HC Deb 24 March 1970 vol 798 cc1390-400

Motion made, and Question proposea, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Armstrong.]

12.35 a.m.

Mr. Kenneth Lewis (Rutland and Stamford)

I am glad that the Minister without Portfolio and Deputy Leader of the House of Commons is joining me in my penance and the punishment I am inflicting on both myself and him at this late hour. I do not know whether he is more surprised to be replying or that he was brought into the Cabinet to advise on election strategy on Thursday.

Mr. Speaker

Order. The hon. Gentleman has chosen a subject for the debate. I hope that he will talk about it.

Mr. Lewis

When I selected this subject there was some doubt whether it was acceptable because of the question of Ministerial responsibility. I said that there was an overall responsibility of someone for the Government, and I did not mind whether it was the Prime Minister, the Leader of the House or his deputy.

I think that the right hon. Gentleman, as Deputy Leader of the House, would agree that the whole subject of Question Time is important, because it should be the most compelling of all the parts of our procedure. It has everything—local and national impact; confrontation with the Executive, which is its purpose; high drama and excitement; and the straight-forward but important probing by one hon. Member of another who happens to be a Minister. Yet many people have said in recent years that Question Time is losing its impact. If that is so, and if it is allowed to be so, it is a serious matter and should concern the right hon. Gentleman.

The Fifth Report of the Select Committee on Procedure, 1966–67, dealt with Questions. I want only briefly to deal with two matters mentioned in its report—the transfer of Questions by one Minister to another and the answering together of two Questions put by one hon. Member. I am not satisfied that the transfer of Questions is not a delaying ploy by Ministers. Sometimes Ministers have a split responsibility. Departments edge up on one another. Therefore, sometimes one Minister can as well answer as another. If a Question is transferred late to another Minister when it need not be, the Member concerned has lost his place in the queue of Questions. The Minister gains an advantage, because it is virtually certain that that Question gets a Written Answer. There is too much delay in this transfer and too much unnecessary transfer. If the Table Office can give us a quick decision, so also should the Minister with all the staff behind him. The Table Office serves the House and its Members splendidly. It can show the Executive how to move quickly in the interests of democracy.

My second point is the practice of answering one Member's two Questions together. This is growing, and in recent weeks I have seen at least three or four examples. If a Member wishes to use up his two-Question allowance by putting Questions with a slight variation, that is a matter for him. He should at least receive two answers so that he can put two supplementaries. After all, he is only allowed two Questions. Ministers should not put together Questions tabled by hon. Members even if they are similar. My main complaint is the failure of Ministers to give adequate answers. Too frequently answers are evasive, indifferent, slippery, noncommittal, unforthcoming and defensive. This is no help to democracy.

I remember the present Secretary of State for Social Services when Leader of the House arriving at his position with a special theme song, that he wanted to strengthen Parliament against the Executive. It was a good motto for any Leader of the House. The right hon. Gentleman is now in a different job, and even his hon. Friends are disenchanted with the way he answers Questions. In The Guardian last week, on 20th March, there was an item which said: Labour M.P.s Policy Group"— I believe that the chairman is the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Moonman)— on Mental Health criticised the Government for its failure to give adequate answers to questions. They said first that answers were too long, second the figures were not available and third the information was not given. If that is what hon. Members opposite think, what about the Opposition? Some of the answers which we get are very interesting. They are repeated by Ministers, as can be seen when looking through HANSARD. The first answer is, "I refer the hon. Member to an answer I gave on such-and-such a date to another hon. Member." I thought that the best reply to that was made by the late Sir Cyril Osborne, who said, "I cannot remember the answer given to my hon. Friend and, therefore, the answer I have had is useless and stupid." Ministers continue to do this.

Then there is the retort of many Ministers who do not know the answer. They say, "That supplementary question is really not for my right hon. Frien". There are other Ministers who say, "I require notice of that question"—as though they have not already had notice, three weeks or so. Some Ministers reply, "This is being kept under constant review". The matters that this Government are keeping under constant review must lead to dispatch boxes being filled with papers. Again there is the answer, "I have nothing to add," or "I am setting up a committee". There must be dozens of committees sitting in Whitehall, set up in response to Questions because a Minister did not know the answer. There must be many people discussing something or nothing. No one remembers them, and presumably they fade away.

There is an old formula of the House which I find looking through HANSARD is being used more and more. It is: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment as soon as possible. It is a good test of any Government to see how often this formula is used. Of course, if Members actually followed through that formula and were to have Adjournment debates there would be such a queue that I certainly would not be having this opportunity tonight.

I wonder what the right hon. Gentleman's reactions would be if some of the answers given in the House by his colleagues were to be given to him in private conversation. Probably, if he got such answers, he would think the persons giving them must be slightly touched.

There was a Minister who was asked about the import of food, and replied, "I have repeatedly emphasised the value I attach to import saving". He ought to talk to my potato farmers in the middle of June when potatoes start coming in and the Government do nothing about it.

There was a Question about renegotiating the Nassau Agreement, and the Minister replied, "When the time comes when conditions are appropriate we will negotiate".

