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Peter Hain: First, on the last point, I will happily endeavour to protect Opposition time. I realise that that is an issue for the right hon. Gentleman—[Hon. Members: "For all of us."] Indeed, and I shall see what I can do. The right hon. Gentleman will also appreciate that we have had regular requests for statements from Secretaries of State—certainly in the first period of our Government—and Ministers, including the Prime Minister, have made statements with greater frequency. I know that the House welcomes that.
The right hon. Gentleman made regular reference to me as the part-time Leader of the House. I regard myself as doing everything that is needed in all the time that is needed to do this job properly, and I will certainly continue to do that. There are many precedents for it. I do not claim to have the intellectual ability or stature of Lord Howe, but he was both Leader of the House and Deputy Prime Minister. Someone of much greater stature than both of us—Winston Churchill—also held those posts—
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): He was a great man.
Peter Hain: That is what I have just said. I agree with the hon. Gentleman.
I also want to say that I thought that the right hon. Gentleman gave a very creditable performance, and I look forward to many more of them. Indeed, his performance on Tuesday was so creditable by comparison with that of the Leader of the Opposition
yesterday that I wonder whether he might find himself in a different job in the event of a shadow Cabinet reshuffle. The Daily Mail reported this morning that the Leader of the Opposition
- "was terrible. Quite stunningly bad. By the end . . . he was reduced to not much more than a handful of quivering gizzards and an empty, tock-hollow skull."
- "was like seeing Manuel the waiter carry a large tray of Campari sodas down the Spanish Steps in Rome."
I turn now to the other points that the right hon. Gentleman raised. The shadow Leader of the House asked about officials attending Select Committees. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made the matter amply clear and, if there was need of clarification, Mr. Deputy Speaker later supplied it. Officials appear by special invitation; but it is not simply as it were a sport—a question of any official attending on demand. The matter is handled in the usual way.
On the second point raised by the shadow Leader of the House, I can happily confirm what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said. Buckingham Palace was indeed consulted in the usual fashion. [Hon. Members: "When?"] The right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues ask when and where, but it is not the habit of this House to discuss private conversations with the monarch. The right hon. Gentleman should abide by the culture of the House, as I shall certainly seek to do.
The right hon. Gentleman asked why only one day had been allocated for consideration of the Hunting Bill. He and every other hon. Member will be well aware that the Bill has been subject to detailed scrutiny, quite properly, in Committee and on other occasions in the House. We are dealing with the Hunting Bill in the normal fashion, and according to the precedent established with other Bills.
The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst asked about the Wales Office and the Scotland Office. Frankly, I think the issue is running out of steam, but I shall deal with the points that he raised. Of course my deputy in the Wales Office is listed as a junior Minister under the Department for Constitutional Affairs. For the purposes of locating officials—[Hon. Members: "Careful."] I am being precise, not just careful. I am the Secretary of State for Wales as well as the Leader of the House, so I know what is going on in Wales, unlike the right hon. Gentleman.
The Wales Office is open for business. The right hon. Gentleman can trot up Whitehall and find that the Wales Office plaque is still there. It was there on Thursday afternoon; it was there on Thursday evening; it was there on Friday morning; and it will remain there. All the officials who were working for me before the reshuffle announcement on Thursday afternoon are still working for me, and will continue to do so. The right hon. Gentleman should stop flogging this dead horse and get on to serious business instead.
As to why the Scotland Office and the Wales Office were not listed on the official titles of Ministers, I can tell the House that they never have been. The title of
Secretary of State for Wales has always appeared in the official list, and that remains the case—it refers to my goodself. [Interruption.] It is interesting to note that the Opposition promised in their manifesto for the last general election exactly the same division of responsibilities for the Secretaries of State for Wales and for Scotland as we have now implemented. They are now seeking to walk away from that manifesto promise, because they are interested in trivia and not the big the constitutional picture.The right hon. Gentleman should concentrate on the fact that I, as Secretary of State for Wales, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland will deliver for the people of Wales and Scotland in a way that the Tories so abjectly failed to do during their 18 miserable years of office.
