I wish to call attention to business and industry; and I beg to move,

That this House congratulates the Government on its Budget for business and industry, but reminds it that, if large and small firms are to prosper, create jobs, keep a clean environment and export, then each department of state must apply itself constantly to the needs of business and industry.

I was delighted to win the ballot for the debate. It is traditional in the Conservative party, and perhaps in the Labour party, that the Member whose name is drawn first out of the ballot should say, "No, please put it back; draw it again." I did not have that option; nor would I have wanted it. I thank the Whips for encouraging us all to sign the ballot books as frequently as possible.

I have had support from all sorts of people in the Mid-Yorkshire chamber of commerce, Kirklees council, Bradford airport support group, the CBI, the Food and Drink Federation, various schools, the Institute of Directors, all sorts of textile associations, private firms, banks and many more. It is always necessary to draw the attention of the Government to business and industry, because it is from business that all else flows. There is no doubt that our taxes—taxes on business and taxes on people's earnings and spending—should be as fairly distributed as possible and properly spent, but when there is no manufacturing and no trade, there can be no income, no inheritance and no future.

The Government are no different from other enterprise—whether a single entity, a farm, a small family business, a large business or a multinational business. All must keep control of their money; all must budget wisely. My right hon. and learned Friend's Budget has been almost universally judged by the communities interested in this debate as wise and fair.

The next sentence of my motion—at least, I imagine that it is a sentence because it starts with a capital letter—implores all Departments to bear in mind every day that trade, business and industry matter. It is obvious that Departments have to balance other needs and that is, no doubt, sometimes difficult. Health, education, social security, defence and the rest are all integrated. However, we shall have a stronger health service, more money for education, less to pay on social security, and more adaptable and better defence if our industries are strong and prospering.

It is a curious fact—this fact may not be relevant only to the United Kingdom—that the responsibilities that one would imagine rested entirely with the Department of Trade and Industry are spread out among the DTI and many other Departments. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food looks after the food and drink industry; the Department of the Environment looks after the construction industry; the Department of Health deals with pharmaceuticals; the Treasury tries to deal with the City; the Department of National Heritage has the tourism industry in its remit; the Foreign and Commonwealth Office attempts to look after much of our trade overseas.

I hope to touch on each aspect of the motion. I am glad to see here my hon. Friends the Under-Secretary of State for Technology and the Comptroller of Her Majesty's Household, who are both men of business and who have both worked. I am glad to see on the Opposition Benches the hon. Members for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) and for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), two colleagues from West Yorkshire who understand business and manufacturing industry, and their importance.

It is important that Members of Parliament have worked. A Tory grandee, a former Minister, visited Hebden Bridge one Friday. When he was asked what he had done besides being a Member of Parliament, he said, "I was Monty's aide-de-camp in the war. I went into advertising and then I went into Parliament." My friend said, "Oh, you have never worked then." People who have worked have a different attitude, and this debate is about work.

My own background is in three industries. I was a farmer in the 1950s, and a wholesale and retail butcher in the 1960s. From that grew a glass fibre manufacturing business, fabricating liners for the backs of vans and estate cars so that they could carry food cleanly. From that, the business moved into manufacturing bits for the building industry, for the caravan industry and for others.

My mother started work at the age of 12 in textiles in Liversedge and my father, who was a farmer, probably started work before he was 12 years old. My friends, whom I am lucky enough to see every weekend and with whom I was at school, are from every industry: textiles, dyeing, valve manufacturing, insurance, electronics, metal spinning, transport and banking.

My interests are declared in the Register of Members' Interests. As I said, I was a butcher, and I represent butchers and catering manufacturers. As I said, I made glass fibre bits for the caravan industry and I do some work for that industry. I was a farmer and I do some work for the British Agricultural and Garden Machinery Association. There are companies, large and small, in engineering in my part of the world. All of them depend on the mining industry and on the nuclear industry. From time to time, I advise a cross-party team on nuclear matters through the Nuclear Forum. Naomi Arnold is an old pal of mine and I help her in her consultancy. It is perfectly right and proper that Members of Parliament should declare their interests. I am delighted that we have a Select Committee on Members' Interests which makes it easier for Members of Parliament to take up various interests and to broaden the base of knowledge in the House.

My speech is in three parts. The first deals with Calder Valley and Calderdale, and with its business and industrial base. The second part deals with the wider national scene and, if I have time, the third will deal with the international scene.

Calder Valley lies in West Yorkshire, with its boundary hard against Lancashire. To set the scene, unemployment in my constituency is, thankfully, at 6·7 per cent.—6 per cent. too much—and in Halifax, unemployment is at 9·7 per cent. By comparison, the figure for Belgium is 9·7 per cent., for Denmark it is 10·6 per cent., for France it is 11 per cent., for Ireland it is 18 per cent., for Italy it is 11 per cent. and for Spain it is 21 per cent. The United Kingdom national average is 10·3 per cent. and the EC average is 10·6 per cent.

However, a job is a job and being a statistic is not nice if one does not have a job—the more people in work, the better. I feel distress for all who look for work and who find none. The fact that the unemployment figure is falling month by month proves to me that my constituents and others are actively looking for work and want work. The more work that can be provided, the better it will be.

The strength of Calder Valley is its historical diversity. There are textiles, wool, cotton, clothes manufacturing, engineering, foundries, metal benders, wire drawers, valve manufactures, fabricators, machine tools, clay pipes, furniture, carpets and trousers. We are fortunate to have such diversity.

Parts of South Yorkshire rely solely on mining, and the withdrawal of that industry has been devastating. It is difficult to overestimate the effect on a one-company town when that company is closed or that industry is withdrawn. No amount of aid rapidly repairs such a wrench, so I am doubly grateful for the diversity and adaptability of the people who work in my constituency and in West Yorkshire, and of its entrepreneurs.

The development agency that covers the rural part of my constituency tells me that it is amazed by the many different ideas that emerge from my part of the world. I am delighted that the development agency is to stay with my constituents. It does a remarkably good job on a very tight budget.

It is impossible to count the number of firms in my patch. They range from large multinationals to four-person firms. There are long-established family businesses, with grandfathers, sons and grandsons working in the firm; One example of that is Cinderhill Spinners in Todmorden. There are brand-new enterprises. All those firms are set in valleys that are made beautiful and kept beautiful by farmers.

The area increasingly attracts visitors who are catered for by a growing tourist industry. We are not an assisted area, although the development agency's writ runs in part. As one can imagine, in an area that was formerly highly industrialised—and still is—derelict land grants play a significant part. The EC periphery scheme is putting money back into Todmorden.

The tourism industry has benefited from improvements to the environment through various job creation schemes. When the schemes were envisaged as long as 10 years ago, they were pooh-poohed and sniffed at, but they have proved to be valuable in strengthening the environment, especially around the canals.

The use of the derelict land grant, which has just been sanctioned to be used on canals, will remove the last blockage in the Leeds-Rochdale canal at Sowerby Bridge. That will be boon to many people. With the help of Prince Charles, Business in the Community has led to amazing initiatives. A recent study called "Calderdale Inheritance Decade" celebrates those 10 successful years of activity. It is also celebrating the Calder Valley being put back on the map.

The local project has worked hard to motivate and initiative reinvestment and regeneration into our businesses. By reviving our heritage, it has provided a model of economic success for others to follow in both national and European programmes. That comes from the document "Calderdale Inheritance Decade", which was paid for by the DTI and is written by people from outside the area. In it, we are reminded of efforts combined with the Business in the Community initiative.

When the project was launched in 1984, it was a unique exmple of urban and economic regeneration. Nine years on, we are still proud to be supported by the Civic Trust, the Council of Europe and Prince Charles, all of whom have visited Calderdale and have had an active part in our environment. I am lucky enough to serve as a member of the Council of Europe and the Western European Union.

The Calderdale Inheritance started with the plan of enhancing the remarkable buildings of our towns to stimulate business interest. The approach has been unique by involving local business people and their ideas while promoting enterprise and the projects of Calderdale on a national level. We have had marvellous results and have attracted all sorts of businesses, new and old, which have chosen our valley in which to settle.

Through regeneration, large manufacturing businesses such as Hoechst, Volex, Warmans and Readicut International all feel safe to stay in our valley. They were not the only ones giving us a vote of confidence. Other businesses, ranging from the huge and significant Halifax building society to Eureka!—an experience for children which has been an immense success, and which was stimulated and financed by Vivienne Duffield—have also put Calderdale on the map, way ahead of much of its opposition.

In all, some £10 million has been raised and used to help business people and workers in our valley. Almost £3 million of that has been used in Brighouse, Ripponden, Elland and Sowerby Bridge. There is now a "Build a Better Brighouse" campaign. It is run by local people enthusiastically. It sounds amusing from here, but the people of Brighouse and the industries care. They want to live there. Whether one lives in Tower Hamlets or Brighouse, one should be able to do what one can to enhance the neighbourhood, and the Member of Parliament should occasionally—if he is lucky in the ballot—be able to crow about it. On behalf of Todmorden, in which £650,000 has gone in for improvement schemes, and Hebden Bridge with £460,000, I am doing a bit of crowing.

The initiative has been an outstanding success. It is a pity in some ways that the latest document has not been more whole-heartedly embraced by all sides of Calderdale council. I know that the DTI wanted—and still may want—to run a special seminar on the importance of the initiative in Calderdale. It has national and international significance. It can be copied in all sorts of areas—Wakefield and elsewhere—to strengthen the community.

Having said that, there are two spectres, both controversial, looming on the horizons of Calder Valley: opencast mining and wind farms. With the Clean Air Act 1956, which was one of the best bits of legislation to clean up the north of England that was ever introduced, and small-bore central heating, the whole of the industrial north was transformed. The smoke had gone from the streets and the hills, and houses of all sizes could be kept snug and warm for the first time.

There were no more cold bedrooms and no need to slide one's feet gently down the sheets at this time of the year, hoping that they would not be too cold. Small-bore central heating removed all that. The subsequent appreciation by more and more people of the industrial landscape and the reutilisation of former "dark Satanic mills" has led to a regeneration of our hills and valleys.

The friendly charm of once hard towns such as Hebden Bridge and Brighouse has lead to a growing self reliance and an increasing tourist industry. All that is now threatened by what can only be seen as no longer acceptable industrial scars. If one could have a modern anachronism, that is what an opencast mine on a moorland, or wind farms in the Pennines would be. The tearing up of moorland for opencast mining and the implementation of giant wind farms, both of which are unwanted in a fragile setting, is unjustifiable in the minds of many of my constituents.

Wind farms are not only a Yorkshire problem. I have chosen the Western Mail, as the Welsh are further down that windy road than we are. In it, a Welshman man called Mario Basini [Laughter.]—there is always a little Celtic chip—writes:

'The Department of Trade and Industry estimates that eventually wind power could provide up to 10 per cent. of our electricity needs. To achieve that, Britain would need no less than 38,000 of these spare, space-age windmills, dotting 4,000 square kilometres of land or 1·7 per cent. of our already overcrowded land space."

He adds:

"Since Wales and Scotland have both the wind and empty high spaces needed to exploit it, many of the turbines will have to be located about there. Once again, many will argue Britain's Celtic Fringe will have to shoulder the disproportionate burden of supplying Britain's energy needs."

The Western Mail might not know that Yorkshire has always supplied a great deal of Britain's energy needs and still does, and does not want to share its wind farms with it. Mr. Basini says:

"Confronted with the prospect of these skeletal towers mushrooming all over our countryside, supporters will shrug and say, 'so what?'.

After all, this is an energy free from the poisonous pollutants of fossils. Its turbines are, friends argue, comparatively noise free—although there are many living close to the farms who fiercely contest that. Some claim to find these skeletal towers as pleasing modern sculpture.

Nothing better illustrates the truth of that old cliche, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.

I must admit that for me, confronting these monsters lining a hitherto unspoilt mountain ridge has much more to do with pain than pleasure.

They fit as naturally into the landscape as John Wyndham's Triffids."

I agree. I look out of the window of my golf club on to an ex-opencast site which has been beautifully restored—on grazing land rather than moorland. It is no use spending 10 years regenerating Calder Valley and the north and bringing in business from all over the world with the help of Prince Charles and the rest only to reimpose industrial dereliction.

Two other industries run a similar risk of vandalism. All industrial complexes and conurbations need to be able to dispose readily of waste food. Mink farming used to provide my constituency such a system: 20 per cent. of all farmed mink came from my constituency. Now much of the industry has been driven abroad to countries where it is not only welcome but receives industrial and EC state aid.

The second industry is the manufacture of sporting clothes, which is under direct and illegal threat from an uncaring minority. Caldene clothing—an old established-firm—and Elizabeth Greenwood's more recently established company export their riding gear worldwide. In recent times, those companies and their employees' jobs have been undermined by vicious groups whose clear agenda it is to attack the country sports, country living, equestrian sports, fishing and eventually even pet keeping. That phenomenon is threatening my constituency and my constituents. Compassion and a clean environment are to be secured by green policies, but it is as well to remember that green can be a chemical or a dyestuff and that, in either case, it must be applied wisely.

This summer, I visited innumerable businesses in my constituency. Their questions to me were not about exports or manning levels but about crime and break-ins. The enemy of business is crime, both nationally and internationally, and we were all glad when the Home Secretary announced tht he would take tougher action against crooks. I hope that we shall do as well with City crooks and City fraudsters, because no one wants to work hard all his life for a pension and then be swindled out of it. To make working people unsure of what is happening to their pension fund and thus their future is a cruel thing to do.

Despite the downside, my manufacturing companies are ready to do battle in Europe and the rest of the world. There are a couple of sore spots in that regard, too. It seems that—as usual, some would say—we are depriving our businesses of legitimate trading opportunities. For example, a firm in my constituency that attended the November defence exhibition in Hungary found the French selling protective equipment to their hosts, which they are not allowed to do. That company would like at least to be able to open a marketing dialogue with such countries. I suppose that that is another example of things not being the DTI's problem: it is probably a problem for the Ministry of Defence. The fact remains, however, that my company's market is restricted, while its competitors can sell all over the world. There may be reasons for that, but I see very few.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that other member countries of the European Community have numerous hidden advantages? For example, British textile companies going abroad to exhibitions usually have to pay all the costs of attending and promoting their products. In Germany, on the other hand, the Lander—the regional governments—pay 100 per cent. of the costs incurred by German textile firms visiting exhibitions all over the world. The Government need to intervene positively to prevent other Common Market countries from exercising such considerable advantages.

I knew that the hon. Gentleman would be here this morning, because he is interested in small business—indeed, he was once the Minister responsible for it. I also knew that he would mention textiles, although I am glad that he did not mention GATT, because I am coming to that.

I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman said about the way in which we choose to fund the companies that go abroad to textile and high-tech exhibitions. A certain amount of rigidity has been creeeping into the selection of such companies and I have written to my hon. Friend the Minister and my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade on a number of occasions about firms that have been bitterly disappointed that they have not been able to go to textile and engineering exhibitions.

There is a need, especially in the new Europe, for a constant dialogue between Whitehall—

Order. I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) is staying or going. He must either sit down or go out.

It is not just one Department—

I beg to move, That strangers do withdraw.

May I make a point? The hon. Gentleman was standing near his place for a long time. I did not intervene until it was not at all clear whether he was coming or going. I am referring to the period before he moved That strangers do withdraw.

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In view of the abysmal failure of the Tory Administration to organise themselves properly and to keep a quorum in the House, have you had any notification that the Prime Minister or a Minister will come to the House and give an explanation of how incompetent the Government are? In view of their failure to maintain their position in Parliament, there is a question whether they continue in Government.

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Tory Government have failed to mobilise and organise within the House on a Friday morning, the day after they introduced a guillotine on two important Bills to be debated next week. It is disgraceful that they have gone away for their holidays, only to come back next week to guillotine two important Bills, which will cost people outside millions of pounds. The Tory Government should now resign.

Order. Those are not matters for the Chair. I shall explain what the position now is in the light of the voting.

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I do not expect to be interrupted while I am on my feet.

As fewer than 40 Members have taken part in the Division, the matter is not decided and strangers remain. However, the rule of the House is that the business under discussion cannot continue. We therefore move to the next motion.

I beg to move:

That this House calls on the Procedure Committee to bring forward proposals so that in future years the House would no longer vote for or against the Budget, but would instead choose between alternative budgets put forward by both the Government and the Official Opposition, with the winning Budget proposals then going forward for consideration in Committee; that the Treasury would give full cooperation to the Opposition in the preparation of its Budget, and that in the event of the Official Opposition failing to take up this opportunity, it would fall to the third largest party to present the alternative Budget.

I have not prepared a long speech. The circumstances in which I have been called to address the House are extraordinary. I am in an almost unique position. A controversial motion—which could have been debated for not only one day, but two or three days—was tabled by a member of the governing party, with which I have had many disagreements. We now find that there are not enough Members of the governing party in the House, that that motion has fallen and that we move on to the motion standing in my name. I should be quite happy if, at some time today, the Prime Minister or a senior Minister arrived to announce the dissolution of Parliament and a general election, given the Government's failure to control the procedures of the House and to deliver their policies and prepared business.

I now offer the prospect of an interesting debate. Given the similarity between my motion and that tabled by the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Sir D. Thompson), I am sure that many hon. Members with speeches prepared for the first motion will find that most of them are in order on my motion. My motion is, after all, concerned with the Budget and the confidence that it engenders in industry and commerce.

