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Mr. Andrew Reed (Loughborough): Will my right hon. Friend find time as soon as possible for a debate on the welcome measures announced yesterday to improve road safety? Although I would like those measures to go further, such a debate would allow the House to contrast them with the answer that I received from the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) on 29 June 1999--that the Opposition would like to see the removal of bumps, chicanes and speed cameras as an impediment to cars. Would that not increase danger for the majority of pedestrians? As 103 child deaths a year are too many, may we have a debate on how to reduce that number as much as possible?

Mrs. Beckett: My hon. Friend is entirely right. I well remember the exchange to which he refers and the statement he elicited from the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood). It is again a matter of creative tension between sensible regulation and red tape--and of the inability of the Conservative party to distinguish between the two.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield): Representing the interests of the House rather than the Government, does the Leader of the House think that it was appropriate for a Minister--in this case the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry--to use a parliamentary question to announce a major change in a piece of legislation?

Secondly, thousands of redundancies are being announced in the textile and clothing industry, in which I have taken an interest in all the 29 years that I have been in the House. Those redundancies are the result of companies locating their manufacturing capacity overseas, encouraged, very often, by our major retailers, and of the costs in this country, which are caused by Government regulation and action. Will the right hon. Lady therefore allow a debate about the crisis facing the textile and clothing industry, particularly the strategy document that has recently been published and put out for consultation by the textile and clothing industry trade organisations, including the trade unions?

Mrs. Beckett: I am well aware of the hon. Gentleman's long-standing interest in the industry and, indeed, in all

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aspects of manufacturing. He knows that I share that interest. I recognise the concerns of the clothing and textile industry. I am aware of how successive Governments have sought to work with it to solve those problems. Knowing the hon. Gentleman, I am quite prepared to believe that he does not solely lay at the door of this Government the problems that the industry faces.

Mr. Winterton indicated assent.

Mrs. Beckett: I am pleased to see that he agrees. However, I cannot undertake to find time for a further special debate on the industry, although I recognise the concerns that he identifies. I know that he and other hon. Members with similar interests will keep the matter under close scrutiny.

The hon. Gentleman also asked whether it was appropriate for the Secretary of State to announce the changes that have been made in the way that he did. We are in a somewhat difficult position. As he will appreciate, the Bill is being considered by a Standing Committee Upstairs. I do not think it unreasonable for me to share with the House the information that it was the very strong advice of the Clerks that, when a Bill is in that stage of its process through the House, it is the property of the Committee which the hon. Gentleman, given his long-standing contribution to Standing Committees, will understand. It was therefore felt that an announcement had to be made first to the Committee, and it was then a matter of getting the timing right so that the House was not deprived while the Committee was informed. Since it coincided with Trade and Industry questions, this was thought the best possible way of dealing with the slightly difficult technicality of the Committee being in existence and the Government wishing, as always, to show full courtesy to both the House and the Committee.

Dr. Tony Wright (Cannock Chase): When the Wakeham commission was established, it was asked to work to a very tight timetable so that we could make rapid progress on reform of the other House. It worked to that timetable and delivered its report against all the odds by the end of last year. Since then, nothing seems to have happened. We have not yet fulfilled our pledge to remove the hereditaries because nearly 100 remain. It is now urgent for the House to debate this issue and for a Joint Committee of the two Houses to be established, as promised, so that it can begin to work and we can move from an incomplete stage 1 to a proper stage 2.

Mrs. Beckett: My hon. Friend is remembering only half of what was said about Wakeham. We wished the royal commission to meet, discuss and come to a speedy conclusion so that the Government could then judge whether it was possible to see an emerging consensus which could be followed by further speedy action. [Hon. Members: "Oh!"] Opposition Members groan but, if they look at the record, they will find that that has always and consistently been the view expressed from the Dispatch Box. It is well within my hon. Friend's memory, I am sure, that the Conservative party claimed that no such consensus would emerge, and has indeed done its best to ensure that it does not. The question of who wants to see progress on this is a different one.

