HC Deb 05 April 1955 vol 539 cc1004-7
Mr. Attlee

May I ask the Lord Privy Seal, as Leader of the House, whether it has been brought to his notice that there is an entirely new practice on the part of Ministers of being present in the House when Questions are put to their Departments and leaving the reply to an Under-Secretary? It is quite a new thing. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will agree that it was never done formerly.

The House is entitled to have a reply from a responsible Minister. An Under-Secretary is not responsible for a Department. Under-secretaries may be used when the Ministers cannot attend the House, or on a particular occasion when the Under-Secretary has been put in charge of a particular item of business. The growing practice now, to which I have referred, is quite new. For example, the President of the Board of Trade sat here when answers were being given by a Parliamentary Secretary, who could not answer any policy Questions. He always had to refer to his right hon. Friend, when his right lion. Friend was sitting there taking no notice. It really is an insult to the House.

Mr. Crookshank

Exception has not been taken to this practice before; indeed, it has been going on for a very long time. It has been the practice for a considerable while for Questions to be divided between the Ministers in a Department. So far as the Board of Trade is concerned, I understand that the practice has been that my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade always answers Question on Tuesdays and Thursdays when they are top of the list. In the weeks when, on Tuesdays, they fall below No. 1—or rather it is the other way round, when they climb up towards No. I—he has left it to the Minister of State, Board of Trade, and the Parliamentary Secretary to reply on his behalf. That has happened for a long time and has happened in many other Departments.

The right hon. Gentleman is taking exception to this practice now, but he may accept it as having been done without protest. Had there been a protest it could have been looked into. There has not been a protest either this Session, in the Session before, or for some time before that. if the right hon. Gentleman is taking exception to the fact that the President of the Board of Trade was here in person, and was not answering Questions the explanation which I would like to give to the right hon. Gentleman is that today certain Questions about cotton had been transferred from the Prime Minister's list to my right hon. Friend's, and as the Questions were specifically addressed in the first place to the Prime Minister, and my right hon. Friend had been asked to reply instead of the Prime Minister, he thought it was more courteous to the House to break the rule which he had kept for so long by himself answering those Questions. It is not always easy, of course, for a Minister to gauge the exact moment when his Questions will be called, so my right hon. Friend was here a little ahead of time.

Mr. Attlee

I have never heard of this practice. It has been the practice for the Prime Minister to answer Questions on a certain day, but I have never heard of other Ministers doing it. Ministers are supposed to be here to answer Questions. It is quite true that if a Question is a long way down the list, and is not likely to be reached, it may be left to an Under-Secretary or Parliamentary Secretary, but today the President of the Board of Trade's Questions started at No. 17. If there is nothing else taking him away, it is the duty of a Minister to answer the Questions put on the Order Paper for answer by him. He is the responsible Minister, and not the Parliamentary Secretary. If this is the practice which has crept in, it is quite an innovation, and the sooner it is stopped the better.

Mr. Crookshank

I really cannot accept that. The right hon. Gentleman's memory is completely at fault. When I was Financial Secretary, in 1939, I answered Questions which were addressed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Mr. Attlee

The right hon. Gentleman is quite right, because in Treasury work certain questions come within the Department of the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. But that is quite a different matter from an Under-Secretary answering for a Department when he has no responsibility for it.

Mr. Crookshank

I cannot accept that explanation either. I said that I answered on behalf of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There are Questions put down to the Financial Secretary, but I was not referring to those. As long ago as 1939, junior Ministers answered when occasion offered, or necessity compelled, on behalf of senior Ministers.

Mr. H. Wilson

During the whole lifetime of the Labour Government, and during the ten years of office of Sir Stafford Cripps himself, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Helens (Sir H. Shawcross), and myself, there was never an occasion like this afternoon when the President of the Board of Trade was present and was not answering Questions put to his Department. We all recognise the position in the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation, where the Parliamentary Secretary may have specialised questions to answer on road safety, but it is quite unheard of for the President of the Board of Trade to answer certain Questions and to leave others to be dealt with by the Parliamentary Secretary or the Minister of State, Board of Trade.

Mr. Crookshank

I can only repeat that the practice is not unheard of. It might even be a good thing for junior Ministers to gain experience in answering Questions.

Air Commodore Harvey

Is it not a fact that during the lifetime of the Labour Government there was frequently no Minister at all representative of a Department on the Front Bench?