Mr. Robin Cook (Livingston): I thank my right hon. Friend for his generous words about me and offer my own warm congratulations to him. I am delighted that the role of regenerating our parliamentary democracy should fall to him, and I am confident that he will give it full priority and will be successful.
My right hon. Friend will find that one of the delights about this time on a Thursday is the volume of helpful but unsolicited advice that he will receive from Back Benchers. Now that I have the privilege of being a Back Bencher, may I offer him two suggestions on parliamentary business?
First, when I left his post, the majority of Departments that had a Bill for the next Session had given an undertaking to publish it in draft before the end of this Session. As there are only four weeks to go before the House rises for the summer, I suggest that my right hon. Friend give priority to reminding Departments that they need to fulfil that undertaking.
Secondly, the innovation, which we introduced, of having a 12-month calendar of parliamentary dates has, sadly, only four more months to run. I am well aware that there will be those around my right hon. Friend who will say that we have no idea of the date of prorogation. May I suggest that if he were to produce a calendar that took us up to and included the next Whit recess, with an asterisk noting that prorogation will be at an unknown date in November, the majority of Members would warmly welcome it and it would get him off to a good start with Members on both sides of the House?
Peter Hain: I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend. I am a long-standing admirer and friend of his, and I am privileged to follow in his footsteps in this job. He has made two important suggestions, and I have a great deal of sympathy with both. As Secretary of State for Wales, I have been responsible for seeing draft Wales Bills—a draft Audit Bill for Wales is currently going through pre-legislative scrutiny, which has been very effective—
Mr. Patrick McLoughlin (West Derbyshire): You are still responsible for it.
Peter Hain: Indeed, I am, and I will see it to its end and see it on to the statute book.
That precedent is a good one, and I shall encourage my fellow Secretaries of State in Cabinet to continue with it.
On the question of dates for recesses, my right hon. Friend made a valid point, and I understand the need that right hon. and hon. Members have for a clear calendar. That was one of my right hon. Friend's innovative procedures, and it was widely welcomed across the House. I hope to be in a position next week at least to say something about the Christmas recess dates.
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall): In congratulating you, Mr. Speaker, on behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends on the honour awarded to you by Glasgow university, I wonder whether you may want to dispel the nefarious rumour that you wish, outside the Chamber, to be referred to from now on as "Doc Martin".
The Leader of the House has given us further information on the Hunting Bill. Will he consider seriously what will happen after the Bill leaves this part of the building and goes to the other place? He will be aware, having fully briefed himself, that the House of Lords has a different procedure from ours for carry-over. If the Bill is not properly considered in this House—there are queries about whether it will be—and many amendments therefore have to be considered in the other place, the arrangements at the other end of the building are, according to the Clerks, that
- "bills that have received pre-legislative scrutiny in either House should, on a motion moved in the House in possession of the bill at the end of the session, be allowed to be carried-over into the next session"
- "We recommend that the House should now take this endorsement a stage further and agree to Group recommendation (b)"—
- "but only for Government bills and subject to the proviso on pre-legislative scrutiny in paragraph 6 above."
What does the Leader of the House intend to do in those circumstances? I have no doubt that he has had an opportunity of reading contributions to the debate in this House on carry-over on 10 June, including my own, and I hope that he will note that carry-over is still a matter for negotiation between the parties and is very much connected with the proposals of the Modernisation Committee, led by the previous Leader of the House, which were part of a trade-off to the effect that the Opposition parties should have a bigger role in deciding what comes to this House and in what order, and what business takes place here.
On a different point, the Leader of the House will have noted the decision on Friday when the Ministry of Defence lost an appeal on Gulf war illnesses having spent £1 million on legal fees, pursuing and harrying veterans—service personnel who served this country well in the first Gulf War—whose only fault was that they sought justice. This morning the Medical Research Council has reviewed the situation. There is still great
uncertainty, but what is certain is that those who have served the country well deserve better than the extraordinary behaviour of the Ministry of Defence. Given that there is a new Minister responsible for veterans' affairs, surely the Secretary of State himself should come to the House and explain what has happened.
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