HC Deb 10 July 1973 vol 859 cc1277-85

Queen's Recommendation having been signified—

Motion made,

That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session relating to finance, it is expedient to authorise any increase in the sums payable out of moneys provided by Parliament under section 7(2) of the European Communities Act 1972 which is attributable to any provision of the Act of the present Session for payments by the Sugar Board to sugar refiners.—[Mr. Higgins.]

4.18 p.m.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell (Wolverhampton, South-West)

I wish to follow the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) and perhaps I can appropriately do it on this motion, which would be of no effect but for the two motions which follow it on the Order Paper—at any rate the fourth motion, to which I hope you will permit me also to refer: That notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the practice of the House relating to the matters which may be included in Finance Bills, any Finance Bill of the present Session may contain provision for payments by the Sugar Board to sugar refiners.

Mr. Speaker

May I interrupt the right hon. Gentleman at this stage, because my original feeling about this is that the point put forward by the hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) is not a matter of order but that it is definitely a matter of argument.

Mr. Powell

I have not sought to address you on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I was speaking to a motion. I am sorry if the Question has not been proposed.

Mr. Speaker

I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. It is my fault.

The hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury rose on a point of order. I do not think that it is a matter of order. It is a matter of argument. I intend to propose the question on the third motion.

Question proposed.

Mr. Powell

Perhaps I may now address you on the motion, Mr. Speaker, in support of my hon. Friend's contention and refer in the course of that, as I hope I am allowed to do, to the fourth motion, which follows it on the Order Paper and without which it would be impossible to give effect to the motion which you have just proposed to the House.

There is a fundamental distinction which our procedure has always drawn between Ways and Means and Supply. The Finance Bill is essentially, and with very few exceptions exclusively, a vehicle of Ways and Means. It is a Bill for imposing burdens upon the public. We have an entirely different procedure for authorising and controlling expenditure.

As I understand it, what my right hon. and hon. Friends propose to do in the present instance is, for the sake of convenience, to include what is essentially a provision for Supply in Ways and Means legislation and to include the authorisation of expenditures as well as certain other amendments which come under the fifth motion in a Finance Bill to which, as the terms of those motions openly acknowledge, it is not germane under the practice of the House. We shall no doubt be told how far there is precedent for such proceeding.

I draw the attention of the House to the extreme danger either of creating or of reinforcing such a precedent, since it enables a Government who have a Finance Bill, for instance, at a certain stage before the House to dispense with what would otherwise be the necessity of bringing in separate legislation or making provision in other legislation of the Session for other things which they wish to do and which have nothing to do with ex-and which have nothing to do with taxation.

My submission, therefore, is that it is a pernicious breach of our practice which we are being invited to authorise by these three motions taken together, and that, if it is to be done at all, both the exceptional nature of it and the fact that it is not to be drawn into a precedent should be frankly acknowledged by my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench.

What is more, I think that my right hon. and hon. Friends ought to be able to show quite exceptional grounds for what they are proposing, for unless there is something which distinguishes the necessity behind these motions from the ordinary necessities of government, the House may be perfectly sure that Finance Bills in the future will increasingly be hung about like Christmas trees with all sorts of adventitious matter which, though perhaps very convenient and, indeed, perhaps desired by hon. Members in all parts of the House, it is not part of our procedure to introduce in that way in Finance Bills.

I shall not detain the House long on this matter, though I regard it as of great importance for the House and one on which we should be very tender when we are considering a Finance Bill. The procedures of the House are at present under considerable challenge. Our right to grant taxation and to alter our law by the traditional procedures, and no others, has been gravely prejudiced by an Act of the previous session, and there are constant cases now in which our taxation and our law are being altered without due parliamentary procedure.

It would be improper for me to refer to that matter at great length in this context, but I mention it since it gives particular importance to the adherence and loyalty of the House to its own procedures, above all in matters of finance, and I think that it would be wrong if these motions were passed by the House without its sense of the impropriety of what we are doing being marked on this occasion and without as binding as possible an assurance being given from the Front Bench that there is no intention of the procedure being repeated.