I must inform the House that my motion does not reflect official Labour party policy. I feel strongly about the issue, but it is not formal policy that the rules of the House should be changed as I have suggested. Every year when we debate the Budget we find ourselves in a ridiculous position. There is always a major confrontation between the parties about the Government's taxation proposals, but confrontation is hardly adequate. In the aftermath of this year's disgraceful Budget, in which massive public spending cuts were made, the Opposition parties were merely able to oppose such cuts.

If the parties that seek to govern Britain genuinely believe that they are ready to take command of government for five years, they should be able to put forward genuine alternative proposals to the Budget. The British people would then witness not simply a debate in which the governing party of the day had its proposals attacked as inadequate, but one in which competing sets of proposals could be judged against one another. It would be a useful discipline for the official Opposition not simply to oppose the Government of the day, but to outline what they would do from day one, if elected.

I note that under my hon. Friend's motion the Government would be required to provide assistance to enable the Opposition to prepare their alternative Budget. That would be a great help to the Labour party, because it would be able to discover the extent of the maladministration and the enormity of the debt. We should be able to look at the books before we had the opportunity to form the Government at the next general election. That assistance would also lead to greater openness—the Government have not achieved that, despite their many claims—and that would benefit the community.

I am delighted with that intervention. One of the problems that the Opposition face is that most of the detailed financial information available to the Government remains confidential to them. The advice given by senior civil servants in the Treasury is not revealed to Parliament, except in those brief exchanges at sittings of the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee, when it is possible to prise a few nuggets of information out of them. It would be of great benefit to the Government of the day and the Opposition if we were able to have more informed debate about the nation's finances.

If the Opposition were to have access to senior Treasury officials, we would know the true state of the nation's finances. That would mean that a Government in waiting would not make promises that could not be kept and repeat the mistakes that have sometimes been made. In 1964, for example, the incoming Labour Government knew that the financial position was bad, but, once in office, they found that it was infinitely worse than predicted.

Lord Callaghan says in his autobiography that on his first day as Chancellor of the Exchequer he was sitting at the desk in No. 11, surrounded by officials, when the outgoing Chancellor, the late Reginald Maudling, popped his head round the door and said, "Sorry to leave it in such a mess, old cock." He then sloped off. Governments have a tremendous interest in suppressing damaging facts about their stewardship of the economy. That is wrong and such practices should end.

The debate about each year's Budget and the projections for the year ahead, which lay the foundations for either recovery or recession, should be available to the alternative Government so that they can construct the details of their Budget.

Most of what is produced in the Budget passes without great public attention or even attention in this House. Most of the debate focuses on VAT, income tax and the projected total public spending. An array of subsidiary detail which is not controversial is provided, however, and there would be no problem in Treasury officials making it known to the official Opposition so that they could prepare a proper alterntative Budget.

Under my arrangements, I envisage that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would, as usual, address the House for several hours to explain the Budget. A debate would follow and then the House would adjourn. On the next day, the Leader of the Opposition or the shadow Chancellor would spend a similar amount of time putting forward the Opposition's proposals, based on the same range of detailed documents that the Government had provided to the Vote Office.

rose—

I am happy to give way to my hon. Friend because he helped to make it possible for me to make this speech.

I did not realise what my hon. Friend's motion was about and there is no doubt that its content is different, unlike the motion tabled by the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Sir D. Thompson). My hon. Friend has offered some new ideas about the presentation of the Budget, but he had better be careful about what day he chooses for its presentation. If that day happened to be a Friday, the Government might not be here to carry their Budget through. He must pick his day carefully.

My hon. Friend has made a cruel and unkind point. I do not want to rub salt into open wounds.

As part of the new consultative process, does my hon. Friend agree that proper soundings should be made throughout the regions of England and in Scotland and Wales? The Budget offers no benefit to Wales. If a new devolved structure of government is established, and given the new Budget procedures that my hon. Friend envisages, perhaps consultations could be held with the Welsh Parliament to ensure that the Budget genuinely reflected the views of all Britain rather than those of the narrow Whitehall clique. That clique governs the momentum and the ideas of the current Budget procedures which we are now seeking to overturn.

I am in complete agreement with my hon. Friend. It is absolute nonsense for secrecy to surround the whole Budget process.

My motion focuses narrowly on the presentation of the Budget before Parliament. If my motion is agreed—there may be a vote on it and it could be passed unanimously—and the Procedure Committee studies it in detail, I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr. Hain) will convey his remarks to it. Instead of the great secrecy that surrounds the Budget, a consultation paper should be issued two or three months before it is formally presented. It could set out the parameters of the Budget, the broad financial position, the various options and demands on spending and the range of available tax options. We should then be able to conduct a proper national debate in regional parliaments, which I hope will be established before the century is out, local authorities, chambers of commerce and trade unions. People could then debate the Budget options and give advice to the Government. Given current sophisticated polling techniques, the Government could then gauge public opinion of certain Budget proposals.

Would it not be far better to conduct an open debate, as my hon. Friend has suggested, rather than give private dinners at No. 10, hosted by the Prime Minister? Those dinners are attended by people who give funds to the Conservative party and they influence decisions, most importantly, about the Budget. No doubt the brewers were present at such a dinner and exercised their influence, because there was no increase in the excise duty on beer. Similar influence must have been exerted by the tobacco industry, because, although the duty on tobacco has increased, there is continuing opposition within the Government to a ban on tobacco advertising. There is no doubt that such secret interventions and influences on the processes of government under the Conservative Administration, whom many regard as political corruption, would be kept at bay if we had a completely open debate about Budget priorities, as suggested by my hon. Friend.

That is exactly right. Part of the British tradition of secrecy and elitism means that a handful of people at the top of the Treasury and the most senior members of the Government know what is going on. We should be honest, however, and accept that most members of the Cabinet are no more than spectators of the process. They are told on the morning of the Budget what it contains, when it is far too late to make any serious changes. I suspect that it is too late for any change simply because all the documents have already been printed and collated, ready to be handed out at the Vote Office as soon as the Chancellor has sat down. It is absolute nonsense.

This is not, therefore, a question simply of the members of a wicked Tory Cabinet carving it up among themselves. It comes down to the Chancellor, the Prime Minister, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and a handful of unelected Treasury officials, often drawn from a narrow public school, Oxford and Cambridge elite. That is utterly unacceptable at the tail end of the 20th century, when most countries in Europe have been functioning democracies for a very long time.

While my hon. Friend is discussing the subject of secrecy of the intervention and influence of Treasury officials—who are almost entirely drawn from the Oxbridge category, public school educated and not sympathetic to the Labour party or to progressive ideas generally—will he dwell a little on the subject of the influence of the Common Market institutions on the preparation of the Budget, in which they also, not openly but clandestinely, bring pressure to bear on Governments to follow specific economic policies?

My hon. Friend is right that the advice and pressures applied to Government should he open. The country has been scandalised by the thought of the Prime Minister of the day sitting at a private dinner in No. 10 Downing street with foreign business men, many of whom are now known to be crooks, discussing what tax breaks they would like and then getting them into the Budget.

Mrs. Jones who lives next door to me would like to have a couple of hours with the Prime Minister over a tasty dinner and see what can be done to improve the quality of her life by bumping up her pension, but the Mrs Joneses get no say, whereas international criminals descend from Hong Kong and from Cyprus, in the run-up to the Budget, to bend the ear of the Chancellor and of the Prime Minister—and then there are nice fat cheques for Tory party coffers. That is a disgrace. I am sure that it is all perfectly legal, but I hope that an incoming Labour Government will introduce retrospective legislation so that those people can all be sent to prison, including the Ministers who are involved.

I am in favour of the consultation process, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr. Hain), with the—one hopes, elected—representatives of the regions. Does my hon. Friend agree with the process that we would institute by his new procedures, in the sense that the average person in the street could be consulted? There would be a range of proposals and, as in the case of the Sunday Trading Bill, for example, people could write in and put pressure on Conservative Members, who at the moment simply troop through the Lobbies, cut everyone's pension and increase national insurance contributions and so on and effectively increase tax rates to the highest that we have ever had. The public could plead with the Whips to abide by their voters' wishes and then go for our alternative proposals, which would reverse those decisions.

When listening to my hon. Friend, I was reminded of the Budget process in Grenada, when that country had a progresssive Government before it was brutally overthrown by American troops. Each year the Budget in Grenada was published in detail; there was a period of consultation; the whole community came together. It is much easier to do that in Grenada, where there are just a few tens of thousands of people—a couple of hundred thousand at most—compared with this country. It would be much more difficult in a nation of 56 million, but a party that has been able to govern for 14 years must surely have ideas about setting up structures for the consultation of the British people.

I hope that when we get a change of Government the climate of respect for community and commitment to community and community institutions will lead to a flourishing of representative organisations throughout the country: neighbourhood councils, a strengthening of trade unions, an increased attendance at the meetings of residents' associations and chambers of commerce. I see no reason why Government should not be widespread and open in their consultation.

When I was leader of the Greater London council—that brief, shining five years, the apex of human civilisation, government and wisdom—we were able to institute a procedure by which we did consult; and it was not just with the wicked old trade unions. The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry would come in to see me and the chair of finance would sit down and say, "We have a problem at the moment: could you cut the budget by another 2·5 per cent; bring the rate down?" and we were able to accommodate that. When the members of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry were consulted by the right hon. Member for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker), who was then in his incarnation as destroyer of London democracy, he was amazed to discover that the chamber had had a better deal out of the Labour-controlled GLC, in being listened to and helped by the financial policies of the council, than they had ever had from previous administrations under Sir Horace Cutler and Lord Plummer.

As my hon. Friend has alternative Budgets in his motion, I wonder if he would dwell a little on the alternative system of taxation, because the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he delivered his long, somewhat monotonous and boring speech recently on the Budget, expatiated at length of the virtue of value added tax as opposed to direct income tax.

If Labour Members were proposing an alternative Budget in the way in which my hon. Friend's motion suggests, we would want to emphasise the fairness of direct taxation, which is linked to people's ability to pay, and the unfairness of value added tax, which oppresses the poor because it takes a much greater proportion of their income than of that of the person who is extremely, or relatively, well off. My hon. Friend should emphasise that, to show what radically different views we have about the means of raising taxation.

I am coming to that argument.

I have talked about the general procedures. I want to try to sketch out what would perhaps have happened if we had had that situation in operation this week. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) says, there are clear ideological difficulties in the House about the approach to taxation.

Sadly, the British media—most of whom are in the pockets of the present Government and collaborate in perpetrating the big lie—have gone on, year after year, depicting the Conservative party as a party of low taxation. In fact, we experienced, immediately after the former Prime Minister Lady Thatcher came to power, several years of real increases in taxation which hurt not just working-class families but middle-class families. There was a brief period when taxes were reduced a smidgeon as the oil revenues flowed in, but now once again we are committed to substantial real increases in taxation, which will mean that under the present Government we are being more severely taxed than under the last Labour Government.

They are different taxes, however. We do not get the cries of pain from the Tory press when this Government are banging up taxes that we had when Labour Governments did that, because the basis of the taxation is different. It is called low visibility taxation because, instead of putting up people's income tax honestly and fairly, which means that people who earn the most donate the most—people who have done the best make the greatest contribution—there has been a shift to just putting taxes on consumption. The way in which that works is pernicious.

Let us consider the way in which value added tax will be applied to heating fuel. The poorest 10 per cent. of people in Britain spend nearly 10 per cent. of their income on heating. The addition of VAT will mean a substantial increase in spending for them. The richest 10 per cent., with much larger homes but who are much more careless about the way in which they heat their homes, spend only £13 of their income—a ratio of 10:13. Yet the incomes of the top 10 per cent. are in some cases hundreds of times greater than those of people in the bottom 10 per cent. It is an unfair and regressive form of taxation which penalises the poor.

The aspect of that which I find most depressing is that we are now in a position which is worse than that which prevailed in Victorian times. We have got back to Victorian values—the values that produce great inequalities of wealth. The inequalities of wealth in Britain today between the richest and the poorest have grown so dramatically that they are worse than they were more than 100 years ago. As a result of the increasing use of VAT and the increasing reductions in taxation of high earners, the situation seems set to worsen year by year.

There is a moral case to be made for saying that that is unfair, but there is also an economic case for saying that it is damaging. If we examine the works of most modern economists, we find that the greater the inequalities of wealth in a nation, the more one accentuates the business cycle—the boom and bust cycle. When one is in a turndown in the economy and people start to cut back, the people at the top of society, the richest, can make dramatic and immediate reductions in their spending, whereas the people at the bottom cannot.

The more we widen the inequalities of wealth, the more we accentuate the shift into recession. If we had narrowed differentials, people at the bottom of society would have continued to spend in a recession because they spend on the basic essentials.

Let us consider what could have happened. Let us suppose that we had increased the top rate of tax and reversed the Lawson tax proposals of 1988. Suppose we had returned to a top rate of tax of effectively 60 per cent. which is what prevailed for a decade under Mrs. Thatcher's regime as Prime Minister—that could hardly have been a socialist measure. If we had returned to the tax regime as it was prior to 1988, we would have released between £5 billion and £7 billion in extra taxes on the rich. If we had transferred all that to pensioners, they would have seen a dramatic real increase in the quality of their lives and the money at their disposal.

Pensioners would have gone out and spent that money. They would have warmed their homes a little more. They would have bought themselves better food and some new clothes. Increasingly, the poor spend their money on British-produced goods and that creates more work. However, people affected by tax increases at the top rate often spend their money on highly expensive and high-tech imported goods which we no longer produce or perhaps never produced in this country. If we were to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, that would help to lift the nation out or recession. There is an underlying economic argument which the Government should have taken on board if they wanted to strengthen our move out of recession.

My hon. Friend has made a very important point about the distribution of income and the business cycle. Now that he is blessed by the presence of a Treasury Minister, he may want to reinforce that point by considering the difference between the business cycle in the United Kingdom and business cycles elsewhere in western Europe. The business cycle is much sharper in this country, which illustrates my hon. Friend's point about the wider distribution of income and the greater inequalities in the United Kingdom as opposed to other western European countries. That has a damaging impact on Britain's manufacturing industry and on the ability of our managers to manage and to plan ahead.

My hon. Friend has made a very valuable point. Modern European economies have done so much better than the United Kingdom in recent years because their economic cycles are managed by their Governments. Their Governments intervene to smooth the cycles to assist. However, we have the lunatic classical old economics which are regurgitated in a modern form. We stand back and let the cycle run its course.

The economic history of the past 150 years from the point of view of unemployment figures contains some striking differences. A graph depicting the level of unemployment prior to the start of the second world war would show that unemployment fluctuated up to 10 per cent. and then came down within four or five years. That was a sharp and rapid business cycle. However, that sharp cycle was smoothed out by the Keynesian economics which predominated from 1945 to the mid-1970s. Instead of violent oscillations in the business cycle, we saw the most sustained and successful period of growth in the global economy while most western nations were committed to Keynesianism.

That is the kind of debate that we could enjoy if rival Budgets were presented based on different economic priorities and different attitudes towards Government intervention in the economy and the balance between the public and the private sector. Such issues could be debated seriously and that would engage the British public.

Let me consider now what would have happened if my system had been in operation this year. The Chancellor would—as he did—have presented his Budget. His presentation last month might have been quite different if he had known that an alternative was to be produced the next day which would have been judged against the Chancellor's Budget. I am not alone in suspecting that the Chancellor's Budget was geared very much towards winning the next election—and I do not for a moment mean the general election: I mean the next Tory leadership election.

On Budget day, I arrived too late to obtain a seat on the rather crowded Labour Benches and I had to sit in the overspill Gallery. For the first time in my life, I listened to the Chancellor's Budget surrounded predominantly by Conservative Members. It is not unfair to say that they were almost sub-orgasmic with joy and ecstasy as the Chancellor rolled out those right-wing platitudes. He did it quite casually, with little of intellectual substance to sustain them. Conservative Members were bouncing up and down, and I suddenly thought that the Chancellor was attempting to pander to them. He was attempting to pander to the people who had helped to bankrupt Britain and who had led us into this disastrous economic position.

The Chancellor is supposed to be something of a liberal—if that is not a contradiction in terms for any Conservative Member these days. However, he pandered to the worst, most ignorant and backward instincts of the Conservative party. I am not sure whether the Chancellor would have attempted such a shallow performance if he had known that it would be judged the next day against the performance of the Leader of the Opposition or the shadow Chancellor.

The alternative Budget would have been presented the day after the Chancellor's Budget. That would have provided a stark contrast and would have been a benefit to the Labour party. The British people would have been able to see the alternative.

I want now to consider briefly what that alternative Budget would have contained. I have no doubt that it would have contained serious proposals to deal with the crisis facing Britain in terms of military spending. Virtually all economic commentators point out that we are spending twice the proportion of our gross domestic product on the military than the average European nation. That builds in an economic disincentive because military spending is not as dynamic in terms of its economic impact as other forms of public spending. Military spending produces only one quarter of the jobs that other forms of public spending produce.