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I do not agree with my hon. Friend's remarks about the remaining hereditary principle. No one sits in the House of Lords on the basis of heredity any more. The procedures have been changed so that people are there through some mechanism related to their record and not to the record of their forebears.

Mr. Peter Brooke (Cities of London and Westminster): I seek to follow the Government's logic by asking whether, if the water provisions had been first withdrawn, the Leader of the House would have withdrawn the telecommunications provisions, even if there had been no elusive White Paper on telecommunications?

Mrs. Beckett: The point that the right hon. Gentleman was seeking to make was, uncharacteristically, not entirely clear. The issues are separate and slightly different, but as proposals for change were to be made on each matter, it was sensible to make them together.

Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow): Has the Leader of the House read the exchanges at column 1381 of Hansard on 22 February regarding rail safety? Is she familiar with the expression that something is "like painting the Forth rail bridge", which means that some process is going on and on and will never stop? Well, the painting of the bridge has now stopped because of an acrimonious dispute between Rigblast and Railtrack. Both as Leader of the House and as an engineer, has my right hon. Friend read Magnus Linklater's damning comment in The Times today that the whole business is a disgrace to our country? Much of the responsibility for that lies on The Mound, where today is being spent on a discussion of Gaelic, a language that only two Members there speak--and one of them badly. They are paying for simultaneous translation rather than attending to urgent engineering problems.

Mrs. Beckett: I understand, as the whole House does, my hon. Friend's proper concern for the Forth bridge, which is an important international monument. I am familiar with the expression--now a cliche I suppose--to which he drew attention, and I have read both the exchanges between my hon. Friend and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions and the comments in The Times. I well understand my hon. Friend's concern, and shall draw his remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friend, who I believe is looking into the matter, and will write to my hon. Friend on it. Other than that, I am conscious of the courtesies required between fellow legislative bodies.

Mr. Archy Kirkwood (Roxburgh and Berwickshire): May I draw the Leader of the House's attention to the negative prayer in my name against statutory instrument 239, which introduces changes to jobseeker's allowance regulations? The purpose of the change is to increase the benefit penalty sanction to 26 weeks if an 18 to 24-year-old refuses a new deal option over 12 months. The Advisory Committee on Social Security has made helpful suggestions that would mitigate some of the adverse effects of that change. Will the Leader of the House use her good offices through the usual channels to seek Committee consideration of the regulations before their implementation, which, I understand, is intended to happen early in March?

Mrs. Beckett: I have seen the hon. Gentleman's prayer, and I understand his point. I shall draw his remarks to the

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attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment. The hon. Gentleman asks me to see that the issue is raised through the usual channels; having been a usual channel himself, he will be well aware of how that process operates.

Mr. Paul Flynn (Newport, West): When can we debate early-day motion 2?

[That this House applauds the Government's intention to ensure that all pensioners entitled to income support receive it, making it a genuine minimum income guarantee; notes that, although the minimum income guarantee was introduced in April 1999, the promised national programme of measures to maximise take-up is still awaited; and urges the Secretary of State for Social Security to announce that claims made by pensioners after the date of that announcement will be treated as having been made on that date and that arrears of benefit will be paid accordingly.]

According to the Government's figures, 700,000 of the poorest pensioners will lose out on the so-called minimum income guarantee to an average of £18 a week. When will we begin the campaign promised in our manifesto? It was promised for April 1999 but, on 6 February 2000, the Minister of State, Department of Social Security promised that it would happen by the end of that month. He repeated that promise in Westminster Hall on 9 February, but we are into March and nothing has happened. Can we have a debate in which the Government can reassure the poorest pensioners, who were promised, but have been denied, a minimum income? It is worth recalling that the minimum income guarantee is the Government's main excuse for not restoring the link between pensions and earnings. We need a debate to make sure that the Government guarantee that the great losses suffered by the poorest pensioners because of delays in the take-up campaign will be backdated.

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