4.33 p.m.

Mr. George Cunningham (Islington, South-West)

I have great sympathy with the views just expressed by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South West (Mr. Powell), though the conclusion I reach is to some extent different.

The right hon. Gentleman said, as I understood him, that because of the undesirability of this practice the Government ought at least to explain what is special or unique about the present case and justify the motion upon that basis. I would rather say that if even this once the Government propose to get the House to allow this to happen, it should follow that I, too, and any other Member, must be able to propose expenditure in a Finance Bill.

In effect, the Government are the only initiators, the only ones who can put down and have carried a motion of this kind. Therefore, if we got into the habit of proceeding in this way we should have the Government able to carry through expenditure proposals by means of a Finance Bill, but no one else, since no similar motion put down by a private Member would be voted upon. Upon that ground, I should certainly oppose the motion.

If, however, the motion is carried, as seems likely since the Government usually get what they want, it will be a sufficient breach of our normal practices, I submit, for the matter to go to the Procedure Committee for that Committee to consider whether the breach of practice in this respect is such as to introduce a new advantage for the Government vis-à-vis private Members and report to the House with a recommendation on whether the practice should ever be permissible in the future.

4.35 p.m.

Mr. Nicholas Ridley (Cirencester and Tewkesbury)

I support what has been said on this matter, but I should point out to the hon. Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. George Cunningham) that whether expenditure be incurred by a procedure motion on a Finance Bill of this sort, backed up by a new clause. or whether it be incurred under new legislation, private Members cannot themselves move the financial motion in either case. Therefore, it is not as though we are being further denied the opportunity to move expenditure motions in this way.

The issue here is that when expenditure is proposed by new legislation there is a debate upon the principle, there are the Committee and Report stages, and there is Third Reading. In my view, if we are to subsidise sugar refiners, the question of principle as to whether that is the right thing to do should be debated by the House and we should then have the opportunity to consider and amend the details of the subsidy scheme, with a subsequent Report stage in the normal way.

I object to the bypassing of our normal processes of consideration by this technique. I think it particularly unfortunate that the motion should have been put down in time for the Report stage rather than Committee, because the House is thereby denied any opportunity to have a second look at either the detail or the principle.

I hope that the Government, however urgent the matter may be, will reconsider their decision. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary will consider whether it might be better to seek the approval of the House for a short Bill to be put through. For my part, I should expedite its progress, as I am sure other hon. Members would. The principle upon which this action is being taken has not yet, I believe, been explained to us. But it opens up most undesirable avenues for further expenditure to be incurred in later Finance Bills simply by an amendment or new clause on Report, and this could remove one of the basic rights of Parliament; that is, to take expenditure legislation through all its stages.

4.37 p.m.

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Patrick Jenkin)

I have listened with great interest and attention to what has been said on both sides about the two motions. I endorse what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) in response to the hon. Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. George Cunningham); namely, that under our Standing Orders only the Government can move a money resolution, whether the Bill be a Finance Bill or not. I entirely endorse what my hon. Friend said to the effect that there is, therefore, no derogation of back-bench rights occasioned on that account by what we propose.

Equally, I take the point that, as a general rule, it is unusual, and may well be undesirable, for new additions to public expenditure to be sanctioned by the House by means of a clause in a Finance Bill. Without notice, I cannot cite precedents, but I believe that I am right in saying that it is by no means unknown for there to be money resolutions in connection with Finance Bills. In view of what has been said, I have instituted inquiries as to whether I have precedents to cite, but my recollection is that over the years, as well as a number of Ways and Means resolutions, there have been procedure resolutions and money resolutions on Finance Bills.

The purpose of the procedure motion on this Bill is to enable us to discuss new Clause 43, since it might be argued—it is not clear beyond a peradventure, but it might be argued—that matters relating to sugar, the sugar levy and a sugar subsidy would be outside the normal scope of a Finance Bill. For that reason, to put the matter beyond doubt, the Government thought it right to move a procedure motion to cover its inclusion in the Bill and in this way to preserve the proprieties.