A nation that is disproportionately spending on its military creates fewer jobs, and it is jobs which help to fuel economic recovery. A Labour party which knew that it had to present a serious Budget would have consulted the defence industry, the trade unions working in that industry, the managers in the industry and the academics who have examined the question of arms diversification and conversion. The Labour party would have produced a detailed proposal for a phased programme of arms conversion—

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to interrupt the debate, but I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) is now in order and I ask for your ruling. Having already made a phantasmagoric and hysterical speech about weird suggestions for new procedures, the hon. Gentleman is now straying from the terms of his motion.

The debate must of course centre around procedures. I am happy to hear illustrations, but the debate must not go so far beyond illustrative purposes as to forget the main terms of the motion. I am sure that the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) will bear that in mind, as will all other hon. Members.

I hasten to say that I am not engaged in a filibuster. I can see the end of my speech hoving into view even as I think of my next sentence.

The procedures that I have proposed would not simply affect this House. There would have been a wide debate in the arms industry. Labour would have produced detailed proposals to protect jobs because jobs in the industry are being lost. Without a proper state-led arms conversion and diversification programme, jobs are being lost industry by industry, site by site across the country. Those jobs often involve the most skilled workers in British manufacturing in the most modern plants. They are exactly the kind of workers who should be put to work to create in Britain the high-skilled, high-tech products that we are importing and which are adding to our balance of trade deficit problems.

The alternative Budget would have contained a major element about making the arms industry in Britain much more dynamic. That would have made a much greater contribution to reducing our terrible balance of trade deficit.

That is an interesting idea. However, the terms of the hon. Gentleman's motion call for an alternative Budget to be put forward by the official Opposition. Would the official Opposition espouse the cause which the hon. Gentleman has just argued?

I have no doubt whatsoever that that would be the case. The Labour party is committed, in the shadow Cabinet and at conference, to a proper arms diversification strategy for Britain. We should hear no more nonsense about the Conservative party being sound on defence. By ignoring the great historic changes that are taking place and by refusing to have a defence review, the Government are locking us into a position where we are losing jobs week by week because we do not have such a strategy. Labour is committed to that strategy.

There may well be an intense debate in the Labour party about how fast we should go or exactly what form that strategy should take, but no one in the Labour party denies that there should be a proper diversification strategy. Otherwise, people will lose their jobs. The Labour party is committed to ensuring that, if defence jobs are lost, the workers are retrained, the factories are retooled and we keep the workers producing for Britain. That would have been a major part of this debate—

Order. The hon. Gentleman is straying too far from his self-imposed brief.

I apologise. I was led astray by the Minister—I am told that it happens all the time.

The second major item would be the fundamental question of public spending. We have been told in a quite breathtaking sleight of hand that the Government will reduce public spending. There are two strands to that. First, the Government are freezing the wages of public sector workers and, secondly, they are making unspecified commitments to cuts by robbing the contingency fund. Amazingly, the markets have bought that rubbish. It is incredible that the Chancellor can say that the Government will make cuts in public spending and then get away with simply referring to the contingency fund and public sector wages. It is absolute nonsense.

There have been major pressures on the Government because people in the public sector have been losing real income. I do not believe that those who serve our nation in public sector employment—whether they are nurses, local authority workers, teachers or the people who sweep our streets—should bear the burden of lifting Britain out of the present economic morass by having their wages cut. Clearly, that would have been the central theme of an alternative Budget—being much more precise and honest. If we reduce the wages of public sector workers, it means that they will spend less. In that sense, they are being used to undermine economic recovery.

The Labour party's alternative Budget would have been precise and clear because we would have had access to Treasury officials. We would have had time to consult and work out exactly where we plan to increase public spending—what would be most urgent and most useful in lifting the nation out of the present and appalling recession. I know that technically we are out of recession, but it still feels very much like a recession to most people.

The third major item—I will not go beyond these three items because they are the core of any Budget—is the question of taxation. What was damaging for the Labour party at the general election—I disagree with some of my hon. Friends on this point—was the fact that it launched an alternative Budget at the beginning of the campaign. If we had been in the position year by year of preparing a fully detailed Budget with the support of Treasury officials, we would have had a debate about taxation as part of the normal political cycle, rather than launching it under the constraints of an election.

I do not know about other hon. Members, but I tend to find that people are more resistant to believing what I say during a general election than at any other time that I open my mouth. I suspect that the public defences go up as soon as the election "off" is given—they tend to be rather less receptive to what we say. A debate about the level of taxation for a week or more in the normal political cycle, as issues are tested and positions clarified, would leave people in a much better position to make up their minds about the truth of who would or would not increase taxes. Of course, the judgment of history will be that Labour's proposed taxes at the last election would have been much less savage than those with which we will have to live. We have been penalised for telling the truth. I want to get away from the situation in which such matters are thrown in at the last minute in an election.

I have no doubt that a Labour Government would have had to increase income taxes. The discipline of preparing an alternative Budget, the discipline of sitting down with Treasury officials and the discipline of saying where the money would come from to pay for the vital reconstruction of our industrial base and the rebuilding of those, public services that have been savaged the most, and to fund a public works programme or to start to bring unemployed people back to work, would inevitably have forced the Labour party to face up to what increases in taxes would have been required and equally to work out those taxes in a way that would be the most productive for the nation as a whole rather than simply benefiting a narrow section.

I have not the slightest doubt that, after such a debate, we would have come up with an increase in the top tax rate and the tax rate for those earning over £30,000 a year. I should be quite happy to see the top tax rate back at 60 per cent., including national insurance contributions, for people earning over £30,000 a year. The argument would have been hammered out here and people would have decided whether it was fair and whether it was something that they were prepared to support.

I hope that the Government can see an advantage in that for them. Of course, there would be a major advantage for the Labour party in having access to Treasury officials. There would be major advantages in the Labour party's, being able to prepare for government with that discipline. However, there would also be major advantages for an honest Government. We would not have elections that degenerated into slanging matches of promises and accusations; we would build into the normal political cycle an annual debate about the priorities of the parties with regard to public spending and taxation. People could watch that debate away from the heat and the nonsense of an election campaign, and all the diversions and sound bites, and come to their own conclusions about which party had the long-term interests of the people and the economy at heart.

In that situation, the Labour party's alternative Budget would have been a decisive nail through the heart of the Government and would have opened the way not simply to a Labour victory but to a Labour party coming to power prepared and ready to govern from day one.

I am grateful for the fact that, by a quirk of parliamentary procedures, we are debating this extraordinary motion this morning. I offer my apologies to the House. Unfortunately, my business men's lunch club is coming to Westminster today, so sadly I cannot be here for the end of the debate. However, I guarantee that I will read Hansard with interest on Monday. My business men were looking forward to hearing a report of the business and industry issues discussed in the House this morning. Sadly, that is not to be, because of the premature curtailment of the debate, which I suspect is something to do with the ongoing petulance of the war of attrition that the Labour party is waging to restore some of its credibility over its monumental incompetence in failing to table an amendment to the Budget resolution on value added tax on fuel and heating.

The motion strikes me as naive if one is being charitable, and extraordinary if one is being realistic. Listening to the cogent and well-argued speech of the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone), it crossed my mind what Lord Healey would think if he had an opportunity to read the motion. I suspect that, if one went down the Corridor to another place and drew his attention to the motion, one would be able to hear echoing down the Corridors his belly-aching at the preposterousness of the motion. The motion states:

That this House calls on the Procedure Committee to bring forward proposals so that in future years the House would no longer vote for or against the Budget".

I am sure that the hon. Member for Brent, East does not need a lesson on constitutional history or on the way in which the constitution operates. However, in case he needs such a lesson, it would be sensible simply to explain that, in a constitutional democracy, there are general elections in which different parties compete with a set of proposals that are to be implemented on successful election as the Government. Normally, although not always, the Opposition parties, by definition, have serious differences of opinion on the main thrust of the policies of the Government of the day. To think that a Budget could be produced when there is a fundamental difference between the basic philosophies of the two parties is to ask too much. If one cannot get agreement because of a difference in the fundamental philosophies of two political parties, how would one ever get a Budget? If one could not get a Budget, how would the country continue to operate?

The hon. Gentleman is not reading the motion as I intended. If the motion is poorly worded, I apologise; I am not suggesting for one moment that the House would choose a compromise Budget from the two parties. There would be the Government's Budget and the Opposition's Budget, and the vote would be between the two. In a sense, we would still have a vote for or against the Budget, but it would not simply be for only one Budget. In a hung Parliament, which might be on the books one day, the Opposition's Budget would perhaps be carried.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. All I can do is discuss the proposals in the motion. I am sorry if he has not worded his motion properly; he could have tightened it up and improved it. We are meant to be debating and considering a motion under which the House would no longer vote for or against the Budget. That proposition would be a recipe for disaster. In most years, we would never get a Budget because we would not be able to reach agreement.

The proposition is that we choose instead between alternative Budgets proposed by the Government and by the Opposition. I have always understood that the duty of the Government was to govern and the duty of the Opposition was to oppose. If the country wanted the Opposition and the Government to determine our way forward during a five-year period, I suspect that they would use their votes in a general election to come up with that extraordinary mish-mash. That is what is suggested as the logical conclusion of the motion.

I would find it quite extraordinary if any Labour Government ever agreed to the contents of the motion. I look forward to reading with great interest the speech of the hon. Member for Leeds, Central (Mr. Fatchett), who is to respond for the Opposition. I would think that the shadow Chancellor, the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown), and his predecessor in that position, the Leader of the Opposition, would have no truck with such a suggestion.

The motion goes on to say that if the Opposition could not or did not want to exercise the right to take part in the little performance, it would be up to the next party to do so —the Liberal Democrat party. I see that representatives of that party are conspicuously absent from today's debate. That suggestion boggles the mind.

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. The hon. Gentleman's proposal is, at best, naive.

Will my hon. Friend consider the fact that there may be at least the germ of an idea in the motion? We have just had five days of parliamentary time devoted to the Budget debate, during which we discussed the Government's proposals in the conventional way. It was regarded as normal in other years that the Opposition would have at least one single proposal on how things might have been done better.

Instead, we had five days of speeches from the Opposition Front Bench which did not contain a single proposal with the authority of the Labour party. Whether the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) would agree with any such proposal is a further matter on which one may speculate. The Labour party did not have a single proposal on how it would deal with things differently from what the Government propose.

My hon. Friend has a justifiable reputation for being eminently reasonable and perspicacious. Like him, I was not in the slightest bit surprised that the Labour party could not, for whatever reason, come up with a single constructive proposal. That rather adds to my misgivings about the motion, because, as a charitable person, I should hate to have to put the Opposition on a spot in which they were forced to come up with constructive proposals to deal with the economy and with the Budget.

rose—

I will give way with pleasure to the hon. Gentleman in a moment. He may say that he has many suggestions about an alternative Budget, and I have no doubt about that, because he is an interesting thinker. Without wanting to get involved in the internecine wars in the Labour party, I must say that, sadly, he is a man in the wilderness whistling in the dark when it comes to making constructive suggestions.

Surely the hon. Gentleman will accept that one cannot complain that the Labour party puts forward no alternative during the Budget debate, and then complain also about a motion that would institutionalise, a procedure whereby the Opposition had to make specific proposals. On the basis of this speech, I would expect him to support my proposal.

With respect, that was not what I was suggesting. I was worried that it might be unfair to institutionalise a system that brought pressure to bear on the Opposition to have the courage to make constructive proposals.

The hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) and others have commented on the alternative Budget that has been heralded so much during the past 18 months. That alternative Budget was announced, I think, on the steps of the Treasury in that arrogant photo-opportunity which showed the over-confidence of the Labour party during the general election. The hon. Member for Dagenham said that, as soon as he had read it, he realised with horror that the Labour party had totally misunderstood what was going on in the economy in the south-east of Britain.

To paraphrase the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), the alternative Budget was the longest suicide note in history for the Labour party in the south-east. It bore no reality to the average earnings and the tax payments that were made by people in the south-east. That has been reflected in the fact that the Labour party has a minimal number of seats outside London in the south-east. That shows how out of touch it is with what goes on in this country broadly on a line from the Wash to Birmingham.

I return to the quite extraordinary motion. I should be fascinated to know whether a future Labour Government would want to abide by its terms because, frankly, I cannot foresee that happening. The hon. Member for Brent, East clearly knows that we have just had five days of debate on the Budget, and that we have an ongoing debate, not just for five days of the year but for 365 days of the year, on general economic policy.

The Government put forward their economic policy and stick by it, and the Opposition say constantly how, in their view, the economy could and should be improved. A different emphasis should be placed on economic policy. Suggestions are made as the official policy of the Opposition, when we are lucky—at the moment, there is a dearth of such policies. There are also different interest groups within the parliamentary Labour party which are associated with the general philosophy of that party.

To say that there is no debate on an alternative economic programme or an alternative Budget clearly does not stand up to investigation. The motion would allow the Opposition, and presumably the shadow Chancellor, to have time on the Floor of the House, to make proposals.

Certainly, that spokesman would not be the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar), after his comments during the past few weeks in the press and in the House. The Labour party would not want the hon. Gentleman to be official spokesman on the economy in case he gave the game away and put his foot in it, once again, and caused embarrassment. I suspect that it was because of the hon. Gentleman's alleged remarks in The People that the Labour party failed to table an amendment to the Budget earlier this week. That embarrassed the party and highlighted its incompetence. The hon. Member for Garscadden knows that the package produced by my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor to give genuine help to pensioners and to others with their VAT bills from 1 April next year has met the needs of those people.

To return to the main motion, no Labour Government would ever want to offer the Opposition in the future the facilities that the motion gives. I suspect—this will not come as any surprise to the hon. Member for Brent, East—that the shadow Cabinet does not support it either. Under this ricochet motion, if the official Opposition fail in any way to take up the opportunity offered, it passes to the third largest party which, of course, is the Liberal Democrat party. That suggestion is fraught with danger. I hope that we have some common ground on that point. I suspect that the experiences of the hon. Member for Brent, East and the hon. Member for Garscadden as parliamentary candidates do not differ from mine.

Liberal Democrat candidates can go up and down a street, meet 30 people in that street and give 30 variations on a policy in the hope of winning votes for their party. They are the experts at grubbing for votes by saying anything that they think the listener wants to hear. I suspect that the Liberal Democrats themselves would recoil in horror at the thought of presenting an alternative Budget. The last thing that any Liberal wants to do is categorically to state what his party believes in and will stick by, however tough the going gets.

Let us take the issue of VAT on fuel. We all know that in 1991 it was official Liberal Democrat policy to impose VAT on fuel. That is clear in the party's documents. Yet now, because the Liberal Democrats saw the initial reaction before the compensation scheme was announced, they have run away and tried to disown that policy. Imagine the conflicts, the arguments and the dilemmas that the Liberal Democrats would face if they had the opportunity to have an alternative Budget considered by a future House of Commons. It would not work.

The hon. Member for Brent, East has given us a useful opportunity to debate—

The Government gave us the opportunity.

The hon. Gentleman says that we gave him the opportunity. On this particular morning, it was the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) who gave us the opportunity by seeking prematurely to end the debate on business and industry initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Sir D. Thompson). However, I shall not argue the semantics of the matter.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Brent, East for giving us the opportunity to indulge in this intellectual exercise and this canter around the course. I fear that he is in a small minority in supporting the motion. However attractive it might be to an Opposition party now, there is a possibility—albeit a slim one—that at some point in the future we will conceivably have a Labour Government, and no Government would want to be saddled with this nightmare proposal.

We have before us a set of procedures which are wholly unworkable and highly unrealistic. The proposals enunciated by the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) are probably intellectually interesting enough, but they have wide implications for an entire area of the economy which I suppose that he has not thought about.

It is my understanding that political parties set out before elections their manifestos which contain commitments to the country on the economy, the manufacturing base, fiscal policy, monetary policy, trade policy and all other areas of economic activity. The hon. Member for Brent, East made out that the Budget is an occasion once a year when we decide how to cut or increase taxes. But the Budget has a structure based on the fiscal, monetary, trade and economic policy of the Government.

If the hon. Member for Brent, East assumes that a Budget is merely a matter of increasing or reducing taxes, I am glad that he would never be Chancellor of the Exchequer in any future Labour Government. The country has always been given choices; those choices are set out in our manifestos and policies. In the past 14 years, the Conservative Government have done many things that have widened the base of share ownership, wealth ownership and property ownership in our country. All those changes have been made as a result of successive Conservative victories. They have come through the various Budgets which have fine-tuned the economy and achieved the successes that we have seen so far.

The hon. Member for Brent, East talks about open government. Open government is, indeed, important. It can be seen as something which ought to be a part of our democratic process. The Conservative Government are wholly committed to open government. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has gone out of his way, through our citizens charter and other initiatives, to make sure that open government is a matter of great importance in our policies.

If the proposals of the hon. Member for Brent, East were accepted, many of the measures that any Government, whether Conservative or Labour, could put into effect would be cancelled and stultified at the outset, right here in the House. We would end up with a hotch-potch, a compromise, and an indistinguishable morass of policies which would have been traded and bartered across the Floor of the Chamber. There would be no politics, let alone policy, in the running of the Government.

Today, our economic performance is one of the best of any member state of the European Community. Would it have been possible, under the proposals of the hon. Member for Brent, East, to bring inflation down to 1·4 per cent.—the lowest in the EC and G7 countries and the lowest in Britain since 1959? Would it have been possible to bring industry's interest bill down by £12·5 billion since 1990 by reducing interest rates? Would it have been possible to reduce unemployment since January by 137,000? Would it have been possible for industry to increase productivity by 5 per cent. in the last quarter? Those improvements can be engendered only by the Government creating the right framework and a stable economic environment. That is done by the Government and the Chancellor of the day, unilaterally, but through consensus and discussion. It cannot be done by bartering across the Floor of the House of Commons on different aspects of policy.

