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12.18 pm
The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Ann Taylor): I shall begin on a note with which I hope the whole House will agree. It is 25 years since Madam Speaker came to the House. Some of us were privileged to present her with a birthday cake this morning on behalf of the House, courtesy of my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. Turner) in his capacity as Chairman of the Catering Committee. I am sure that all hon. Members echo the congratulations that we offered to Madam Speaker.
We heard 13 Back-Bench speeches this morning and I have 12 minutes in which to respond to them. I shall be as thorough as I can, but if I miss some points, I shall write to hon. Members. I begin by echoing what has been said about the usefulness of a debate of this kind. To have three hours when Members can raise any subjects that they want is something that the House would wish to guard. I cannot speak for the members of the Modernisation Committee on all aspects of procedure, but I think that we want to preserve opportunities for Members to raise issues in this way.
My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes), who is a regular attender of these debates, raised a serious incident in his constituency, at Killamarsh. Obviously, my hon. Friend has not been able to return to the Chamber. He made important points and he asked me to pass his concerns to my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment, and I shall willingly do so. However, action has already been taken to follow up the incident to which my hon. Friend referred. The relevant authorities--the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Executive--are looking into the causes of the incident and trying to learn lessons from them.
The hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) is a regular attender on these occasions, as he was in the previous Parliament when he represented Basildon. The hon. Gentleman raised, as the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) said, four different issues. I shall not deal with them all in great detail, but there is one point, ministerial correspondence, that I wish to take up because the hon. Member for South Staffordshire did so from the Opposition Dispatch Box.
Members will know--I know that the hon. Member for South Staffordshire is well aware of this--that I have been taking up cases on behalf of individual Members. The hon. Gentleman may not have seen the parliamentary answer that I gave on Monday in which I stated that further to my comments in the House on several occasions, and in particular on 12 March, I had written to all my ministerial colleagues about the matter, asking them to take action where necessary. Sir Richard Wilson has written to all permanent secretaries asking them to make sure that replies are of high quality and timely.
It is not always possible for Ministers to sign every letter, as is wished by some Members. I hope that Departments that have had a vastly increased volume of correspondence will be able to take action to ensure that Members receive replies as quickly as possible.
I will not go into all the other points raised by the hon. Member for Southend, West, except to say that his boasting about rail privatisation contrasts with the usual questions that I receive at the Dispatch Box and the recent report on the failings of the rail service since privatisation. I know that those failings are of concern to many hon. Members.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) talked about the possible reorganisation of the police force. My hon. Friend knows that the Government are committed to maintaining an efficient and effective police service. Of course, we are always willing to consider suggestions for improvement. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will consider any representations that are made to him. I can tell my hon. Friend that at present, there are no plans for a merger along the lines that he is suggesting. I know that my hon. Friend may wish to pursue the matter in other ways.
I think that the hon. Member for South Staffordshire said that the right hon. Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Mr. Clark) was inimitable. I thought that the right hon. Gentleman was entertaining, as ever. He raised two separate points, one being that grades 1 and 2 listed buildings have been deemed to be at risk and, therefore, have been named so that attention can be brought to that fact. There is nothing wrong with making it clear that there are problems in that area. The Government hope that the register that has been published will alert people to the importance of historic buildings.
I know that the right hon. Gentleman does not approve of naming and shaming, but I thought that he took the view that all publicity was good publicity. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman recognises that there is a real problem with these buildings and that more needs to be done to help them. The right hon. Gentleman said that he did not want any financial assistance. However, he then detailed two ways in which he wanted my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give financial assistance for these projects.
Mr. Alan Clark:
Not direct grants.
Mrs. Taylor:
Not direct grants, but it would be direct financial assistance.
I reject what the right hon. Gentleman said about the Government not being willing to respect our heritage. We have welcomed the list to which I referred because of our respect for our heritage. We need to look to the future and to respect what is good in the past. That applies to changing the House of Commons or respecting buildings.
I take up the important question raised by the right hon. Gentleman about a leak. If there has been a leak along the lines that he outlined and an official has given information to the press in that way--
Mrs. Taylor:
If false information or, indeed, any information has been given to the press in that way, the matter will have to be examined. I shall ensure that the relevant Minister is informed of that problem.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) raised the issue of magistrates courts in Derbyshire and the hon. Member for South Staffordshire mentioned his interest in the matter. There has been a
great deal of discussion and I think that the Derbyshire magistrates courts committee has sought to keep local people informed. At present, there are no plans to change the structure for consultation. However, if people have ideas, they can be passed to Ministers as well.
The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) said that the Labour Government had made no difference, but he then gave us support for some of the changes we have made, which he said were wholly beneficial. We welcome the usual Liberal Democrat approach to these issues. We have made significant progress in terms of our commitment to developing on brown-field rather than green-field sites. We are spending more than the Liberal Democrats asked for on education. I shall say more about agriculture when I respond to the comments of the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler).
The hon. Member for North Cornwall said that the strong pound seemed to be the cause of most of the problems in north Cornwall. It is not the case that the Government have not provided help for agriculture; last year, we provided £1.8 billion of support. The hon. Gentleman mentioned that we could have had another £1,000 million from the European Union. He failed to remind us, although he made incidental mention of the fact, that that would have cost the British taxpayer a great deal. The British taxpayer pays 71 per cent. of money that is made available in that way.
I found the comments of the hon. Member for North Cornwall on the pound especially interesting. If he looks back to what his party leader said when the previous Government left the exchange rate mechanism, hewill find that the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) said:
My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) made an interesting speech about children in care and their long-term needs. I think that there would be a great deal of support and admiration for his suggestion about bringing people together at local level to ensure proper co-ordination. These issues, especially the transition to independence, are important. I wish my hon. Friend well with this project. Other Members may wish to follow his example.
My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) mentioned a constituency interest with wider implications--the fiscal regime affecting the offshore oil and gas industries. My hon. Friend said that he was not a tax expert, but at times, he sounded like one and I commend him on that. He asked the Treasury to take a wider view, but he acknowledged that it was not a simple issue. I shall ensure that his remarks are passed to my ministerial colleagues. There will be proper consultation before any detailed plans are finalised.
The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), to whom I always listen with great pleasure, raised the question of referendums. It is a little ironic that he is criticising referendums on the day when the leader of his party is, rightly, in Northern Ireland campaigning for a yes vote. He asked whether referendums were a legitimate or valid process. I am afraid that he will simply have to live with the fact that the House has approved legislation that he does not like, and he will have to live with the consequences.
"Freedom to devalue is the freedom to suffer inflation, to have lower growth, to decline while others prosper and to boom and bust, just as we have done for the past 40 years."--[Official Report, 24 September 1992; Vol. 212, c. 33.]
It is precisely because we want stability and not a return to that sort of economics that we are making sensible decisions. For the Liberal Democrats now to be the party of devaluation contradicts what the right hon. Member for Yeovil was saying earlier.
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