Mr. Nigel Spearing (Acton)

The right hon. Gentleman has explained why the Government are doing it, but he has said that he cannot, without notice, give precedents. Is he saying that, as far as he knows, there is no precedent for a procedure motion of this sort? If he is, that backs up the arguments against this procedure which hon. Members have already put. If, on the other hand, the right hon. Gentleman is saying that there is a precedent for his procedure motion, will he now give it—or does he not know?

Mr. Jenkin

There are precedents, and since I was on my feet a moment ago I have remembered that in connection with this year's Finance Bill we had a money resolution which provided for expenditure. So far as I know, the House accepted that without argument. It related to the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of amounts relating to the repayment of tax to charities for the years 1971–72 and following. That was a question of tax repayment.

We are here concerned with the on-payment of a levy which has been authorised by other legislation by the Sugar Board to the refiners. It is perhaps not appropriate that I should go into the full merits of the case, and my hon. Friend the Minister of State for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will be dealing with the new clause when we reach it. However I can assure my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) that the cost of this subsidy to the sugar refiners does not involve a new net addition to public expenditure. It represents a part of the proceeds of the sugar levy going to the refiners instead of the Commission.

Mr. J. Bruce-Gardyne (South Angus)

My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary has drawn our attention to a precedent concerning a money resolution passed at the end of the Budget debate. Surely, however, a money resolution of this kind inserted at the beginning of the Report stage is in a different category and, therefore, the precedent he has cited is not a strict precedent?

Mr. Jenkin

I cited that precedent because it was suggested at an earlier stage that there were no precedents for money resolutions on Finance Bills, and I was indicating that where it was a question of spending or passing on part of the proceeds of a tax—in that case a tax which had been paid by charities and in this case a levy on sugar—it would seem that there were precedents.

As for new clauses of whatever kind coming forward on Report, I should have thought that was by now a well established practice of Governments of all parties and that it was sometimes necessary because of the exigencies of business to introduce new matters into Bills, including Finance Bills, on Report. The clause has been on the Order Paper for some days and there will be an opportunity to debate it in a few moments. However, it would be out of order for it to be discussed and, if the House so decides, passed unless we first passed both the procedure resolution to put beyond doubt the propriety of discussing sugar in the Finance Bill, and, secondly, the money resolution to authorise payment of money to the sugar refiners in accordance with the clause.

I have taken careful note of the strictures of the House about any extension of the procedure of authorising expenditure through Finance Bills. The procedure in this case is amply justified. I understand that it was agreed with the House authorities, who were satisfied on the precedents that it was perfectly in order. I am told, for instance, that provision was made in last year's Finance Bill for public works loans and that sugar has been dealt with in three previous Finance Bills. However, we thought it right to proceed, perhaps out of an excess of caution, by having a procedure resolution as well as a money resolution, which would have been necessary anyway.

Mr. Tam Dalyell (West Lothian)

Will the Chief Secretary amplify his remark that this was done with the agreement of the House authorities? Which House authorities?

Mr. Jenkin

This is a matter which is dealt with frequently between Government Departments and the House authorities, and the Government will naturally act very closely in accordance with the views of those authorities when dealing with precedents in the House—with, I imagine, the Public Bill Office of the House.

Of course the Government take full responsibility for any action but I can assure the hon. Member that on matters of this sort we would not proceed with confidence if we had not consulted and secured the approval of the House authorities.

Mr. J. C. Jennings (Burton)

Before my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary sits down, will he agree when he is talking about the dangers of the future that this will be quoted as a precedent if the House agrees to the motions?

Mr. Jenkin

I cannot stop any future Minister or any other hon. or right hon. Member from quoting a precedent—

Mr. Jennings

That is the point.

Mr. Jenkin

—but what we are doing today is in accordance with the precedent.

Question put and agreed to.

That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session relating to finance, it is expedient to authorise any increase in the sums payable out of moneys provided by Parliament under section 7(2) of the European Communities Act 1972 which is attributable to any provision of the Act of the present Session for payments by the Sugar Board to sugar refiners.