Would it have been possible under the hon. Gentleman's proposals to reduce corporation tax since 1978 from 52 to 33 per cent. and yet to see our revenue from corporation tax increase from £4 billion in 1978 to £21 billion in 1990? I wonder whether it would have been possible for the United Kingdom to be the largest receiver of overseas investment in the past five years. I estimate that overseas investment totals £149 million, of which £80 million was portfolio investment. Would it have been possible to attract such investment under the hon. Gentleman's proposals for hotch-potch Budgets? Would it have been possible for Britain to attract 44 per cent. of all inward investment into the EC if we had had the mish-mash of policies, compromises and bartering that the hon. Gentleman has proposed? Would it have been possible for us to save 240,000 jobs in Britain through foreign investment, if the hon. Member for Brent, East had been allowed his proposition?

The hon. Gentleman's proposal has wide ramifications for our trade, inward investment and macro-economic policies and implications for our fiscal and monetary policies. If we had agreed to it, could Britain have been among those countries with the largest amount of foreign investment? I understand that last year we earned £26 billion from such investments. Surely the Opposition were well known for enforcing exchange controls and for their protectionist policies. Could that type of policy have been discussed alongside our policies in the House and been mitigated and alleviated by the procedures that the hon. Gentleman suggests?

Is it not a fact that our overseas investments in many parts of the world—I understand that they amount to $80 billion in the United States—including south Asia, the Pacific rim and the far east are earning money for this country, bringing in investment and protecting jobs? Could British companies have won contracts in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia? Could they have set up joint ventures in India, under the Prime Minister's Indo-British initiative, thereby encouraging a flow of inward and outward investment? Would all that have been possible, given the hon. Gentleman's proposal? It would not.

It would have been wholly impossible to run this country in the way that it has been run for many hundreds of years, and it would have been impossible for political parties to function sensibly.

The proposal would simply create intellectual chaos. Does that not show that the Opposition have no real alternatives to the successes that Conservative Governments have engendered during the past 14 years and that the proposal has been suggested as a way of wearing some of our clothes?

I am bound to say that when I was brought in to respond to this debate at relatively short notice, I found the terms of the motion somewhat surprising. The first element to attract my attention was that mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Burns). It seemed an odd proposition that we should approve a motion which states that, when dealing with future Budgets, the House

"would no longer vote for or against the Budget".

That proposition begs two questions. First, what would be the role of the House in the context of the Budget and, secondly, what would be the consequences of whatever action the House might take if it were not being invited to vote for or against? That seems an interesting constitutional doctrine which, as a Treasury Minister, might make my life quite comfortable. However, as a Member of Parliament and a citizen of this country, I find the idea deeply offensive.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford very properly speculated on the attitude of Lord Healey or Lord Barnett to the idea that, between 1974 and 1979, they should have presented a few ideas to the House, but that other ideas would also have been invited; they would merely have adopted the guise of advocates for their ideas, as there would have been ample opportunity for anyone else to come up with others that might directly contradict them. I doubt whether they would have embraced that proposition with warmth, or considered it an idea to be pursued.

I wonder whether my hon. Friend thinks that Lord Healey, who is renowned for his very forthright views, might think that anyone who supported such a motion was out of their "tiny Chinese minds".

My hon. Friend has taken the words out of my mouth. That was a formulation which sprang to mind as a description that Lord Healey might have used of someone suggesting alternative proposals of which he did not desperately approve. If he were still a Member of this House he might even have used that phrase about the views expressed by the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone). If my memory serves me right, Lord Healey first used it when talking about his reception at a national executive committee meeting of the Labour party, so if it was not specifically a description of the hon. Member for Brent, East, it at least described many of his friends in the Labour party. I do not remember whether the hon. Member for Brent, East was a member of the NEC at the time, but I am certain that the people at whom Lord Healey's remark was directed were people of whom the hon. Member would approve.

As I said during my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford, the motion contains one kernel of an idea with which I have a sneaking sympathy. If accepted, it would put the onus on the official Opposition to come to a Budget debate with some ideas—even one idea would be an advance on what we heard last week—and they would have to show how they would have preferred budgetary policy to develop.

I can understand the frustration of the hon. Member for Brent, East about the fact that the Opposition Front Bench did not see fit to set out an alternative economic strategy to the House last week. Indeed, they did not see fit to set out any clear ideas on fiscal, monetary and trading policy, or on any other aspect of economic policy.

The Opposition expect the House and the country to take seriously a party that presents itself as the low-tax option. No doubt, there are plenty of arguments that the Labour party might use in a Budget debate, but the proposition which the Opposition would come to the House and go to the country on the basis that they would levy less tax and be sterner disciplinarians of the public finances than the Government defies common sense. Also, that is not a proposition which the hon. Member for Brent, East would support.

I think that I detect in the motion an attempt by the hon. Member for Brent, East to wheedle out of his hon. Friends some ideas about how they think that the economy should be run. If that is his endeavour, I wish him well. Honest debate would indeed be served if the Opposition could be persuaded to tell the country just one detail of what they would do if they had the opportunity to present economic proposals and packages to the House.

The hon. Member for Brent, East suggests that, as part of this process to encourage honest and informed debate on practical measures, the official Opposition should have access to Treasury officials when preparing their ideas to present to the House. That suggestion could create serious problems in terms of constitutional doctrine, the use of Treasury officials' time and so forth. However, I have an even more fundamental difficulty with the idea, because in the Budget debate last week we did not hear any concepts of what the Opposition think that they would do.

The implication of the motion is that the void that currently occupies the part of Labour party thinking that should be filled by economic policy would be filled by Treasury officials. Although there are good officials in the Treasury, that would not lead to good economic policy. It is not my understanding of how political choice operates or of the purpose of debate in the House or of elections. It is not the job of Treasury officials to fill the policy void of politicians who do not know, or cannot agree on, what they want to do. It is the job of Treasury officials to assist and support in the execution of policies espoused by elected politicians.

Until we have clear evidence that the Opposition have a package of proposals and ideas about how they think that the economy should be managed, there is no job for Treasury officials to do, because it is for politicians to set out the parameters within which they want officials to work. The implication of the motion is that when politicians have failed to produce even the sketchiest of parameters, somehow it is for Treasury officials miraculously to fill that void. That is an unattractive proposition.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mr. Deva) put forward the most rigorous objection to the idea that the House can pick and choose between various options presented to it in the Budget. It is that although the tax expenditure balance is an important part of total economic policy, it is by no means all of it. Indeed, it is probably much less than half, if one wanted to measure it, of total economic policy.

The Government pursue an economic strategy based on a clear idea that our task is to deliver fiscal and monetary discipline and a stable background against which a free economy can work, and to provide a legal and social framework that reinforces a free market economy. We do that because we think that it is the most effective way to generate wealth and improve living standards, which is the basis on which we presented the Budget on 30 November and on which we shall continue to present Budgets and ask the House to support them.

I did not anticipate speaking on this motion or having an opportunity to do so. However, it is worth asking the House to delay proceedings for just a few minutes. The Leader of the House, whose reputation for being a reasonable man has withstood the test of time—though it has been damaged in the past few days—will understand that this is an unusual motion. It relates directly to the equally unusual business next week and the way in which the House is to deal with significant and important measures. What the motion does in short order is not just telescope but almost reverse the normal procedure for dealing with Bills.

All hon. Members will be familiar with the fact that Bills receive a Second Reading and normally then go to Committee, occasionally on the Floor of the House but usually upstairs. Only once the House has given Bills a Second Reading are we in a position to put down various amendments.

Is there not also normally a gap between Second Reading and Committee stage so that hon. Members have an opportunity to table amendments before the Committee stage starts? The motion would wipe out that opportunity.

The tabloid cliche is "indecent haste", which is a mark of Government procedures. We are being invited not to wait to see whether the House will give Second Reading approval to the Social Security (Contributions) Bill and the Statutory Sick Pay Bill. We are being invited to table amendments in anticipation of that approval. The reason is simple. The timetable motion to steam roller those measures through is so brutal that it will be impossible, other than by means of manuscript amendments handed in at the end of Second Reading, to table any amendments, new clauses or new schedules. Therefore, special arrangements are being made to enable that to be done before Second Reading.

I must confess that I find it extraordinary. I genuinely do not understand the necessity for such an odd procedure. I do not know why the House is being invited to push through two Bills of considerable significance in terms of their impact on ordinary people. The Government will no doubt argue that the Bills are narrow and technical in their drafting and I concede that they are, to a limited extent, but they raise considerable matters of principle about what the Government are doing and how they want to run our affairs. It is—I use the word advisedly—monstrous that we should be asked to approve this motion today and bulldoze the Bills through all their stages in two days.

We do not know the details because I have not seen a guillotine motion yet. As far as I know, until yesterday, when the position changed, there had been no consultation on the matter between myself and my opposite number and I was given no indication that the measure was being contemplated. It is an abuse of process and I find it offensive that we should be put in this position. It is all the more puzzling because there was no evidence this morning of urgency in the Government's management of our affairs; we discovered that they could not even keep a quorum for a debate that was no doubt important to the hon. Member whose name had been drawn in the ballot and who raised the subject of business and industry.

I must make it clear that I shall not advise my hon. Friends to oppose this procedural motion, because, although it is unacceptable from the point of view of public policy and parliamentary procedure, I want the limited opportunity that the timetable motion may give me and my hon. Friends to put down motions. I do not wish to put you, Madam Deputy Speaker, in a position of having to accept manuscript amendments in a flurry and scurry around the Clerk's Table after Second Reading, assuming that the House grants those measures a Second Reading. I am therefore mindful to advise my hon. Friends to nod the motion through. However, I am right to protest about it because it is central to a flawed parliamentary strategy that cannot be justified.

May I explain why we take that view? I said that the Government would argue that the measures are narrow and technical. However, they are important. I was interested to notice that Ministers referred to the 1 per cent. increase in national insurance contributions as an increase in taxation. As the Leader of the House will know, the Chancellor is taking some £2 billion from the people of this country, which is over £300 million more than he would get by putting 1 p on the standard rate of income tax.

The measure is of considerable substance and represents a significant contribution to the massive hike in taxation contained in the recent Budget proposals. The measure also has a wider social significance. The motion paves the way to force through a package. I do not want to debate that subject at length, as I would be testing your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I shall mention the importance of the motion.

The Government are not only taking a substantial sum in increased taxation through the Social Security (Contributions) Bill that they wish to expedite with today's motion, but are taking more money by changing the unemployment benefit provisions and cutting the entitlement period from 12 to six months with the new job-seeker's allowance. The Bill is part of an important thrust of social policy which is arguably—I am not arrogant enough to say that there is no other side to the argument—challenging and undermining the contributory principle.

The Leader of the House was a sympathetic and well-respected Secretary of State for Social Security. There is no Minister better able to appreciate the implications and importance of what is being proposed. Therefore, I deplore the fact that the motion has been tabled as part of the steam-rollering exercise to which the Leader of the House has given his name.

The Statutory Sick Pay Bill has been dealt with in the same way. It is an important technical measure as it alters a system that is important to industry. At present, if an employee is ill, the employer can reclaim 80 per cent. of the statutory sick pay from the state. Some £750 million is to be transferred to larger firms that are being asked to shoulder that burden. This morning on breakfast television —I am sure that the Leader of the House was loyally watching—the Prime Minister, in some part of Brussels, said that he could not accept the Delors package because it would make our industry less competitive. He said that we should fight unemployment by cutting industrial costs and competing effectively in the marketplace.

The measure is being railroaded through in one day —it may be less, as the Social Security (Contributions) Bill may win the lion's share of the timetable motion, which we have not seen. However, if we assume that the measure is to be railroaded through in one day, industry will face a massive £750 million additional impost created by the Government in a hole and corner way. At the very same time, the Government are breaching the primacy of cutting industrial costs in the interests of allowing us to trade successfully in the free market of the European Union. At the very least, the issues are controversial, and should be allowed substantial debate, but we are being gagged.

The motion, which is part of the gagging process, should be challenged, not just in the name of decent parliamentary scrutiny and the parliamentary process, but in the interests of the many people outside the House with an interest in the legislation who have had no opportunity to lobby, influence opinion or state their view. Those people do not belong to unrepresentative groups. I know from private conversations of the deep dismay in organisations that are normally seen as loyal to the Government's general approach, such as the Institute of Directors and the Confederation of British Industry. They will have views on suddenly having to shoulder a bill of several hundred millions of pounds.

I appreciate that there is to be a package to offset employers' contributions, but it is not clear to me and to many other people exactly how that is to work and whether it will provide an adequate trade-off. We are discussing highly technical and complex issues. If I, as a Front-Bench spokesman, am having to run hard to try to catch up with the issues involved on Second Reading, in Committee and on Report—which have been rolled into one next week —people outside will definitely find it difficult to ensure that they are not diddled by the arithmetic of such a complex change. It is nonsense to put people in that position.

We must also consider the interests of those who have lost benefit due to the changes involved in the new incapacity benefit. They may be thinking about moving into the labour market but wonder whether the measure provides them with a disincentive to work. Sadly, the provision may also provide an incentive for employers to look at employees' health records less sympathetically and to terminate employment before they face the risk of a claim for unfair dismissal.

The issues are all major, and we should have had a decent amount of time to consider them. There should also have been time for consultation, and to draw into the parliamentary process the public and vested interests—in the best sense of the phrase. That is an important factor of the democratic system, and it does us no credit if the issues are telescoped for reasons that I genuinely do not understand.

Next week, we shall debate the subjects, not at length, but for longer than today. It is not true that there is nothing that we can do but vote "Yea" or "Nay". Both Bills have a Northern Ireland dimension. The Statutory Sick Pay Bill preserves the small employers' exemption, but, as I understand it, as many as 85 per cent. of employees will not fall within the exemption category. I welcome the presence of the Minister for Social Security and Disabled People, who will have a greater understanding of the subject. My understanding of the calculations carried out by the Library is that only 15 per cent. of the work force will fall within the category and 85 per cent. will not receive payment. The motion paves the way for an unsatisfactory measure.

I recognise that there is always a difference of approach between Opposition and Government—that is the law of the jungle and, certainly, of Parliament. On occasions, we clash richly about the organisation of business, and there is a certain amount of posturing. However, that is not true of our approach today—we are not posturing. We regard the measures as important and of genuine public interest. When I was a young Back Bencher a long time ago, I had something of a reputation as a menace on Committees. I enjoyed them, and it used to be said that my idea of heaven was a Scottish Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill that never ended, so perhaps I am prejudiced. Now I am older and cynical, and realise that one should not be starry-eyed about parliamentary procedures. However, I still believe that scrutiny is important and forms part of the parliamentary process that lies at the heart of our democracy. We should probe, test and look at the detail of the measures. On this occasion, we have been unnecessarily prevented from doing so. There should be a driving, self-evident and pressing reason for using such a procedure.

The argument does not even arise. At best, it seems that it has been done for the convenience of the Government. Some of my hon. Friends, with whom I have some sympathy, think that it has been done out of a sense of pique. There have been recent problems and troubles—the unified Budget procedure has not perhaps worked as smoothly as the Government had hoped. Now, the Budget is unravelling before our eyes. I am not one for trying to speculate about the Government's motives, but I am entitled to pass judgment on the results of their actions and must conclude that there has not been any real attempt to explain why the Bills have been treated in such a way.

Perhaps I am exceeding my authority, as I have not discussed it with the deputy Chief Whip, but had the Bills gone into Committee in the normal way, they would not have been artificially elongated and the Leader of the House should be reassured that the rules of order would have made any sort of filibustering in Committee difficult. There are points of importance that we wanted to discuss and specific amendments that we wanted to table. If we had had time to do that on a considered basis, we would have had time to involve others in the process. It would have been more sensible, knowing that there would not have been an abuse in Committee, to allow time for full consideration and it would have been much better to allow us to do so, rather than end up in—perhaps jiggery pokery is an offensive parliamentary term—let us say the unnatural procedures which the motions represent.

On Monday and Tuesday, I shall be scribbling out my new clauses to a Bill that has not even appeared on Second Reading. I sometimes wonder about the logicality of the parliamentary procedure—it has grown like Topsy over the years and centuries—but there is a certain logic to the Second Reading. It provides time for consideration.

The Committee stage provides further time for consideration and the Report stage is for a final look at what the Government have been doing. The Report stage also gives the Government a chance to change their mind and consider suggestions that have been made—perhaps a rarer event than the Opposition would like. It is being absolutely squashing in a way that cannot be defended.

Although I shall not advise my hon. Friends to oppose the motions—I do not want to have to rely on the goodwill of the Chair to accept manuscript amendments—and shall advise them to let the unusual procedure take place, it must not be thought that that is in any way an approval of what is happening and we shall take the opportunity next week to stress in the Lobbies our strong disapproval of what the Government are doing.