There is also the Minister who says he has nothing to add to the answer already given to a Question, when the previous answer said he had nothing to say anyway.

A Minister of Health was asked to introduce regulations against smoking. He might have thought himself Leader of the House, for he answered, "Not this Session".

The Secretary of State for Education, who likes to be short, when asked what local authorities should do to eliminate classes more than 40 in number, replied, "Any action within the resources available", knowing perfectly well that there were no resources available.

There are two common practices of Ministers which are particularly to be deprecated. One is stalling hon. Members who put down Questions by answering by Written Answer. This is particularly bad when a Question deals with a regional or local matter, but it happens a good deal. I have had complaints from the other side of the House as well as my own about this. An hon. Member follows a subject through, putting down Question after Question. Suddenly the Minister gives a Written Answer to somebody else, or perhaps makes a statement in the House without notice to the hon. Member particularly concerned.

The second particularly bad but common practice is giving half an Answer in the House and the best half to the Press—before the other half is given in the House. It is surprising how often the Press know an answer before we do. That really cannot be very good for the image of the House of Commons. Yesterday the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications said telephone charges were to go, but he was very coy about by how much they are to go up. I hope that information does not come out in the middle of the Easter Recess when we are not here. That sort of thing has happened before. We have tried to get answers on the Floor of the House and not succeeded and then suddenly, when we have been away, Eureka!—the Minister has given the answer. Increases in postal charges are coming. When are they coming? I hope the answer will be given on the Floor of the House.

We had the Donnison Report today on direct grant schools. I have had several Questions asking when this report would be published. I found out—outside the House and so did other hon. Members and when we were eventually told by the Minister—upstairs—we knew about it already. That is not the way to treat the House of Commons.

Then there is the situation in which a Minister says one thing and another contradicts it, the Government just not knowing what, as a team, they are doing. The Foreign Secretary a few weeks ago said he was discussing the arrangement of foreign aid with the Governments of Uganda and Kenya on the basis that they help with the Asians holding British passports. So I put a Question to the Minister of Overseas Development about it, and the Minister said this was not possible, that it was quite improper that we should use foreign aid for political purposes. The Foreign Secretary had better get together with the Minister for Overseas Development. I should have thought that my proposal would appeal to the right hon. and learned Member for Ipswich (Sir Dingle Foot), and I wonder whether the Government's left hand knows what their right foot is doing.

Sometimes, answers are plainly misleading. Time after time we were told that there was nothing wrong with the Redundancy Fund, until a special Order was brought in by the Minister to bolster it up and we were promised legislation to deal with the anomalies, which, it had been said, did not exist.

The right hon. Lady the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity has said a great deal about how she will help the lower-paid workers. She said in the House that she hoped to get relationships between different pay structures at a more socially justifiable level. What is happening in her Department is that those workers who are——

Mr. Speaker

Order. Was this in answer to an hon. Member's Question?

Mr. Lewis

Yes, Mr. Speaker. What is happening is that pay rises are going up and the right hon. Lady's policy, which she announced on the Floor of the House in answer to a Question, is simply not capable of being implemented.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) has told me of a Question which he tabled to the President of the Board of Trade asking about the increase in the price of the Daily Telegraph. In February, the President of the Board of Trade said that the Government would try to restrict the increase in price. He repeated that, and, again in February, he said that the Government agreed with the Prices and Incomes Board Report and would deal with the proposed increase in the price of the Daily Telegraph during 1970. On 13th March, the Minister finally admitted that he could only try to persuade the Daily Telegraph to observe whatever the Prices and Incomes Board said and whatever the Minister wanted to do about what the board said, because the policy was voluntary.

We were told that that the Industrial Training Act was working well. Within a few weeks we had a new Industrial Training Bill.

Finally, we have Questions to the Prime Minister. Everybody comes in to hear the Prime Minister. The Galleries are always full, much fuller than I notice they are tonight to hear——

Mr. Speaker

Order. The hon. Member must not, even indirectly, call attention to the presence or absence of strangers.

Mr. Lewis

I appreciate that, Mr. Speaker, and I apologise.

The Prime Minister's answers to Questions——

Mr. John Ellis (Bristol, North-West)

They are very good.

Mr. Lewis

Yes, the right hon. Gentleman always answers the first Question very well. After that, he gets verbal diarrhoea. The Prime Minister answers Questions very well, except for one thing. He takes up more space in HANSARD on each Question than any other occupant of the Treasury Bench. He tries to cover up the Government's failures with verbiage.

Mr. Ellis

Nonsense.

Mr. Lewis

It is not. If the hon. Member looks at HANSARD, he will see that the Prime Minister takes up whole columns whereas other hon. Members take up half-inches. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition does not get a look in compared with—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker

Order. Too much turbulence from Bristol.

Mr. Lewis

—the Prime Minister in the extent of his answers. My right hon. Friend gets up and makes a brief comment which devastates the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister answers by giving us a very long dissertation. That is why the Prime Minister hardly answers more than five Questions during his quarter of an hour.

