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Mrs. Beckett: My hon. Friend is entirely right to draw attention to the sharp contrast between the Conservative Members' ideological approach and their ceaseless demand for more spending and more intervention at the same time as they claim that they want tax cuts. I fear that, as they proved spectacularly during the late 1990s, arithmetic is not their strong suit.
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold): Will the Leader of the House give time for an important debate on the work of the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges, and in particular on Lord Neill's annual report, which said that the committee's work crucially depends on its independence of the Government of the day? There are strong concerns that that may not always be the case. Could she find time so that we can debate this matter?
Mrs. Beckett: I have not had chance to study Lord Neill's remarks in depth, but I remind the hon. Gentleman that the Government widened the remit of the Neill committee and gave it the capacity to scrutinise, among other things, party political funding. That was always resisted by the Conservative party. I share the view that it is important to have proper standards and independent scrutiny of how these matters are developing. However, I utterly reject the contention that any complaint can be made about the Government.
Mr. Owen Paterson (North Shropshire): Following a ruling by a coroner in the south-west, it will no longer be possible for police forces to use emergency powers to close streets for parades or fetes. In order to stay within the law, they will have to request a road closure order from the local authority, which requires the futile exercise of charging the fete or organisation £210 in the case of Shropshire for an advert in the back of a local newspaper that no one reads. I have written to the Minister in the other place, Lord Whitty, asking that this be changed immediately, because the cost in Shropshire alone for events with a turnover of under £5,000 is £31,500. The consequences for girl guides, scouts, remembrance day services, fetes, carnivals and parades across the country will be devastating unless this ridiculous, bureaucratic nonsense is changed quickly. Will a Minister from the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions make a statement to the House?
Mrs. Beckett: I understand the hon. Gentleman's concern, although I gather that that is common practice in some parts of the country. He has raised an important issue. I fear that I cannot undertake to find time for a debate or a statement in the near future, but I will draw the hon. Gentleman's remarks, and the fact that he raised the matter on the Floor of the House, to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions.
Mr. Bob Russell (Colchester): Will the right hon. Lady make time for a debate--or, failing that, a statement from the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport--about the loss to the BBC of coverage of important
football matches? Following the advice of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), does she agree that Government intervention is required? The football authorities have shown themselves to be incapable of looking at the long-term interests of football. Surely the people's sport should be on the people's television. Football on television should be for the many, not the few.
Mrs. Beckett: I agree that football on television should be for the many, not the few. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the Government have taken steps to ensure that important sporting events can be seen by many members of the public. However, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport said this morning, such issues are a matter for commercial negotiation and discussion involving the BBC and others.
I understand the hon. Gentleman's regret that the football "industry" has taken such a stand, in the context of the revenue that it seeks to raise, and I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will continue to look at the effects of such a policy. I fear that I cannot undertake to find time for a special statement in the near future, but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and, indeed, the whole House will want me to wish England well in the forthcoming match with Germany.
Mr. Michael Fabricant (Lichfield): May we have an urgent debate on the future of recruitment in the national health service? In Lichfield and across the land, hospitals are under threat. They stand under the sword of Damocles. People are not prepared to go into hospitals when area health authorities are reviewing whether those hospitals will continue to exist.
Is the right hon. Lady aware that, although a review instigated in south Staffordshire was supposed to take only three months, Victoria hospital is still under threat 12 months later? Does she realise that it is that situation--which, as I have said, applies throughout the United Kingdom--that produced the slow handclap that the Prime Minister received when he said, "We have not abandoned the NHS"? He got a very slow handclap indeed from those in the know.
Mrs. Beckett: No one in the know would have reacted in that way. Those in the know would be aware of the resources being made available. Of course, the situation described by the hon. Gentleman did not come about overnight; it came about under the Government of whom he was such a strong and fulsome supporter. Moreover, those in the know would be aware that the Government have approved some 38 major hospital building projects, and have substantially improved the staffing of the health service.
Of course it is taking time, and will continue to take time, to turn around the problems that we inherited, but given Conservative Members' propensity to complain about spin over substance, let me apprise them of some facts of which they are almost certainly unaware. There are some 30,000 extra jobs in education, some 8,000 extra jobs in health, and fewer jobs in central Government. When the party that the hon. Gentleman supports said that
it would fund its programme by cutting jobs in the public sector, it was talking about sacking exactly the people more of whom he wants to be employed.
Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley): In the light of the British Aerospace job losses, will the Leader of the House consider bringing forward the defence procurement debate that we normally have? The matter is urgent. Will she also consider a debate on the importance of manufacturing generally to the regions? As well as the 750 job losses that have taken place at British Aerospace in the past few weeks, Lancashire has experienced more than 400 manufacturing job losses in Burnley, and 550 in Accrington.
This is an issue that interests all hon. Members, on both sides of the House. I know that the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope) has worked closely with the Department of Trade and Industry, and, indeed, with the Conservative leader of Hyndburn council, in an attempt to alleviate the worst effects of the job losses. The loss of 750 jobs to date will have an enormous impact on communities. Whole families work in some of the industries involved, and whole families have lost their jobs.
Mrs. Beckett: Of course I understand the hon. Gentleman's concern. It gives me a pang to hear Conservative Members expressing the concern for manufacturing that all of us tried to instigate in them during the years when they were in government, but never mind. We are the Government now, as he rightly says. We share his concern, which is why--as he knows and will, I think, acknowledge--the Government have given considerable support to British Aerospace, not least in the field of defence procurement. I understand his suggestion that a vehicle for that concern to be aired might be the defence procurement debate. I cannot at the moment give him the assurance that he seeks, but I will bear his remarks in mind.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): May we please have a statement on the criteria used by Government Departments in deciding when regulations that flow from legislation will be subject to the negative procedure, which does not allow debate, and when they will be subject to the affirmative procedure, which does? The right hon. Lady will no doubt wish to be aware that, on no fewer than three recent occasions, in proposing and seeking to push legislation through the House, Ministers have been unable to tell the House which procedure is to be used or why.
On a wholly separate matter, what assessment has the right hon. Lady made of the progress, or lack of it, in the other place of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Bill?
Mrs. Beckett: I believe that the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Bill has had one debate in the other place. Further than that, I cannot call its present circumstances to mind.
On the criteria to decide when regulation should be subject to negative or affirmative procedure, I understand that the hon. Gentleman seeks greater clarity as to how those decisions are made. I am not sure that it is always as scientific as he might suggest. I am not aware of an occasion on which a Minister could not suggest what the pattern for a set of regulations would be, but it sometimes
depends on the outcome; it depends on the balance of the material which it is anticipated will be put in regulations, and the weight that is associated with the decisions that those regulations will enshrine. That is probably the nearest it gets to being scientific. As to why someone might have been unable to answer the hon. Gentleman's question, perhaps at that time the decisions had not been made.
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