I realise that I cannot ask the Deputy Speaker for a ruling, but, under such unusual procedure, I presume that the starring arrangements do not strictly apply. It is a matter of some importance to some of my hon. Friends on the Back Benches. Normally, I would have to table the amendments on Monday. We must clarify that if they were tabled on Tuesday they would have to be starred. I recognise, Madam Deputy Speaker, that it may be a matter for Madam Speaker to consider whether amendments that are tabled on Tuesday—in the extraordinary circumstances of the procedure being followed—would be sympathetically viewed and that the normal starring arrangements would not be enforced.

I wish in no way to pre-empt the decision, which will not be for me to make, but whether starred amendments are accepted or not is always at the discretion of the Chair.

All sorts of words such as "dignified" and "delphic" may apply to that remark. At least I have my point on the record and merely leave it there.

I gave the pledge that I would not unnaturally elongate events, especially because it is an unplanned outing caused by a nod from the Government Whips because they could not raise a quorum to keep the normal business going. I shall be debating next week whether such action is in the best interests of Parliament. I do not think that it is and I am not aware of the pressing necessity to justify the Government not allowing one or two Second Readings —not on successive days—and the normal Committee stage to be dispatched in a businesslike manner under the normal procedures.

It further undermines public confidence in the way in which Parliament conducts its work and certainly does not encourage good relations that inevitably make the place run. It is a shame, a bad day and it deprives us of the opportunity to consider matters of real importance. I recognise that the Leader of the House cannot think again because he has unwisely committed himself to this course, but I hope that over the weekend he may, at least, worry whether he was right and justified.

It is important that we should make a few points about the motion.

In the ordinary course of events, the Government use Friday mornings and afternoons to table convenient business resolutions to the effect that there should be a vote by 10 o'clock on that business, and that is understood and accepted. The motion today goes further than anything I can recall and compresses the procedure on two Bills to such an extent that it denies, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) said, proper scrutiny of the legislation.

I draw the attention of the House to what the Bills will do. I always look at the financial effects of a Bill and, as many hon. Members know, I sometimes raise questions on money resolutions that are authorised by Parliament. The Bills mentioned in the motion do not have inconsiderable effects. We have spent much more time debating Bills with much fewer and smaller financial implications. The Bill on social security contributions will increase contributions to the insurance fund by £1·9 billion in a full year, and the Government want to get it through on the nod. When local authorities treat expenditure and revenue in such a cavalier fashion, the Government say that they are irresponsible. They must bear some portion of such criticism themselves.

The Bill also authorises payments of £5·5 billion—a huge sum of money. In the past, Parliaments have fallen into disrepute because they have passed money resolutions on the nod in far too casual a way. Criticisms were made, and some of us tried to stop that procedure.

Some of us try to raise issues on money resolutions. Ministers are now prepared with defensive briefs on money resolutions in case I am in the Chamber, as I generally am. That may be inconvenient, but Parliament is here to ensure that Ministers are inconvenienced and that they have to explain the issues. People sit in the Galleries and think that this is a rowdy place. I take the view that if Parliament is rowdy, a Minister has to be up to the job and has to be able to present his case. It is true that it is easier to get legislation through a meek, quiet assembly of people. Parliament is rowdy because the clash of opinions comes out in the open.

Many other assemblies, such as the French Assembly and the United Nations Assembly, do not have clashes of opinion. The proceedings there are ordered and dull because all the clashes take place in committee rooms beforehand. In the conduct of human affairs, there are bound to be disagreements. In other organisations and institutions, matters are arranged so that everything looks neat and tidy. Parliament is not neat and tidy. It involves angry scenes and exchanges, and Ministers have to be well prepared if they are to put their case effectively.

Shortening the arrangements for the two Bills will remove even background scrutiny and will prevent us from examining them in detail, as we want to do. Our right to table amendments will be limited.

The Statutory Sick Pay Bill will reduce public expenditure by £695 million in 1994–95. The figure for the following year will be more than £700 million, and the figure for the year after will be £750 million. The abolition of the recovery of statutory sick pay, under clause 1, will cost employers about £695 million. Should we not debate such costs to employers in some detail and for a reasonable time rather than simply rushing the legislation through because it is convenient for the Government? The position is entirely unsatisfactory.

The guillotine motion will compress the timetable to such a degree that we shall have difficulty in tabling amendments. The Leader of the House knows that I take a particular interest in statutory instruments because I am the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Clause 4 of each Bill will remove the provision for affirmative resolutions for the statutory instruments involved and will put them under the negative procedure. There may be a perfectly good reason for that, which would ordinarily be brought out on Second Reading.

Our procedures on Second Reading are often not a monologue, but a dialogue. Hon. Members frequently give way to Ministers so that they can offer explanations. In the ordinary course of events, we should have an explanation of why the Government seek to remove what I regard as an important safeguard in delegated legislation. We shall not have that chance. The motion removes the normal procedure by which amendments are tabled after Second Reading. Under the normal procedure, we could make a better judgment about whether the Minister had made a good case for an important change.

Many hon. Members do not take too much trouble over delegated legislation and the vast majority of the population do not know what it is about. In fact, everyone is affected by delegated powers and everything is covered by delegated legislation. The Under-Secretary of State for Technology, who took part in the proceedings on the Transport and Works Bill, is in the Chamber and he will remember that we discussed delegated legislation in some detail. Delegated powers cover people from birth to death.

The House has given virtually untrammelled powers to Ministers over the years to the extent that they can now individually change legislation, sometimes through instruments that do not require further parliamentary procedures. That is outrageous. I accept that delegated powers may be necessary because details of Acts sometimes need to be carried out swiftly. In this case, we shall not be given an explanation, so we shall not know whether the fairly important changes under clause 4 of each Bill are justified.

We shall have to table amendments beforehand to retain the affirmative procedure, although that may not be entirely justified; we do not know. Inevitably, many amendments will be tabled, but our discussions will be affected by the guillotine. We do not know the details of the timing because they have not yet been made available to Parliament. We may not have adequate time to discuss all the amendments. I am not talking about tabling 150 or so amendments simply to delay the issue; this is not the European Communities (Amendment) Bill. Incidentally, both Bills mentioned in the motion are longer than the Maastricht Bill. We should remember the number of amendments tabled on that Bill, and we should realise that the length of a Bill is no indication of its importance. The argument that these are two small, technical, four-clause Bills is not necessarily a justification for the compressed procedure.

Secondly, there is no question but that the Government have been in office a long time and have grown arrogant and insular. They regard Parliament as a legislative sausage machine that is used for their convenience. Maastricht gave them a shock, because the Prime Minister went off and made an arrangement, and when he came back he found dissension. By and large—

Order. The hon. Gentleman is well aware of the procedures of the House. I think that his argument is now going rather wide of the motion.

It has always been the custom and practice for Members to be allowed to use examples in passing by way of illustration. When we are debating a motion that rips up the usual parliamentary procedures and deliberately deprives Members of the opportunity of tabling amendments, I think that it is relevant to show the arrogance of the Government who are doing that and the fact that they have had a recent shock over their arrogant attitudes. Unfortunately, the Government have been slipping back into their old pre-Maastricht ways in tabling the motion, because it is convenient for them to do that.

The Government determine the recesses and, as the Leader of the House knows, they have been asked questions about their length and time. In the week leading up to Christmas eve, the Government could have put in an extra two or three days to enable us to consider the Bills. No doubt an extra two or three days would be regarded with mixed feelings by various Members, but I tabled a genuine amendment that we should continue the Session until 23 December. If the amendment had been agreed to, I would have been here, as would several of my hon. Friends, arguing the case.

The Leader of the House cannot say that the motion is necessary because we do not have enough days for the business because the Government determine the parliamentary timetable and the agenda. They could have timetabled an extra two or three days if, as no doubt the Leader of the House will claim, there is a need to get the legislation through for various administrative reasons. If they are being discussed and proposed for administrative reasons, it suggests that the administration is not very good and that the Government are having to bypass the usual parliamentary procedures and use a short cut to get the Bill passed because they had not planned far enough ahead. That seems a pretty shoddy way of dealing with Parliament.

As the Leader of the House knows full well, the torrent of legislation that the Government have produced is an indication of the degree of contempt that the Government have for Parliament. For example, last year they produced a record number of statutory instruments—3,500. The Government must overhaul their attitude towards Parliament and undertake a review of their procedures to ensure that that does not happen again.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) said, the Opposition are always in something of a dilemma, because we want the opportunity —even though it is one with which we do not agree, because it is presented in such limited and absolute terms by the Government—to table amendments. Voting against the motion would deprive us of that opportunity, which would be cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Although we are opposed to the motion, we must take what little opportunity the Government have proffered. It is like dealing with Bills. Sometimes we hate, oppose and detest legislation that the Government propose. That has been the case with most of the legislation over the past 14 years. What are the Opposition to do? Are we to maintain complete, untrammelled and unqualified opposition, or are we to say that we hate the Bill and the legislation but will try to table minor improvements where we can? By and large, that is the way in which the Opposition work.

I do not think that we shall persuade the Government —they have cloth ears when it comes to these things—so we shall just have to use the machinery provided to table amendments as best we can. I must say to the Leader of the House that the position remains extremely unsatisfactory. What has been done is an abuse of the House. The Leader of the House will no doubt say, "The Labour Government tabled three guillotine motions in a day—

Five.

Five, then. We certainly used guillotines and, at that time, I endorsed the procedure. But I have changed my mind, and that is not unreasonable because after 14 years a Government can grow too arrogant and too confident of their powers.

We should be chary of the use of guillotines. I hope that we shall also be chary of them after the next general election, when Labour is in power. I say that because. as we all know, it is possible to distinguish between amendments that are meant to improve legislation and safeguard those affected by it and amendments that are tabled simply to spin out a debate.

There are two ways in which the Opposition can deal with proceedings on a Bill. Either they can talk for so long that they force concessions from a Government who want to get their legislation through—that worked fairly satisfactorily in respect of the Transport and Works Act—or they can reach a tacit understanding with the Government about the Committee stage and the way in which amendments are dealt with. They can say, "We will allow the Bill through if we get an extra day on it on the Floor of the House." We all know that such negotiation takes place. We have to judge which approach will best serve the interests of those whom we represent. The motion before us in effect rules that out and prevents us from making such a judgment. We are to be given only very limited scope.

The Government have enjoyed enormous majorities since 1979. Their present majority of 17 is the smallest that they have had since they came to power. We would have given our right arm for such a majority between 1974 and 1979, when we governed with a majority of one until John Stonehouse disappeared, after which we had no majority at all and governed on a minority. Yet, despite their majority, the Government insist on imposing guillotine after guillotine. It is fair to say that the Labour Government were in a somewhat different position from the present Government, who have enjoyed an enormous advantage. [Interruption.] The deputy Chief Whip says, "We are in a mess." He is right: they are in a mess. The hon. Gentleman's comment, uttered sotto voce as he sits on the Treasury Bench in what should be his mute position of inner silence, is correct.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Knight) who is part of what were the usual channels—and I hope at some stage will be so again—has been referred to and cannot reply, I should make it absolutely clear that his words were not, "We are in a mess," but, "They"—the Labour Government of which the hon. Gentleman was a member —"were in a mess." With that, I wholly concur.

That just goes to show that Whips should not mutter under their breath: their remarks can be misinterpreted. It sounded to me as though the hon. Gentleman was saying that the Government were in a mess. By saying anything this morning, when the Government have been completely outmanoeuvred, the deputy Chief Whip is going beyond his remit.

The Government should not press the motion. The Leader of the House ought to accept the view that it should be withdrawn, although I suppose that he will press it. As I have said, I regard it as an abuse of Parliament. I have never seen a motion couched in such terms before. We are talking about two important items of legislation involving a massive chunk of expenditure. Incidentally, I hope that the Government will not start talking about accountability as regards local authority expenditure because their behaviour shows clearly that they want merely to rubber-stamp the expenditure of huge sums. It is simply not good enough.

I hope that, having listened to our brief debate, the Leader of the House will decide not to go ahead. I hope that he will give us the usual amount of time, either extending our proceedings beyond 17 December, which we should be quite happy to accept, or deferring the Committee stage until we return on 11 January, which is only a few weeks off. We can then get down to the job of examining the whole thing properly and giving the legislation the sort of scrutiny that we are used to. It is a sad day when legislation is rushed through in such a manner and when Parliament is given such short shrift.

What a difference a day makes. The Leader of the House was present and on time yesterday when he announced the business for next week. He wants to introduce a guillotine on a proposal that will rip off millions of people through extra taxation. That is what national insurance contributions are all about. They are a form of tax. The Government profess to be a low taxation Government, but they are not a low taxation Government at all. What they do is switch taxes; it is either value added tax going up or, as in this case, national insurance contributions going up.

Let us be fair about it—tax increases are in the Budget. The Budget can have as many as five or six days of debate on the Floor of the House and the Bill then goes to Committee. Many years ago, debates on a Finance Bill could last for five, six or seven weeks. Most of its stages had to be completed by 20 July and, before then, extensive debate took place. We might not have liked the results, but at least we used to have major debates about tax increases.

The motion has been tabled today because of what the Leader of the House announced yesterday. It is not personal, but he is being pushed by others in the Cabinet who are so full of arrogance and contempt for the British people that they have decided to push through next week, without any proper debate, a tax increase which will affect all workers and employers.

I could understand it if the House did not have sufficient time for debate. I mentioned the other week, and yesterday, that 1993 has been a non-election year. I have calculated that the House of Commons will have been in session for only seven months by 17 December, the date of finishing for Christmas. It is an outrage. Why did not the Government accept the motion tabled by myself and my hon. Friends last week, when we proposed that Parliament should sit for an extra week up to 24 December? What is wrong with that? A lot of people out there have to work until Christmas eve; they cannot pack up on 17 December.

Santa Clause does not come down their chimney until 25 December.

I packed up believing in Santa Clause at the same time that I packed up believing in the royal family, when I was about three. He did not do me much good, being in a family of 10 just before the war.

There is plenty of time. Anybody out there who watches "Westminster Live" would ask why Parliament is not sitting the week after next week. We have done it before. It is not as though Parliament has risen every year on 17 December. There have been a few odd occasions when we rose earlier, but generally we have gone on to 21 or 22 December and, on occasions, to 23 December.

The Government do not want anybody to oppose them. They have become used to power and they are contemptuous of anybody having the guts to take them on. They say, "We will get the Leader of the House to move the motion quickly. There will not be too many people there and nobody will notice." As it happened, it was spotted by my hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench, and we said, "We are not having it; it is not playing the game to put up taxes in a day, without proper scrutiny."

The Government say that they are short of time and that they must get the legislation through. My hon. Friend will recall that the Jopling report, which the Government back would close down Parliament even more. In that event, we would have no time at all and the Government would escape scot free from the scrutiny that they richly deserve.

My hon. Friend has taken a strong position against the Jopling report, as I have, and one or two others, including my hon. Friend the Opposition Deputy Chief Whip—I do not know whether I can speak for him on this occasion, but I think that it is fair to say that he holds strong views on it.

It may seem all right to get rid of another day or week spent in Parliament—it is organised truancy—but let us face it, the Opposition's job is to oppose. That is why I hope that all my hon. Friends, along with my hon. Friends the Members for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon) and for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer), will oppose the Jopling report. I do not know whether they will, but I hope that they understand that, although we might be in the minority in the House, we have a chance to stand up and speak and to vote on important issues.

I am pleased that we had a vote this morning—I say that en passant, Mr. Deputy Speaker—because the Government lost their majority. In fact, they did not have a quorum. Those Tory Members who are in favour of next week's guillotine, which will enable the Government to increase people's taxes, were not here to vote this morning. Only 20 of them voted and I did not see any members of the Cabinet, apart from the Chief Whip. The Leader of the House was missing.

Good God.

He had to be brought here, as well as others, but it was too late. The big vote today was just after 10 am. Tory Members are not used to being here at this time. Parliament starts at 2.30 pm Monday to Thursday and they do not realise that one has to get here for at least 10.30 am on Fridays.

The Leader of the House may be the innocent in all this. I will give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he was pushed into tabling the motion and, yesterday, he probably thought that no one would be here today. The Government's behaviour is outrageous. They tell the House that a guillotine will be imposed next week and they then say to all the Tory Members," Go on, pack up for the holidays. You are on a four-day week."

That is what the Leader of the Opposition has signed up to.

I believe in a four-day week for workers. When that is offered to every worker in Britain, Parliament can have it as well, but not until then. Four million people do not have a job and it would be a great idea to have a four-day for workers because that would give young lasses and lads the chance to have a job.

rose—

I am on a different tack and I know that I must keep in order, because this is a narrow procedural motion. Should my hon. Friend intervene, I hope that he will do so on a straightforward procedural basis.

The Government have a cheek to flaunt their power. We gave them the opportunity last Friday to extend the debate on the Bills when we tabled our amendment, which was voted on. The Tories only managed to muster 99 votes then. That was a few more than today. I wonder where they go to. It is pretty clear that the Government told them to pack up and come back on Monday to pass the guillotine motion. The Government told them to refresh themselves and then come back to attack the working-class people. The tax increase also represents an attack on the middle class—all those Tory voters who have got pampas grass in their gardens in Surrey and everywhere else. They will be hit as well.

The Tory Government have dealt with the miners, the steelworkers and the shipyard workers. Now they are attacking their own middle class. No wonder they will get clobbered at the next election. We should have that election now. Instead of debating the motion, we should be debating a resignation motion, because I believe that 90 per cent. of the electorate, or perhaps 80 per cent.—I do not want to over-egg the pudding—want this lot out. They are fed up with all the Government's attacks. The tax increases are yet another one, right at the end of the autumn part of the Session.