This subject must fascinate the House, as it fascinates me. We have with us tonight the Deputy Leader of the House to listen to what I say, and I hope that he will be able to answer my comments to everybody's satisfaction.

Mr. Speaker

Order. I hope that the hon. Member will give the Minister time to answer.

Mr. Lewis

I am coming to an end, Mr. Speaker. The Government's answers leave much to be desired. Now that we are coming to an election, I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will advise his right hon. Friends, at least on accasion, to come clean.

12.55 a.m.

The Minister without Portfolio and Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Peter Shore)

The fact that I have only 10 minutes left in which to answer the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis) illustrates the sort of difficulty which Ministers sometimes have in answering Questions. Time is not always on their side, and they have to make the best of the opportunities left to them.

When I first saw the subject of the Adjournment I felt that I would have some difficulty because of the very wideness of its terms. As written, it embraced all Ministers and all Questions, and it could be argued that if it were to be dealt with in the terms in which it was written, each Minister would have to defend or explain what he had said in answering Questions, and that would clearly be ludicrous. Although I am here to reply on behalf of my colleagues, I have no doubt that they would all welcome the opportunity individually to rebut the charges which the hon. Member has made against them collectively and individually.

I have no intention of attempting to reply in detail about the way in which my colleagues deal with Questions. They are capable of looking after themselves. The hon. Member can take it, however, that what he has said will be drawn to their attention, although I should have thought that he had ample opportunity both inside and outside the Chamber to pursue what he has described as the inadequate replies to Questions with the Ministers involved.

I agree with the hon. Member that Question Time is of crucial significance in enabling hon. Members to call on members of the Government to account for their actions. It is a great institution which is near to the heart of our democratic practice and which the House rightly regards with jealousy and pride. I assure the hon. Member that the Government are no less aware of what Question Time stands for, and collectively and individually are no less concerned than he is to ensure its continued effectiveness.

As the hon. Member will know from his discussions with individual Ministers, all of them spend a great deal of time and energy replying to Parliamentary Questions, and I can assure him that the Departments also take seriously the Questions put to their Ministers. Knowing this, I regard the terms of the subject of the Adjournment debate as unjustified criticism of my colleagues. I do not say that in any spirit of animosity, but simply to record the way in which I as an hon. Member and as a member of the Government approach these issues.

The hon. Member made two or three points with which I must try to deal in the time available to me. I do not agree that Question Time is losing its impact, and I do not accept that the practice of transferring Questions or that of answering two or more together is in any sense an abuse or a ploy used somehow to deprive hon. Members of their opportunities to ask Questions. If he is being fair, the hon. Member will agree that there is always a problem, that one Question inevitably takes away the time available for another. Therefore, if two Questions which are similar can be dealt with in a single answer, that will not relieve the Minister of his duty to answer Questions, but it will make it possible for another hon. Member to put a Question which might not otherwise have had a chance of being asked. So we can seriously put those points aside.

I want now to take up what the hon. Gentleman said and the enormous collection of adjectives that he deployed about answers which he claims have been unsatisfactory. I will not attempt to repeat them. They are on the record. When he came to illustrate the charges which he levelled, they were not very convincing. I will not break my promise not to take up individual cases, but, if I did, I am certain that I could give him convincing replies on the matters that he has put forward.

Certainly I put to the hon. Member strongly that it is not that Ministers seek to mislead the House. There are occasions when the flow of information or the development of policy has not reached the point where a definite answer can be given. It is because of this that the hon. Gentleman gets what he may think is a cautious, hedging or reserved reply. There is nothing new in that. I think that it was Queen Elizabeth who, when faced with a difficult question, said to the questioner, "I must give you an answer, answerless", because she could say neither "Yes" nor "No". That is often the situation in which Ministers find themselves when answering Questions.

Lastly, I take up what the hon. Gentleman said about my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. He left that to the end, no doubt because he thought that it was the more explosive piece of his speech. I note what he said. I think that the House looks forward to Question Time not only because of its liveliness but because hon. Members know that they will get from my right hon. Friend an enormous amount of information.

The hon. Gentleman thinks that my right hon. Friend makes long replies. That may be so, although he speaks at great speed and gets in a lot of words in a short space of time. My right hon. Friend's motive is the pursuit of truth and the desire to combat error. In the exchanges which he has across the Floor of the House it is important that he should do both and continue to do them twice a week for at least 15 minutes in order that the truth may be properly identified. It is not always easy in the arguments that take place.

Some of the hon. Gentleman's remarks were made in a fairly light-hearted spirit, although the more important parts of his speech were argued with seriousness, so I bring my reply to a conclusion by reminding him that if Ministers occasionally have failed to give just the right reply or the definition of reply that he would like, he should see it against the background of Ministers having answered some 6,850 Questions since 19th January this year. That is quite a background of information being given to the House. I assure the hon. Gentleman that not only in Ministerial attitudes to answering Questions but in the whole attitude of this Government to Parliament we are very much concerned to see that hon. Members get as much information as possible and as helpfully as we can possibly provide it.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at four minutes past One o'clock.