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Mr. Michael Fabricant (Lichfield): The Minister is right to play down expectations of immediate cures. I believe that Gray's "Anatomy" was first published in 1858, but it was some 70 years before people realised the link between the islets of Langerhans and insulin.

Can the Minister assure the House that the Government will take no steps to prevent any further research into human stem cells or similar tissue? That is the key that can open the door to the cures for many dysfunctions, including cancer and other congenital diseases, yet there are many siren voices who argue that any research on human cells should be banned.

Ms Hewitt: I am advised that the chief medical officer's working group is considering that issue. His advice has not yet come to the Government, and we have therefore not yet made a decision.

Dr. Howard Stoate (Dartford): I add my congratulations to the many scientists internationally who have achieved this wonderful goal today. It has already been likened in importance to the invention of the wheel. However, many right hon. and hon. Members have echoed the real worries surrounding the issue, and I am pleased that the Minister has already accepted that there is the possibility of a genetic underclass. We need to be very careful about how the technology is rolled out.

May I call for an early and swift debate on this matter? Public opinion is quite sensitive at the moment, because of genetically modified foods, BSE and the like. I urge my hon. Friend to ask her ministerial colleagues if we can have a debate as soon as possible on the wide and significant issues raised by this extremely important discovery.

Ms Hewitt: I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will take notice of that further request for a debate on these important issues.

Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East): Are the Government not being uncharacteristically modest about the human genome project? Should they not at least have said a word of praise for the experimental laboratories in Walworth road and Millbank, whose successful trials in human cloning have led to the results that are so evident on the Government Back Benches?

Ms Hewitt: I had hoped that questions on the statement would pass without unfortunate references to human genetic treatment of such a kind. I shall resist following the hon. Gentleman.

If I may clarify the answer that I gave a moment ago, the working group led by the chief medical officer has completed its work, but the Government have not yet made a decision on it.

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Point of Order

4.9 pm

Sir George Young (North-West Hampshire): On a point of order, Madam Speaker. On Thursday, the Leader of the House announced that today's business would be a motion on the Police (Northern Ireland) Bill followed by consideration of the Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate Bill. She then spent 40 minutes explaining why a number of important issues raised by myself and other Members could not be discussed because of lack of parliamentary time. You, Madam Speaker, will have noticed that the Order Paper does not contain a motion on the Police (Northern Ireland) Bill, and that the House has been left with a very light diet indeed. Given all the pressures on parliamentary time, does not today's business represent a missed opportunity?

Madam Speaker: Does the Minister want to raise a further point of order?

The Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office (Mr. Paddy Tipping): Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. As the right hon. Gentleman said, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House made an announcement about a motion for the Police (Northern Ireland) Bill last Thursday. During the course of Friday, we were pleased to receive assurances--both through the usual channels and through wider discussions--that the matter could be concluded satisfactorily without recourse to a guillotine. It is perhaps best for the House to proceed by consensus on matters such as this.

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Orders of the Day

Census (Amendment) Bill [Lords] [Money]

Queen's recommendation having been signified--

4.11 pm

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Stephen Timms): I to beg to move,

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Census (Amendment) Bill [Lords], it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of money so provided under any other enactment.

The Government proposed in the White Paper on the 2001 census, published in March 1999, that a new question on religion should be included in the census in addition to the existing question on ethnic group. An amendment to the Census Act 1920 is necessary because the schedule to the Act, which specifies those matters of which particulars may be required to be stated in census returns, does not currently provide for particulars on religion. This Bill received its Second Reading in the House on 20 June. I commend the resolution to the House.

4.11 pm

Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst): My hopes soared when the Minister rose to move the resolution. Such hopes were unusual in these circumstances and I had hoped that he was setting a precedent. However, I was then profoundly disappointed by the opacity of his announcement. Even the most casual reading of the resolution would tell one that it contains the potential at least for a very large amount of expenditure about which we still know nothing.

For a Treasury Minister to come to the House to ask us to underwrite the expenditure of an unspecified amount is bad enough, but this resolution goes beyond even the usual pronouncements of a money resolution, in two or three important respects. The first is that it states:

for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Census (Amendment) Bill [Lords].

That leads us to suppose that we are being asked to sign a blank cheque that could arise not from the Bill as we now know it, but from the Bill which may emerge after its Committee and Report stages. The Government are therefore pushing their luck more than somewhat. It would be bad enough if we knew the text upon which we are being asked to write a blank cheque, but we are now being asked to write a double or triple blank cheque, in that the resolution refers to the Act that may emerge from the parliamentary process that was initiated, not finalised, by the introduction of the Bill. A huge amount of speculation will arise in that respect.

The resolution then adds impertinently that the Government want the House to approve

any increase attributable to the Act.

The formality of the blank cheque has been set before us but, most important, the resolution continues:

in the sums payable out of money so provided under any other enactment.

Normally one might not be too alarmed by such a statement, but this is a highly controversial Bill. We discovered that on Second Reading, when the House

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divided. Some of my hon. Friends and I expressed considerable disquiet at its content, and that disquiet has not diminished with the passage of time.

The worrying aspect of the seemingly innocuous phrase "under any enactment" arises from the pronouncements of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Sayeed), who is the Bill's supposed promoter, and of the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. Their pronouncements led to a suspicion that we did not have much of an opportunity to explore on Second Reading. On 20 June, in a text which I wonder whether my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire wrote, because it does not sound like him to me, although I shall accept his assurances if he wants to give them, my hon. Friend said:

If we are to deal with discrimination in the provision of health, housing, schools, welfare and community care services, we require better information. We require better information about baseline figures against which racial disadvantage and social exclusion within particular minority groups can be monitored. This information would be useful in the planning of religious education--

I may come back to that in a moment--and

it would have relevance in the regeneration of inner cities; and I would expect it to aid the very valuable work of voluntary sector religious groups.--[Official Report, 20 June 2000; Vol. 352, c. 266.]

That is what my hon. Friend said as reported in Hansard, if I may put it that way, when he was introducing the Bill.

The Minister said later:

The basic reason for collecting such information, however--

that is, information resulting from the census, as it would be altered by the Bill--

is so that it can be used to inform planning, policy and services.--[Official Report, 20 June 2000; Vol. 352, c. 305.]

Flowing from all that is not just the suspicion but the near certainty that the mechanism that would be initiated by adding the question to the census that the Bill suggests will, if it has any meaning at all, result in considerable additional expenditure in some areas, not least the planning of religious education. The matter was touched on on Second Reading, and we received no further information. Everyone seems to want to be coy about it. Will the phrase "under any other enactment" in the money resolution lead us to an unspecified and possibly unlimited amount of expenditure across the board of social policy?

I am not sure what "social exclusion" means. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire is obviously happy with it as a concept. Perhaps he could explain it to me, if not now, then subsequently. References have also been made to the regeneration of inner cities, no less, and then the Minister tells us that the information will be used to inform planning, policy and services.

So contained within the wording of the Bill as it now is, never mind as it may emerge from Committee and Report, is the potential for considerable extra expenditure.

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