I do not know whether it would have been possible to discuss the legislation in January. The Government would still have got it through in time to fit in with the appropriate resolutions. So why have all the rush? I can only assume that they had a gathering of the Cabinet, and they said, "I will tell you what; there will not be many there next week. Some of them will have gone—bobbied off. Let's slip it through in the week before Christmas." Well, some of us are not going to have it and that is why we call upon the Leader of the House. He got a bloody nose this morning and so did the Government—I am speaking metaphorically. The Government got a bloody nose this morning and the Leader of the House was not even here to carry through his business. Someone said to me that they lost a debate this morning. I said, "I did not lose a debate; all I did was move a procedural motion." All that the Government had to do was to bring 40 people in.

Thirty-five.

Thirty-five plus the Tellers and the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. The people who lost the business this morning were the Government. They have a duty to have 40 people here. I have heard them attack the Labour Government between 1974 and 1979, but whatever attacks have been made—I have made a few myself, as a matter of fact—during that period we were never in a position of not having a quorum. We always made sure that we had people here during 1974 and 1979, when we were living on the breadline. We made sure that we had the requisite number of people here.

That is why we are debating this subject now. Why are we debating it now? We are debating it because the Government lost their business this morning. That shows that perhaps the Government, having attacked all those sections of the people, are getting weary. Perhaps it is the fag end of the Government. Perhaps they really have lost; they have run out of steam and they have lost control. It does happen.

There was a feeling like that in 1979, after those five years. I say that in a non-political fashion. It does happen.

Of course.

I think that the Government are running out of steam.

I do not think that Lady Thatcher would have allowed what has happened this morning to happen. She did some terrible things—she attacked working-class people left, right and centre—but I do not believe in my guts that she would have had fewer than 40 people here this morning. If they had not been here, there would have been blood on the carpet.

I do not know what will happen to the Government Whips. I see the Deputy Whip here now, the hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Knight). He was here this morning, along with the Chief Whip, but half his staff were missing. It is really coming to summat, is it not?

They are collapsing.

It is coming to something when the Lords Commissioners, as they call them, are not even present. That is why we are debating the subject now. The Government are losing control of the House.

They get paid extra money.

There is another reason why the Government are in trouble on a Friday morning, which is worth remembering. The hon. and learned Member for Burton (Sir I. Lawrence), who stands at the Bar of the House, has just prompted me to say it. The reason they are in trouble on a Friday—and they would like to get rid of Friday—is that on Friday we start at half-past 9 and the courts are still open. Hon. Members who are on a City board of directors as non-executive members, such as, say, the right hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell), who just left one that went bankrupt, Queen's Moat House—it is a real scandal, and he ran away just before the colloquial so-and-so hit the fan—cannot get here on a Friday. Those people, who come after half-past 2 on Monday to Thursday, obviously cannot get here on a Friday because they are in the courts, making money hand over fist. Guinness—

will my hon. Friend give way?

I shall let my hon. Friend intervene because we have to get back to the narrow procedural motion.

Has my hon. Friend read Suetonius's "Twelve Caesars"? That describes an identical procedural position. When Julius Caesar was having trouble getting something through the senate, which was dominated by reactionaries, he always called a special meeting of the senate on Friday because so many of the rich reactionaries had gone home to their country estates and he could always get things through. There seems to be the same problem with the Government today. After 2000 years, the rich and the corrupt still have trouble working on a Friday.

Let us now get back to the narrow motion.

But Caesar did have a point.

As a matter of fact, I do not want to stray, except to say, in passing, that Caesar got done by his own, did he not, just like Thatcher?

So history repeats itself. Look at them sitting on the Government Front Bench. They support this narrow procedural motion. There used to be a pair of knee pads in Mrs. Thatcher's office for when they got on their hands and knees to grovel to her. As soon as her back was turned it was—I was going to say it was, "Hail Major", but it was not really. Most of them would like to get rid of him now because he does not know whether he is on this earth or fuller's earth.

As you reminded us, Mr. Deputy Speaker, we are talking about why the Government should not have moved this narrow procedural motion today. It is worth remembering that if the Government had not lost their business today, we would not have debated the motion. If we had proceeded through the normal business, the motion would have been moved at 2.30 pm. We might have objected to it and that would have been the end of it. I am right, am I not?

indicated assent.

We are debating the motion because of what happened earlier today. The Government have had their chance. They could have debated the measure the week after next. They could have moved an amendment to our amendment which proposed that the House rise for the Christmas recess on 24 December. The Government could have moved a compromise amendment proposing that the House rise on 22 December and we could have had more time to debate the measure.

It is outrageous for the Government to table a motion which will allow a measure to raise taxes throughout Britain to be pushed through in one day. If this had happened in the Soviet Union 10 or 15 years ago, it would have been expected. People would have said, "Well, that's par for the course. That's what they do here."

The Government are so contemptuous in the use of their power and think that they are going to be here for ever that they believe that they can do what they like. What we have done today is to shove a locker in the tub wheel, as we say in the pit, to stop the train from moving further. At some point, the Government must understand that they are out of step with people outside.

The Government are out of step on the question of tax and also in relation to the health service and housing. People are living on the streets while others live in the lap of luxury. The Government are not building houses. Those are the kind of issues that we should be debating. We should not be debating this narrow procedural motion. We should be debating a motion to allow local authorities to build houses in every town and city in Britain to put roofs over people's heads. Why did not the Leader of the House table such a motion?

Why are we not talking today about education and the fact that we need to spend £4 billion on repairs to schools? That shows the size of the problem. That spending would allow us to put people back to work. That is the kind of subject that we should be debating instead of this narrow procedural motion.

We could also be debating about the pits and arguing that all the pits should be kept open. Instead of debating this narrow procedural motion, we should be debating the reasons why we are throwing thousands of miners and others out of work. What this Government have got away with is a scandal.

More than 1 million people are on NHS waiting lists. It used to be said that we had to have nuclear weapons to stop the Russians from invading Britain. I said then that I did not believe that the Russians would want to join NHS waiting lists. It is all crazy.

At the fag end of this part of the Session we are talking about raising taxes once again, without any proper debate in Parliament. This is a debate about democracy and free speech. It is about gagging people who have the guts to stand up to this mob.

I wonder whether my hon. Friend is aware that it is being reported on the tapes that the Government have collapsed in Parliament today and have lost control of the agenda and that this is the first victory following the announcement by my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition of a policy of non-co-operation with the Government as a result of the way in which business is being managed. Does my hon. Friend believe that we may see further disasters for the Government, with more business lost, more incompetence and more mismanagement as signs of a Government who are beginning to lose their grip?

Order. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) may believe that, but we are discussing a narrow motion. I have already pointed that out and I should be grateful if the hon. Member would address his remarks to the motion.

I cannot follow my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) down that road because you have made it clear, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that we are considering a narrow procedural motion. I was about to say—this is in order—that, instead of having this narrow procedural motion, we should be talking about the problems of the people outside this place. [Interruption.] We could not do that because the Government had not got a majority here in order to keep it going. Tory Members should not blame Labour Members. None of my hon. Friends voted this morning, although they could have done so. They could have defeated the Government.

I hear about the Common Market Commissioners and the way in which they do things and about the lack of democracy in the Common Market. Not only do I hear people talk about it; I know that it is true. That is why I am against the Common Market. The Government are learning the methods of those commissars or commissioners in the Common Market—perhaps I was right the first time—by conducting business in this way. It is high time they understood that there are 651 Members of Parliament and about 270 represent the Labour party. The Tory party has about 230 Members of Parliament, so the Government should not assume that they can steamroller things through. They do not have a majority of 150 or 100, as they had in the past. They should understand that Parliament is more clearly divided now and they do not have that massive majority. The Government have been taught a lesson this morning. They have been shown that they do not have a majority all the time.

The Government should allow debate to take place in a proper manner. We should not be putting taxes up in the course of one day. That is why I hope that, on reflection the Leader of the House will decide not to move the motion but accept that there should be more than one day's debate and that, if necessary, we should continue until 22, 23 or 24 December fully to debate the tax increases.

Before I make one or two observations about what has been said in the debate, I simply acknowledge that, with his usual courtesy, the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) told me that he was not able to stay very long after his speech from the Labour Front Bench because of long-standing commitments. Of course, I want to make it clear that I understand that and do not regard it as discourtesy.

If I am allowed to use rather less tempered language and fall into the vernacular, much of what the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) said is completely up the creek. It was not Government business this morning which the Government had a duty to protect; it was private Members' business.

rose—

Perhaps I might just finish. There was a private Member's motion moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Sir D. Thompson) on a number of business and industry matters including the sort of issues that the hon. Gentleman said we should be discussing. As a result of the hon. Gentleman's manoeuvre, those matters have not been discussed and we are now discussing this procedural motion. There is no question of the Government's not being in control. The hon. Gentleman has wrecked private Members' business and demolished an opportunity to discuss the things that he said we should be talking about.

Let us get this on the record. I agree that the first three items of business today were private Members' business. But the next series of items is Government business. We are now debating Government business because the Government put down their motion. Do not let the Leader of the House kid anyone outside the House and in the media that Friday is not about Government business. Government business is on this agenda.

The truth is that the Government had a duty to protect the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Sir D. Thompson), who moved the original motion. Any decent Government would have had 40 Members here to protect him. The truth is that I did not lose any business, the hon. Gentleman did not lose any business and my hon. Friends did not lose any business. The Government shot the hon. Gentleman in the back.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. When I entered the building this morning, I was told by a Tory Member that they had been told by their Whips to continue at sufficient length to ensure that my motion was not reached.

That is not a point of order for the Chair, as the hon. Gentleman knows.

I repeat that what the hon. Member for Bolsover did today was effectively to wreck private Members' business, not Government business. He deprived the House of an opportunity to discuss exactly the sort of matters which he spent 10 minutes saying we should be talking about. His case simply does not stand up.

Is the Leader of the House saying that if private Members' business had operated in the normal way, the important motion that the Government have tabled would not have been debated at all, and would have been put through on the nod?

That would have depended on the hon. Gentleman and on his hon. Friends. The hon. Member for Garscadden acknowledged that the motion is helpful in the context in which we are talking—and I emphasise "in the context"—by stating that he did not intend to oppose the motion. It allows amendments to be made in a more orderly and straightforward way than would otherwise be possible. If the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) had been here and had objected to it, the motion would not have been passed.

Does the Leader of the House accept that the reason that the motion is down is that the Government are trying to put the Bill through in one day? Will not that allow amendments prior to Second Reading?

The hon. Gentleman is quite right on the background to the situation, which was why I emphasised that it was helpful in the context in which we are talking. We are talking about how the Bill should be dealt with next week. Such a motion would also have been required if the House had been dealing with the Bill in two days next week. There would still not have been a sufficient interval between day one and day two for the amendments to be unstarred. In those circumstances, the Government would have tabled a motion of this kind also.

Despite what was said earlier, there is nothing particularly unusual about the motion, although I accept that the situation more usually arises when there has been agreement in the usual channels to deal with such things rapidly. That is not the background in this case. Nevertheless, there is nothing unusual about the motion in the circumstances where the House is asked to deal with something in one day or a couple of days. A motion of this kind facilitates the tabling of amendments on that basis. The hon. Member for Garscadden suggested that he did not intend to oppose it, even though he did not like the background.

I am intervening only because I have never heard such utter baloney as I have heard this morning from the maverick hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and his hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer).

Had this been a Government day and had the Labour party felt as strongly as the maverick hon. Gentleman pretends that it does, would the Opposition Benches be so empty? Clearly it is not a Government day, but a private Members' day. Will not the way in which the hon. Gentleman is behaving only prejudice the type of argument that he says we ought to be having?

My hon. and learned Friend makes a good point, and it links with one that I had been tempted to make myself. I had almost decided not to make the point, but I have been tempted back again. When the hon. Member for Bolsover spoke so vigorously in favour of the House sitting almost until it was time for Christmas lunch, the number of hon. Members that he could persuade to be here to vote against my proposal for the dates of the recess was precisely five, if I remember rightly. That was out of a total number of about 650 hon. Members, excluding the Chair.

There were seven, including the Tellers.

Well, all right. That takes the figure fractionally above 1 per cent. of the total number of Members of Parliament.

I will make two other points quickly, because I do not want to detain the House for too long. The hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) gave the impression that, as Leader of the House, I had been scattering guillotines about like confetti. This is only the fourth guillotine in well over 18 months during which I have been the Leader of the House. I suspect that that has been a more sparing record than most in recent times. The figure contrasts with the five in one day which were once announced by the former right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale—that is how I most clearly remember him—Michael Foot.

I will make one other factual point quickly to the hon. Gentleman. I have been advised by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security and Disabled People that the type of secondary procedures that are involved in such Bills—that is to say negative rather than affirmative—mirrors the existing procedures. We shall look further at the point that the hon. Gentleman raised.

rose—

He has just got out of bed.

I was here earlier. Things have moved on since then. I apologise that I was not here for the beginning of the debate. I wish to ask the Leader of the House a simple factual question about the motion.

The hon. Gentleman has only just walked in.

I apologised that I was not here for the beginning of the debate. I was here earlier. I have been away and come back.

If the motion is defeated, will it be possible to go through the proceedings on the Bill? The normal procedure is that hon. Members can table amendments and so on only after Second Reading. If no motion has been passed to change that procedure, would the Government be unable to complete the proceedings in a day, irrespective of amendments?

Such guidance more properly belongs to the Chair. If I may venture into this delicate field—unless the Chair wishes to venture into it—I think that under those circumstances there would be many requests for the Chair to accept manuscript amendments between Second Reading and the Committee stage. I see that you are about to be helpful to me, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Yes, all amendments would become manuscript amendments.

As I suspected, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you have confirmed in your ever-helpful way what I could not say so definitely. I am grateful to you for stating that, in those circumstances, the Chair would accept manuscript amendments. So rejection of the motion would not prevent proceedings on the Bill.

I accept that people do not like what I have said that I shall propose next week. In that context, it has been acknowledged in various quarters that the motion is designed to be helpful to the House. It is designed to facilitate the drafting and tabling of amendments in a sensible way.

I do not need to make a huge number of further points, but I wish to make a few. I do not wish to stray out of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. A fair number of points have been made which perhaps relate more properly to the timetable motion that we shall table than to today's motion. I accept that the motions are a little difficult to disentangle.

It has been suggested that there has been hardly any time to reflect on or discuss the proposal on national insurance contributions. The proposal was announced in the March Budget this year. That was followed by five days of Budget debate. The proposal has been referred to in a variety of other debates by Opposition spokesmen in the intervening period. The proposal was also an integral part of the judgment in the latest Budget, on which we had a six-day debate.

The proposal was also in the Queen's Speech, so one could say that that was another four or five days of opportunity for debate on national insurance contributions. There have been at least 15 days on which hon. Members had the opportunity to debate the national insurance contributions proposal announced last March.

I accept that there has not been such an extensive opportunity to debate the proposal on statutory sick pay. Nevertheless, it is a public expenditure proposal produced in the context of the first unified Budget. At the request of the Opposition, we had an extra day of Budget debate. It was increased from five to six days specifically to allow further discussion of the public expenditure proposals. Not only has there been the opportunity to debate the national insurance proposal, but many references were made to the statutory sick pay proposal.

It has been suggested that the reason for today's motion is the convenience of the Government. That is not the case. The position is this. The national insurance proposals taken broadly—not specifically the proposals for which the Bill is required but the other proposals on employers' contributions—and the SSP proposals go hand in hand. If they are to be implemented in an orderly and sensible way as part of the Budget judgment, which is designed to ensure the continued economic recovery, they must be implemented at the beginning of the next financial year, in April.

We are talking about proposals which affect every firm in Britain, including many with massive payroll systems. Implementation needs to start by March at the latest. Before implementation, extensive secondary legislation needs to be prepared and passed, with the details discussed in the House. Unless we proceed in such a way, we shall not be able to carry through important ingredients of our policy, which are essential to the economic interests of the nation, and to do so in a manner with which businesses could be expected to cope sensibly. That is the basis for our actions.

As I have said, there will be many opportunities for debate. The Bills are very short—although I accept that the Maastricht Bill was also short—and are effectively only one clause, which will have the major effect that we are discussing. One Bill will increase national insurance contributions and the other will change the reimbursement for statutory sick pay. Those are the key clauses and they are basically simple propositions. The detail will come later, in secondary legislation. The national insurance re-rating exercise will be further debated in the House when the necessary instruments are introduced.

Against that background, it is not reasonable to suggest that the Government are somehow trying to steamroller things through. They are trying to achieve a sensible basis on which to proceed with the detail, which can be the subject of further examination and discussion.

In order not to trespass further on the time of the House, I shall conclude on the following two matters that did not seem to be fully understood, judging from some of the contributions to the debate. Repeated references have been made to the changes to national insurance contributions as if they were the same as a variety of other tax increases. Hon. Members know perfectly well that the national insurance fund operates on the basis that this year's contributions pay for this year's benefits, which are overwhelmingly retirement pensions. The money is required to ensure that the fund has a sound basis from which it can continue to pay those benefits and against a background in which, in line with something that the hon. Member for Garscadden is reported to have said in the papers, the Government have announced a significant increase, over and above the normal, in retirement pensions —the increase in relation to value added tax on fuel, which has to be paid out of the fund.

The national insurance proposal is not the same as any other tax increase, but is related to the need to meet the Government's and the country's commitments to retired people and to many others who are dependent on payments out of the national insurance fund.

The hon. Member for Garscadden said that he was not sure of the effects of the changes in statutory sick pay on industry and that there had been talk of some compensation package. The effects are very clear. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the proposal will reduce public spending by about £700 million a year, but the Government are also proposing to reduce the main rates of employers' national insurance contributions by 0·2 per cent. from next April and the lower rates by one percentage point. Those reductions in employers' contributions, which are the other side of the package, will be worth about £830 million, rising to £1 billion by 1996–97.

The net effect of the package of changes to statutory sick pay and employers' national insurance contributions, even allowing for one or two other factors that it could be argued need to be taken into account, is a reduction of at least £100 million in the costs imposed on British industry, but perhaps those are matters for debate when we come to the issues in other ways next week.

I shall not trespass further on the time of the House, but I must emphasise that further opportunities for debate will be properly provided by the Government.

I am grateful for the chance to bring to the attention of the House the awful tragedy of the death of my constituent, Paul Kenney, in Portugal, and I am happy to have the opportunity to do so in a much fuller way than would normally have been the case.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer), and for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone), not merely because they have provided me with extra time, which was not precisely the purpose of their enterprise, but especially for having, in true parliamentary style, shown the Government that this place is not merely for Government action. It is also for the Opposition and Back Benchers, and I am pleased to have an opportunity to put this matter before the House; through the House, to the nation; and, through the nation, to the Portuguese authorities and to their ambassador, who have behaved in a way that I did not believe possible for a civilised nation that belongs to our so-called European Union.

First, I shall outline the facts. Paul Kenney, aged 23, was found on a beach in Portimao, in Portugal, on 17 July this year. His neck was broken and his skull was smashed in. His family did not discover that he had died until four weeks later, despite many visits to the police and to hospital. They still do not know whether he was alive when he was taken to hospital, nor the cause of death, and they have been unable to get adequate information from the Portuguese authorities.

As a result of all that and my bleak failure to extract information from the Portuguese, the family have decided that there is only one way that they might ever find out what happend to their son—through parliamentary action. They wish to emphasise that they hope that, by taking such action, they will spare other parents and families from the tragedy that they have suffered and are suffering.

Members of the Kenney family were not in Portugal on holiday but as a result of another disaster—they could not get jobs in this country. Mr. and Mrs. Kenney went to Portugal from my Leicester constituency because they could not get jobs and had no prospect of getting jobs, so they bought a bar in Portimao. But, because of lack of business, Paul and Mr. Kenney came back. The father worked in a hosiery factory in Leicester and, although Paul Kenney was a qualified electrician, he could not find work in Leicester and did odd jobs back in Portimao.

So the Kenneys were not just passing by. They were not itinerants nor in Portugal for a brief holiday. They have a base in Portugal and a home in Portimao. The home had a telephone number and there were numbers on the body of the deceased when he went into hospital, a fact that becomes highly relevant.

I have a copy of Mrs. Kenney's statement, and the Portuguese ambassador has had the gall impliedly to criticise her for not providing a statement and to ask whether she will now make one. She has given statements; she has had not been visited by the police to ask whether she will help; and she has no kindness, sympathy, co-operation or help from a Government who are meant to be civilised and part of our decent world.

Mrs. Kenney tells me:

"I last saw my son Paul Kenney at 9.15 pm on Friday 16 July 1993 before he went to Praia da Rocha for the evening."

She said that it was not unusual for her not to see Paul for a little while but that she became worried when a friend phoned six days later to say that he had not turned up to help him as promised with a job on his swimming pool. She said:

"After two days of looking for Paul, I went to the Portimao hospital on 23 July 1993 with a Portuguese friend, taking Paul's passport, to inquire whether anyone had been admitted"—

anyone of his description—

"suffering memory loss, or unconscious or dead. The receptionist checked the computer and also checked a list of names which went back to 16 July 1993, but there was no record of any such admittance. All the time my son was lying next door in the morgue."

On the same evening of 23 July, Mrs. Kenney and her husband went to report their son as missing to the special police. They gave them a description of Paul's tattoo and a recent photograph and passport. They went back to the police on 24 and 25 July, and they were told that there was no news, that it was not known where their son was, that he had never been heard of, that he was not in that hospital and that there was no record of him.

On Friday 13 August 1993, four weeks after the boy died, the police rang and said that the parents should go to the hospital in Portimao, the same hospital where they had been told that neither Paul, nor anyone of that description, had been admitted. It was at that hospital that they later found their son in the morgue. He had been there, they were told, for four weeks, so he must have been there on 23 July.

Paul's father told me that, when he and his wife went to the hospital, they were told that their son had drowned. When they saw him in the morgue, he was fully dressed. The hospital said that it had no identification for him and yet Paul's dry wallet—it was not wet—was lying beside him, and it contained plenty of identification.

At the time, the police told the parents that they thought that Paul had drowned. The mother said that she had not believed that, as Paul would not have gone swimming fully clothed at that time of night. They went back to the hospital the following day for Paul's belongings. Hospital staff said that there were no clothes or other belongings, and that Paul had come to the hospital with only his shorts on. The staff said that it was possible that Paul had been swimming and had drowned, and that they had none of his clothes. They said that they had in their possession a doctor's report saying that he had fallen and broken his neck and skull. Yet the hospital had told his parents that Paul had drowned.

The parents were asked to leave and they refused. Another woman came with a bit of paper and took them to another building, to which they had been once and been told that none of Paul's possessions were contained there. Eventually, Paul's parents were given their son's wallet. It contained a small amount of money, his keys and seven local telephone numbers, and his bank number. The parents asked why, if the officials had the numbers, they had not phoned the home or the bank. They asked why hospital staff had not checked and whether they did not care. They asked why the staff had not made any attempt to find out who the boy was and why they did not give the information to the police. They asked why the police did not question the hospital and when the police found Paul in the morgue.

An autopsy had been performed on Paul on 10 August; on 13 August, the officials saw fit to tell the bereaved parents that their son was lying dead in the morgue. Eventually we extracted a copy of the death certificate, of which I have a translation. It does not take the matter forward much. It gives his name and details, such as the fact that he was an electrician. It states:

"Burial:

After the statutory period".

The parents told me that they would have wished to bring the body to Britain for another autopsy and to be buried here, but they could not afford it, so he was cremated and his ashes returned. They gave me the name of the so-called doctor. The document states that Paul was treated in a hospital establishment. The parents wanted to know whether he was treated, whether he was alive when he got to the hospital and, if he was alive, what treatment he was given. The officials said that Paul could not have been swimming because he was in his shorts, but he was not in his shorts.

In another life, I used to present cases against people for such criminal negligence. I have found no word in the English language to describe my contempt for those people, who showed, and still show, a total lack of decency and care, and who have failed to investigate this awful tragedy. Lo and behold, on the same report it says that there was cranial and brain stem injury due to an accidental fall. There then follows a question mark. In other words, it may or may not have happened that way. The father said he went to where the incident occurred and said that there was a cliff, but who knows whether or why his son was on a cliff and fell?

As the tale unfolds and the way in which people have prevaricated becomes apparent, one can understand why the family and I believe that there is far more to the story than meets the eye and why the entire disgraceful episode stinks of a cover-up.

The Kenneys did their best to find out what had happened to their son. I wish to pay tribute to the way in which our consuls all over the world help British citizens who are in trouble. I pay tribute to the diplomatic staff. I have seen them at work and they have helped my constituents over and over again for almost a quarter of a century.

I wish that I could pay similar tribute to the consul in this case—an isolated incident. The parents said that when they visited the consul concerned he told them to get a lawyer. That was not too helpful as they had already done so. The Minister will need to do some research on why that happened. If the consul had done his job properly, I do not believe that this problem would have arisen. The top job of a consul is not to help British people who have lost their passport or who have run out of money or who are in prison, although they are important tasks. The top job of a consul is to deal with a death and to help relatives to trace the person concerned. I hope that the Minister will take action and possibly appoint a new honorary consul in that town.

On 20 August, a month after the incident occurred, His Excellency Dr. Jose Manuel T. G. Pearce de Azevedo, the British consul, received the following letter regarding the subject from the harbour captain in Portimao:

"Regarding the subject raised in your memorandum… I am informing that as a matter of fact it was reported to this Office that an accident had taken place in Praia da Rocha on the 17th July … around 0045 hours, from which resulted the death of the person involved in the same.

It was not possible, at the time, to establish the identity of the person,"

I am not allowed to say that a Member of the House is lying, but I hope that I can say it is a blatant, appalling and disgraceful lie to say that they did not know who he was when his wallet was on the body. I am shocked that anyone in any position of authority in a country that is alleged to be civilised could behave in such a way. The letter continues by saying that identification is still not possible. Yet, by 20 August, Mr. Kenney had been identified, the police had told his parents and they had been to the hospital. For the consul to say that the body could not be identified is not inefficiency, but gross criminal negligence of the most disgusting kind.

The letter also says:

"… Report of the incident was sent to the State Attorney in the Judicial Court of Portimao, who took over the proceedings, and to whom your Excellency should address all enquiries regarding the subject.

Best regards,"

Order. I hesitate to intervene, but it may be convenient to remind the hon. and learned Gentleman that it is not in order to criticise someone from a friendly country except on a substantive motion. I think that he will understand that.

I understand it, but I shall seek the best way to get round it as I do not regard a friendly nation as one that says that it cannot identify a body when identity has already been established in the morgue, and when it does not inform the parents of the death. In deference to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall read out the correspondence and the early-day motion. I hope that that will be appropriate.

The case speaks for itself.

I thank the hon. Gentleman, it does speak for itself. If the authorities are not ashamed of themselves, they should be.

After the Kenney family had failed to get any information about the death of their son—about how and why it had happened—they came to me. I am so pleased that they did. My job is to look after people like them and at least I could share their frustration. I immediately telephoned the ambassador who was, allegedly, away. The embassy promised that the ambassador would contact me; of course he did not. I contacted the ambassador on 20 September, on 22 October, on 9 November, on 22 November and on 29 November, and I have got nowhere at all.

A fax was sent to the ambassador in which my very able assistant Jessica Bawden wrote:

"As discussed in Mr. Janner's telephone conversation this morning, please would you ask the Ambassador to look at this urgent case on his return and could you also call to confirm receipt of the fax."

The reply, I am afraid, got us absolutely nowhere. It was not from the ambassador, but from a junior official.

The first thing I got out of the ambassador was on 26 October when I had written to complain. The first reply was from the first secretary. The ambassador himself did not even bother to answer. The first secretary wrote:

"His Excellency the Ambassador"—

whom I am not allowed to criticise because he is the ambassador of a friendly nation—

"has asked me to acknowledge your letter of the 7th October concerning Mr. Paul Kenney's death in Portugal last July, and to let you know that your letters have already been conveyed to the appropriate Portuguese authorities.

I can assure you that there is no reluctance whatsoever from my authorities to help Mr. Kenney's parents finding out the circumstances that took place regarding this very sad event".

That is how Mr. Kenney's death was described; the letter was in English and was not a translation. The letter continued:

"once all the necessary procedures to establish the facts are completed, my authorities will notify us of their findings and conclusions.

I will not fail to contact you as soon as a reply is received." That was written on 15 October.

Unfortunately, we got nowhere. On 22 October, I wrote the following letter to the ambassador personally:

"I have now been serving my constituents for 23 years and I have never been treated by any Ambassador with such discourtesy as you have seen fit to accord to me in connection with the case of the Kenney family. When I first raised this tragic and urgent matter with your Embassy, you were away and I was assured that you would contact me personally on your return. You did not. I was then promised that the matter would be dealt with in your country as a matter of urgency. It was not. And now I have received a letter from your First Secretary, again delaying.

There is a normal courtesy in this country that when a Member of Parliament writes to a Minister or to an Ambassador, he or she receives at least a personal reply. You have not even had the decency to do that, in a case involving the death of a constituent in your country.

I now propose to see my constituents next week and, if they agree, to start an open parliamentary campaign. I was under the impression that—normal kindnesses and courtesies apart—you would want to avoid the inevitable, massive and adverse publicity that your country will receive—from all sections of the Press —about this terrible tragedy.

As I have always had good relations with your predecessors"—

That is not quite accurate. There was an occasion when there were leaks from gas heaters in the Algarve, as some hon. Members may remember. One of my constituents was killed and the Portuguese were not very helpful then. However, I was trying to be as friendly as my good nature would permit, which is not very friendly. My letter continued by saying that I had

"a warm regard for Portugal—I thought I would write you this strictly personal letter, in a final attempt to evoke a response from you and action from your authorities."

The reply from the ambassador was as follows:

"I very much regret the impression you got about the way Mr. Kenney's case is being handled by this Embassy.

After your first contact with the Chargéd'Affaires, the matter was urgently referred to our authorities and the First Secretary's letter only confirmed that a subsequent request of information was made to our Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

As you will know these matters tend to take some time to be fully investigated".

That letter was written on 26 October, yet we still do not know how this young man died.

The reply continued:

"We quite understand the distress of Mr. Kenney's family".

The Portuguese authorities "quite understand" it? They do not apologise and they do not say that they are sorry for the way in which they handled the matter. They do not even offer a word of sympathy. They say:

"We quite understand the distress Mr. Kenney's family and your concern with this problem, but I can assure you that all efforts are being made by this Embassy to speed up the matter".

If that is how they make "all efforts", I wonder what happens when they do not. Matters would not get very far. My reply on 9 November, after waiting a while, said:

"Thank you for your letter of the 26th October. Please would you inform your authorities that, in my view and in that of the family, there is no excuse whatever for the massive delay in responding to this tragic complaint. In view of your letter, I shall withhold parliamentary action until the start of the next session. If precise results are not available by the 16th November, then it would be wrong for me to resist any further my constituents' massive anger at the way they have been treated and I shall raise the matter in Parliament without further delay."

We go nowhere.

On 22 November, I wrote another letter:

"Not having had even the courtesy of a reply to my letter to you, I am now raising this disgraceful matter in Parliament and with the Foreign Secretary. I am shocked that your country would see fit to behave in the way that it has done—and, if I may respectfully say so, I have never known an Embassy to treat a Member of Parliament in a matter involving a death of this sort with such total lack of concern.

The only documentation that has now been received is from your Ministry of Marine—and I enclose copies for your information— just in case you are interested."

He was not.

On 29 November, I wrote another letter to the alleged ambassador:

"I have failed to get results by any other means and I now enclose the Early Day Motion which I shall table in the House this week. I am so sorry that you have seen fit to handle this tragedy in such an unworthy fashion. I have always had deep respect for your great country and I am shocked that you and your authorities would see fit to behave in this way.

I am sending copies of the Early Day Motion and of this correspondence to the Foreign Secretary".

I also informed him that I would seek a debate, which happily today I have secured.

Early-day motion 155 reads:

"That this House condemns the Portuguese Government and authorities for its failure to investigate the tragic death of Paul Kenney, whilst on holiday in Portugal in July; is outraged that the Portuguese authorities failed to take any steps to trace Paul's family, who were in Portugal at the time and were only informed of his death after his parents traced him to a local hospital, where the body had lain for four weeks after being found on a beach in Portimao, although on several visits to the hospital his parents were told that no person of his description had been admitted; expresses its dismay that even though Paul had telphone numbers on his person that would have helped identify him, neither the police nor the hospital made any effort to trace his next of kin; condemns the extraordinary discourtesy of the Portuguese Ambassador and his staff towards the honourable Member for Leicester, West, when he sought to progress this matter on behalf of his constituents".

That is what matters. It is not what they do to Members of Parliament. We are servants of our constituents. It does not matter on which side of the House we sit, we are put in this place to look after our constituents. When we get in touch with an ambassador for a constituent whose son has died, it is not our amour propre; it is our attempt to get results for our constituents.

The motion continues.

"and demands that the Portuguese Government now take immediate action to investigate Paul Kenney's death, to inform the bereaved family of its causes and circumstances, and to apologise for the disgraceful way in which it has treated them and their awful tragedy."

I am very much obliged to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for the help that it has provided. I have had letters from the Minister of State and from the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, who is being good enough to reply to the debate. I know, because of the letters—I shall not read them out—and my conversations with the right hon. and hon. Gentlemen that they care about this matter and that they will do their best to help us. I know that they are as shocked as I am at the way in which this awful tragedy has been treated. I look forward to hearing from the Minister in due course what steps they will take to try to give the parents at least the knowledge of what happened to their son.

The suggestion that this matter is sub judice, which has been alleged in a letter to me and the Minister, is absolute rubbish. There is no reason whatever why the Portuguese authorities should not tell us what happened. I have here an unidentified document, which comes from Portugal, and says:

"After consulting the Hospital registry on the arrival of the deceased persons and their property, it was verified that on 17/7/93 a corpse, of the male sex, with no identification",—

no identification?—

"had been brought in to the Emergencies' Department by the Voluntary Fire Brigade of Portimao."

That was not true either. I shall come to that in a moment.

"A wallet containing several papers and money in the amount of 8 thousand escudos was found with the deceased."

How can they say that he was not indentifiable when his wallet was there?

"These were all registered in the Hospital's property registry book and later on collected by a person of English nationality who identified herself as the mother"—

as if there were some doubt about it; it is a disgusting document—

"In accordance with the information provided by the staff involved in this case—registration and delivery of the property—the various papers found in the wallet had nothing on them to allow identification of the body."

If that is not a patent, blatant, lie, I do not know what is. After all, the same document refers to a wallet containing his identification.

"On 19/7/93, the Hospital conveyed the situation to the Deputy State Attorney of the Judiciary Court of Portimao as is common practice in similar situations—arrival of corpses."

I shall come to that in a moment, because I do not believe that British people should go on holiday to Portugal if they treat people in this way.

"Regarding this matter, and at our request, we were later informed by this Court that the proceedings were under investigation, at the stage of inquiry and therefore, sub judice. We would like to point out that the transfer of the corpse to the Hospital, whose death occurred outside the Hospital, was due to the fact that the existing morgue, at our premises, is jointly used by the forensic and pathology services and by the District Hospital of Portimao, in accordance with an agreement with the Ministry of Justice"—

as if any one cares. I should not have thought that the fact that organisations shared a morgue prevented them from identifying the bodies in it.

At last I received a letter from the ambassador. It is a page and a half long and helps us not at all. I shall read it, because it speaks for itself. As the hon. Member for Littleborough and Saddleworth (Mr. Dickens) was good enough to point out, it is important that we should allow these people to speak for themselves—degrading for them as it must be. The letter reads as follows:

"Dear Mr. Janner,

Thank you for your letter of 9th November regarding the death of Mr. Paul Kenney. Following your previous letter, dated 22nd October, I have conveyed to my authorities that it would be very helpful to have some kind of preliminary or even incomplete information on the enquiry on Mr. Kenney if it would not be possible to have, in the short term, a complete report addressing in full Mrs. Carla Kenney's concerns on the very unfortunate events related with her son's death.

Although I would rather prefer to give you a comprehensive report, I am afraid that, pending the conclusion of the enquiry conducted by the State Attorney in the Judicial Court of Portimão I will have no more than incomplete answers to Mr. Paul Kenney's family.

Besides the Court, this case is dealt with by other departments of the Portuguese Administration, mainly the Ministries of Health and Home Affairs.

The conclusions of the enquiry carried out by the Ministry for Home Affairs are not yet available."

I remind the House that the letter is dated 3 December and that the accident—if it was an accident—and the death occurred on 17 July, some six months before.

"I can inform you I have just received a report from the Health Minister's office concerning the events … I am sending herewith a tentative translation"—

whatever that may mean—

"of the above-mentioned report and a copy of the annexed, untranslated, document sent by the Health Ministry."

I have not read the untranslated document. My Spanish is excellent but my Portuguese, I am pleased to say, does not exist. The document that I read to the House is clearly that document.

The ambassador then refers to the seven questions originally asked by Mrs. Kenney about how the death happened, of which I now remind the House:

"Why was there no record of Paul ever entering the hospital? Was he alive at any time in the hospital? Why did the hospital not inform the police that they had Paul's body with his wallet containing seven Portimao phone numbers? As the police arrived on the beach after the ambulance 115 had taken Paul to the hospital, why did they not follow it? Why do the hospital insist Paul had no clothes on when he entered the hospital, when the witness found him on the beach fully clothed on 17 July 1993? Why did four weeks elapse without the hospital, the Special Police or the Maritime Police contracting me about my son's death? Why did the police interview the witness one week after finding Paul on the beach."

Those are the mother's perfectly reasonable questions. Here is the ambassador's answer:

"I think you will agree; that some of them"

—the questions—

"have already been answered, namely by the report from the Hospital."

I do not agree, none of them had been answered.

"There was no record of Mr. Paul Kenney ever entering the hospital because the corpse afterwards identified by Mrs. Kenney was registered as 'unidentified'".

She had asked the staff whether they had had anyone in of that description. Paul had the tattoo on his arm; he had the wallet with him; he had his identification on him.

The answer continues:

"the fact was forwarded to the local services of the State Attorney, as demanded by the practice in similar circumstances. The registry staff did not find elements which allowed identification of the body."

This man has not bothered to read the correspondence. He does not know anything. He has not taken the care and trouble to look.

"The unidentified person arrived at the hospital already dead".

Did he? Who said so? One of the reports that I have just read to the House said that he was treated at the hospital. That answers another of Mrs. Carla Kenney's concerns.

"As to the questions involving the members of Police forces, I am afraid the respective answers will not be obtained before the completion of the inquiry by the State Attorney."

Will we be alive to see that, Mr. Deputy Speaker? I hope SO.

"As I have had the occasion to tell you before, I am well aware of the distress caused to Mrs. Carla Kenney, and I sincerely hope that her concerns will be fully answered."

Once again there is no word of kindness, sympathy or understanding.

"Your letter dated 29th November was received during the typing of the translation of the report … I deeply regret the impression you have about the way the Portuguese authorities are handling this case.

The Embassy will continue to pursue its utmost efforts to help your constituent and yourself in this unfortunate matter."

If those are its utmost efforts, what are the rest like? I have never before seen a letter like that.

I have prepared a batch of further questions, which I will place before the House. I invite the Government to ask the Portuguese ambassador and Portuguese Government to inquire into the issues raised by my questions, as I will.

There is no mention of the previous correspondence with me or the questions that I asked. I asked a great series—a fax in late September and letters on the 22 September, 29 November and 22 November. The ambassador asked for a complete report from Mrs. Carla Kenney for the first time. Why did he not ask for it before if they needed it? Why does he not ask Mrs. Kenney herself? She has been living in Portimao since Paul's death. She has only come to this country today to listen to the debate about her son. The police have never visited Mrs. Kenney to ask for a report.

The ambassador says that he sends a "tentative" translation. What is that? Mr. and Mrs. Kenney question much of what is contained in the translated hospital report. Why has it taken almost five months to get a report from the hospital? The excuse for there being no record of a body was that the corpse was unidentified. That is obviously unacceptable. Do hospitals in Portugal not keep records of unidentified bodies that arrive at the hospitals? Mrs. Kenney specifically asked whether any bodies had been brought in and was told that none had been. Why were the police not informed that there was an unidentified corpse at the hospital? Why is a police investigation being carried out now, five months later?

Why would the typing of the translations prevent the ambassador from writing to me for a week? Why did he not use the telephone? The ambassador calls this an unfortunate matter. That is the understatement of the century. As for the hospital report that he saw fit to send, the body was not brought to the hospital by a voluntary fire brigade vehicle; witnesses saw it being taken from the beach by a 115 Portuguese ambulance.

As for the allegation that there was no identification on the body, Portuguese bank numbers and local telephone numbers cannot amount to no identification. Why were the personal belongings kept separate from the body? Why did officials not connect the unidentified personal belongings with the unidentified body? Is it not true that the papers on the body would have enabled identification? Why did the police not go down the road to the bank and check the bank numbers or telephone the Portimao numbers?

If the situation was conveyed to the judiciary court of Portimao on 19 July, why did the police not investigate? Why do we have no result? Why do the parents still not know how their son died? The ambassador blames the confusion on the fact that the morgue is used jointly by the forensic and pathology departments. Why should that be a problem?

I have handled many difficult cases for my constituents in my time, but this is certainly the worst. It could be pure, blatant negligence on the part of the authorities in Portimao, in which case I would have expected the ambassador to have said, "I have gone into this. I am terribly sorry, there has been a mistake." That is what decent people would do. They certainly would not try to justify the treatment that my constituents have been given.

I wish to pay tribute to the courage of the Kenney family. I saw Mr. Kenney before we went public, and I asked him again, "Are you sure that you want to raise this matter in the House of Commons and publicly? It opens up wounds and keeps them open. Would you not prefer—as many of my constituents do when hit by tragedy—to say that you have done your best, to close it and to try to live with the memory of your son without knowing what happened to him?" He said no for two reasons. First, he said that the family had to know what had happened to their lad. Secondly, they did not want the same thing to happen to anyone else's family or anyone else's son. I am proud to be of service to them. I think that they are great people and I wish that the circumstances were not such a tragedy.

I would not go to Portugal until this matter is cleared up. If that is the way the Portuguese treat people, the further we keep away from them the better. I would advise the Portuguese authorities not to spend millions of pounds on advertising their holidays, but to spend just a little time trying to clear up the tragedy that has struck a British citizen. Instead of sending anodyne letters—I do not know to whom they thought they were sending them if they thought that I would sit back and just take them—they should investigate properly. I suggest that British people should express their disgust at this awful treatment.

Although the case involves one person and one family, it has a symbolism about it. It is right that we should have the opportunity, as Back Benchers, to raise matters concerning even one citizen and one family, and I am so grateful for that opportunity.

I hope that the Minister will be kind enough to say what the Government of this country will do to try to get put right what the Government of an allegedly friendly country have deliberately, I think, failed to do. I hope that the Government will try to clear up some of the mystery, which makes the family believe that their son did not die a natural death.

I wonder whether I may make a brief contribution. May I say, as a Conservative politician to a Labour politician, that today is the first time in my 15 years in the House that I have heard a constituency case put so well. The House can tell that I feel emotional having heard all the details.

The thing that struck me most was the lack of compassion, tenderness, understanding in any of the communiqués to the Kenney family. That is an absolute disgrace and I hope that somehow the Foreign Office can get to the bottom of it on behalf of the constituent of the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner). I give the hon. and learned Gentleman full marks, because I do not not think that a constituency case could have been presented better.

I think that we were all impressed by the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner) and the way in which he represented his constituents, Mr. and Mrs. Kenney, and brought this important case to the attention of the House. I should like to outline the action taken by the British Government on behalf of the family since Paul Kenney's death. I will outline separately the action taken by the honorary consul in Portimao, in whose consular district the death occurred and the consul in Lisbon, who later became involved when matters were taken to a higher level.

Before I do that, I would, of course, like to express my sincere condolences to the Kenney family during what must still be a distressing and deeply traumatic time. Before I come to the history of events, I should add that I shall write to the Portuguese ambassador on Monday, as soon as Hansard is available, to give him a copy of the debate at the earliest possible opportunity.

On 16 August 1993, Mrs. Carla Kenney, the co-owner with her husband, Mr. John Raymond Kenney, of a bar in Portimao, contacted the British consulate in Portimao for the first time about her son's death. The honorary consul asked her to come into the consulate to speak to him about it immediately. She told him that her son's body had been in the hospital mortuary in Portimao for one month without anyone informing her.

Mrs. Kenney told the honorary consul in Portimao that her son had left home on 16 July to go to a local bar. When he did not return she made inquiries. She reported his disappearance to the local authorities on 23 And 26 July and again on 5 August. She gave a full description of her son and identifying marks. It was not until 13 August that she was telephoned by the local police and asked to go to the hospital in Portimao to identify her son's body, at the mortuary, which she did. Mrs. Kenney did not contact the consulate during this time.

From her inquiries, Mrs. Kenney found out that Paul Kenney left the bar at about 11.30 pm on 16 July. A local Portuguese lady told her that she had found the body on the beach at Praia da Rocha, called the maritime police from a local restaurant and that the body was taken to the mortuary.

At a meeting on 16 August, the honorary consul in Portimao advised the family to appoint a lawyer immediately to look into the matter. He gave Mr. and Mrs. Kenney a list of lawyers. Mrs. Kenney knew one of them and our honorary consul telephoned his office. In the lawyer's absence, he left a message, asking him to contact Mr. and Mrs. Kenney as soon as possible.

Mr. and Mrs. Kenney visited the consulate again on 20 August. They said that they had established that Portimao hospital had had their son's documents all along, but had not informed the police. His wallet had apparently contained a bank statement and other documents which could have helped to identify him.

As soon as our honorary consul in Portimao heard from Mrs. Kenney what had happened, he spoke to the port captain in Portimao on 20 August. He followed up that conversation with an official written request to the naval authorities and the local court, asking for a report of events. The port captain replied formally on 25 August, saying that he had been informed of the accident on 17 July, but, as his authorities had been unable to identify the body, they had passed the matter to the local court to deal with. The court was in recess at the time so the consul wrote again to them, asking for a report. At the request of the consul in Lisbon, the honorary consul wrote formally to the court on 16 September to request the reports.

The honorary consul in Portimao also contacted the local public prosecutor informally to try to find out what had happened. The public prosecutor said that he had received an official request for information from the Ministry of Justice acting on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The case was sub judice and he could not release the reports. The deputy public prosecutor confirmed that in a letter on 29 September. He was told that the Ministry of Health had also requested a report from the local hospital.

Our honorary consul in Portimao wrote to the court again on 4 October and was told on 8 October that the matter was still sub judice. Our consulate in Lisbon was similary told that, for the same reason, it could not have copies of the reports. The honorary consul called the deputy public prosecutor again on 3 December and was told the same thing. The consul was told that the local police were due to give the public prosecutor's office a report on the inquest soon. The report would also indicate a response from the local health authorities.

I am satisfied that the honorary consul in Portimao did everything that could reasonably be expected of him as soon as Mrs. Kenney alerted him to the problem. He was in touch throughout with Her Majesty's consul in Lisbon, to whom he is answerable. Our consulate in Lisbon in turn informed and consulted the consular department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The action taken by the consul in Lisbon was also appropriate and timely; that is, he reinforced the advice that the family consult a lawyer and, now being aware of the problem of delay in notification, took that up with the Portuguese authorities.

I shall outline what the consul did. He wrote to Mr. and Mrs. Kenney at their address in Portugal on 31 August to explain what action the consul in Portimao had taken on their behalf. He again suggested that they take the matter up through a lawyer to try to obtain further information from the court and about gaining access to some money left in a bank by Paul Kenney. The consul also told them how they could lodge an official complaint with the Portugese Ministry of Health.

On 14 September, in the absence of any satisfactory response to the inquiries made by our consul in Portimao, the British Embassy sent an official note to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, asking why the consulate had not been informed of Paul Kenney's death in spite of Portugal's obligations under the Vienna convention on consular relations. That convention requires the host country to notify all deaths of foreigners without delay to the consul of the country concerned if the information is available to it. The embassy asked why the family had not been informed until a month after Paul's death. It asked for a report into the action taken by the Portuguese authorities after Paul Kenney's body was found.

In the absence of a reply to the embassy's note, our consul in Lisbon arranged a meeting with the acting head of consular matters in the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 5 November. She—the official—undertook to ensure that the consul was given the information we sought as soon as possible by the Portuguese Ministry of Justice and Procurator General.

On 6 December, the ambassador in Lisbon spoke in similar terms to the senior responsible official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and our consul again raised the matter with the acting head of the Foreign Ministry's consular department. Both undertook to ensure that the embassy received a reply to the note of 14 September as soon as possible. The following day, however, the Ministry called the consulate to say that it had received a letter from the Attorney-General's office saying that it could not provide the police and autopsy reports at that stage.

I have described in some detail the action taken so far by the consuls in Portimão and Lisbon to try to establish why Mr. and Mrs. Kenney were not told straight away of their son's death when means of identification were available. We in the Foreign Office also need to know why our consul was not similarly informed in accordance with the Vienna convention.

It will be clear to the House from my account and from that of the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West that no satisfactory explanation for these matters has so far been given. I fully appreciate and share the hon. and learned Gentleman's concern about the case. He has tried to obtain answers from the Portuguese authorities, but has been unable to do so.

All of us sympathise with the anger of Mr. and Mrs. Kenney. It is most distressing for the family not to know what happened. The time that it is taking to conclude the inquiry in Portugal is beyond our control. Although we cannot influence the legal process, we will press the Portuguese to reach a conclusion as soon as possible so that the family will know what happened.

However, it is extremely unsatisfactory that the Portuguese authorities have not answered the two main points that we have made about the delay in informing the next of kin for nearly a month and not telling our consul of the death of a British national. I am aware that Paul Kenney's family believes that there has been a cover up. I can well understand their concern, but I cannot express my final opinion on the conduct of the case at present. However, I can assure Paul Kenney's family that, beyond what I have said, we have been given no further information as to why it took the hospital nearly a month to contact the next of kin.

I can say two further things. First, I assure the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West—and he will take this point to his constituents—that we will continue to press for an explanation of why they were not told of their son's death. Secondly, we will give the record of this debate to the Portuguese authorities so that they will appreciate not just the anger, but the anguish of Paul Kenney's parents and the need for a swift answer after so much unreasonable delay.

I thank the Minister for what he has said and for giving way. Is it not a matter of grave concern that now that so much time has passed, no one will ever know what has happened, because the evidence will have become stale?

Will the Minister ask his two questions and also follow up the questions that I asked the ambassador and which I set out in my speech and will provide to him? In that way, we will try to obtain much more detailed replies and not the kind of response, which I expect will eventually be sent, of, "So sorry we did not let you or them know because something went wrong." If it is possible, we want to find out, even at this stage, what happened to this young man.

In the letter that I have said that I will write to the Portuguese authorities, I will draw attention to the particular questions that the hon. and learned Gentleman has raised. We shall, of course, keep the hon. and learned Gentleman and his constituents fully informed as we continue to press the Portuguese authorities for an explanation. They are fully aware of the hon. and learned Gentleman's efforts so far to bring this matter to the attention of the public. I hope that they will take note of all the publicity caused this week and acknowledge that cases like this have a negative impact on Portugal's image in the United Kingdom.