| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
The Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs (Mr. Christopher Leslie): I have great respect for the hon. Gentleman's contribution, but does he acknowledge that the proposition that more than one post should be in the hands of a particular individual was first posited by the previous Leader of the Opposition? How much time did he feel should be spent on those respective posts?
Sir Patrick Cormack: I was the party's spokesman on constitutional affairs at that time, and I did not think that the system worked all that well, to be honest. [Interruption.] I said so at the time. I have never been one to hide my views. After all, a fortnight ago I was the one Conservative Member to march into the Government Lobby to support the Prime Minister on the inquiry into Iraq. My hon. Friends probably believed that I was profoundly mistaken, but I thought that I was right, so I did it.
It was a perfectly understandable experiment for an Opposition party to enter into, especially at a time when it had been so decimated at the polls, but it is not a good long-term constitutional answer to the problems of the United Kingdom and, in particular, to those of Scotland and Wales.
Mr. Garnier: The answer to my hon. Friend's question about how much time this bifurcated Minister will spend on each of his jobs is surely this: nobody knows, least of all the Government, partly because they have not thought about it.
Sir Patrick Cormack: Absolutely. I want to mention one very tragic example: please God nothing like it will ever happen again. I remember Aberfan. What would a Secretary of State be able to do other than to devote every hour of every day to an issue such as that? Nobody would criticise him for so doing.
Mr. George Foulkes (Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir Patrick Cormack: I will in a second.
Being Leader of this House is a crucial role in Parliament.
Mr. Foulkes: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir Patrick Cormack: If the right hon. Gentleman will just contain himself for a moment, of course I will.
There is no more important job in the House of Commons, other than that of Speaker, than Leader of the House. Having been shadow Leader of the House, I know a little bit about the role. The Leader of the House should be available at all times to all Members of the House. He should not have time to do any other significant job. One either says that being Secretary of State for Wales is an unimportant job with no duties—I do not believe that that is the case—or that the post of Leader of the House has been demoted.
Mr. Foulkes: I tried to intervene earlier to prevent the hon. Gentleman from going down a blind alley. He clearly does not understand what has happened as a
result of devolution. The First Minister of Wales and the First Minister of Scotland deal with such matters now. In the event of a tragedy, they would be responsible for the police service and all the emergency services: they would be on-site. The Secretaries of State for Wales and for Scotland have responsibilities, but they are principally here in the House representing those countries.
Sir Patrick Cormack: Speaking as one who has a son who stood for the Scottish Parliament, I am afraid that I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman. If he thinks that in the aftermath of an Aberfan or a Dunblane the Secretary of State for Wales or for Scotland could stay in England and escape criticism, he is absolutely wrong. One should either get rid of the office entirely or, if one keeps it because one thinks that it is important, give it to somebody who does it full-time.
Mr. Bryant: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir Patrick Cormack: No, the hon. Gentleman has had his turn.
I come back to the role of the Leader of the House. It is a role of prime importance. The Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs is not the Leader of the House's new deputy—he will wind up the debate because of his responsibilities for constitutional affairs; it is all very confusing—but he can at least pass this on to the right hon. Gentleman. If the Leader of the House is to make a success of his job, and I hope that he will, he will have to try to be a little less partisan than he was this afternoon. The great Leaders of the House in my time here—good gracious, it is 33 years tomorrow—have been able to put their party allegiance at a little bit of a distance. The greatest of them was probably John Biffen.
Mr. Bercow: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Sir Patrick Cormack: In a moment, yes. My hon. Friend has rubber pants that make him bounce up and down, but he will have to stay there for a moment or two.
Mr. Bryant: He will have to contain himself in his rubber pants.
Sir Patrick Cormack: Absolutely.
John Biffen was able to distance himself a little. Not all Leaders of the House have done it as well. The right hon. Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor), who currently chairs the Intelligence and Security Committee, was a good Leader of the House in the Government's first year. However, let us not discuss personalities. If the new Leader of the House is to do his duty properly, he will not have time to be Secretary of State for Wales, whether he receives a salary for both jobs or not.
I shall now give way to my exuberant and irrepressible hon. Friend.
Mr. Bercow: I want to underline the significance of my hon. Friend's point. Many of us have long admired
some of the political talents of the right hon. Member for Neath (Peter Hain). However, this afternoon, he gave as hesitant and unpersuasive an account of himself as I have ever had the misfortune to hear.My hon. Friend is developing his thesis on the role of the Leader of the House. Does he agree that the right hon. Member for Neath could usefully learn from the dedication to the role of the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Margaret Beckett) and, whatever we think of his decision, the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook)? Both were Leaders of the House of impeccable quality.
Sir Patrick Cormack: That is entirely fair. Both spent a great deal of time here and listened to debates in which they did not participate. Leaders of the House must do such things. The performance of the current Leader of the House reminded me of the wonderful remarks in "Pickwick Papers"—weak case: abuse plaintiff's attorney. That is what the right hon. Gentleman did all afternoon.
Kevin Brennan: Argument weak—tell a joke.
Sir Patrick Cormack: At least some of us can try to do that, whereas others sit, po-faced and smug, and make irrelevant sedentary interventions.
I should like to consider the constitutional implications of the appointment of the new Secretary of State for Health. I am delighted that the Father of the House, the author of the West Lothian question, is here. I hope that he might be moved to utterance and that, if he wants to utter, he will have the good fortune to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker. He knows, probably better than the rest of us put together, the implications of appointing a Minister with a Scottish constituency and no say in anything to do with health in Scotland to dictate what will happen to the national health service in England and, to some extent, Wales. Although I appreciate that Wales has a measure of devolution, it is not as complete as in Scotland.
Again, the appointment is insensitive. I also believe that it was insensitive of the Prime Minister to remove the good doctor so quickly from the post of Leader of the House. He had barely arrived. I have the honour to be a member of the House of Commons Commission, and I believe that he attended only one meeting. That was not his fault, but how can one become knowledgeable about a job in only eight or nine weeks? That is unacceptable.
I have a higher regard than most of my colleagues for the Prime Minister. I greatly admire his courage in recent months, and have said that on many occasions. However, I believe that his attitude towards the House of Commons, whether intentional or not, is one of contempt. Moving the right hon. Member for Hamilton, North and Bellshill (Dr. Reid) so quickly is further evidence of that. It is not as though the Prime Minister did not have talented Ministers.
I appreciate the blow to the Prime Minister that the resignation of the previous Secretary of State for Health must have been. I believe that he resigned for the honourable reasons that he stated, and I wish him every happiness with his family, but it must have been a blow
to the Prime Minister. However, he could have called on others to fulfil the role without disrupting the affairs of the House or creating another constitutional problem.Last week's episode was characterised by bumbling ineptitude. We must now live with the botched consequences of that. It was instilled in me from birth that everyone has a better instinct, and I have to believe it. I therefore appeal to the Government and the Minister who will wind up to progress gently and properly. Let us have a Green Paper and ascertain what the Government want to do, if they now know. After consultation, let us have a White Paper and draft legislation. Let us call witnesses, including the Lord Chancellor and Lord Bingham, who was prayed in aid this afternoon. Let us ask them searching questions through a fairly large Committee as a pre-legislative exercise. After that, we should have a Bill.
Nobody can pretend that such a measure would not be constitutional legislation of a high order. It should therefore be considered on the Floor of the House. Perhaps then we might reach some solutions that do not violate 1,000 years of history and retain the best of what we have and embody change only for the better. The Government have a historic opportunity. If they do not take it, they will deserve to be castigated evermore for their actions last week.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |