail on Wednesday, particularly in the light of remarks made by Mr. Ben Bridgewater, a consultant thoracic surgeon at Wythenshawe hospital, which serves my constituents, to the effect that some 500 people are dying unnecessarily every year in Britain because of over-long waiting lists for heart bypass surgery, and that the problem is worse now than it was a year ago?

Mrs. Beckett: I shall certainly draw that matter, too, to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health. I will not disguise it from the hon. Gentleman--I hope that I am not doing wrong by saying this, so I stress that, very incorrectly and very unusually, I am giving my personal opinion--that I have long thought it unfortunate that we cannot do more to encourage people to carry donor cards--[Interruption.] Sometimes, as the hon. Gentleman knows, organ donation is involved. I recognise the scale of the problem, as does my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West): The right hon. Lady has just announced yet another day's debate for the minority parties, despite their extraordinary record in that respect recently. Has she seen early-day motion 713?

[That this House expresses its admiration and respect for the Leader of the Opposition who despite a multitude of criticism, poor opinion poll ratings and warnings of electoral disaster had the courage and determination to adopt and fight for a policy designed to prevent further

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surrenders of sovereignty to the non-democratic institutions of the European Union; and believes that, following the election results on 13th June, with the help of the British people, he will prevent the final surrender over the single currency.]

Furthermore, does she think that it might be within her power to persuade the Liberal Democrats to debate that next week, rather than one of the motions that they have chosen? It might help them to focus on their own leadership election.

Mrs. Beckett: The amount of time allotted among the Opposition parties for Opposition-day debates is covered by tried and tested general guidance. The reason the Liberal Democrats get more debates than they may have done in the past is that they did rather better at the last general election, at the expense of the Conservative party.

Mr. Owen Paterson (North Shropshire): May I offer my sympathy to the Leader of the House for the miserable week that she has had? She was forced to lead an election campaign under a system that she does not believe in, sundry spin doctors put about stories that she had disappeared into her caravan during the campaign, and she has since been blamed for the disaster that engulfed the Labour party when the results were announced.

It is clear that the British electorate found the PR system repulsive. It became clear yesterday that the Prime Minister did not understand that. We know that he is a busy man, but could he detain himself for half an hour after Prime Minister's questions next Wednesday to explain his personal position on the question of introducing PR for this Parliament?

Mrs. Beckett: I suppose that I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his sympathy, although the notion that we took a week's holiday in our caravan, which was entirely misplaced, was not, as far as I am aware, the invention of any spin doctor. If the hon. Gentleman wants my frank opinion, I suspect that it started as a newsroom joke and spread because it was too good a story to resist.

One of the most worrying things about the European elections, which should genuinely trouble all hon. Members, was the low turnout. It was not unpredicted, but it was alarming. The hon. Gentleman says that it is because of the system. It has always been a feature of the European Parliament elections that turn-out is lower than at local elections, and turn-out at the local elections this year was only 29 per cent.; so, again, that is part of the pattern. But it is a source of serious concern to all of us. One thing that we should be doing, and the Government are doing, is giving much thought to how we can make it easier, not more difficult, for people to vote. That could apply across the board.

As to the notion that the low turn-out was due simply to the voting system, given the understandably extensive coverage of the important issue of the war in Kosovo, and a range of other factors of that kind, it is, perhaps, less surprising than it ought to be. I would not myself lay the blame at the door of the system, but I am sure that all those factors will be considered. My right hon. Friend's position on proportional representation is entirely plain.

Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): Further to the highly pertinent inquiry from my right hon. Friend the Member

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for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), may we have an early statement from the Prime Minister to clarify whether he intends to lead the campaign by the federasts to abolish Britain's national currency and to hand over the running of our economy permanently to people whom we do not elect and cannot remove?

Given that only today in the Daily Mirror that newspaper's chief political commentator, Mr. Paul Routledge, has described the Prime Minister, following his risible performance yesterday, as a startled deer who limped off the stage, does the right hon. Lady not accept that it is crucial that the Prime Minister, instead of sitting on the fence and playing the role of the chameleon, which he so enjoys, should instead stand up for the principle in which he believes, argue the case to abolish our national currency and be prepared for the fact that, when he does so, this Conservative Opposition will come back at him with arguments and force infinitely greater than anything he can offer?

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