§ 10.12 p.m.
§ Mr. Norman Fowler (Sutton Coldfield)On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I ask for your guidance on this point? The House is being asked to take note of and to welcome the latest proposals of the European Commission concerning the taxation of commercial road vehicles. The difficulty is that we do not in fact have in front of us the latest proposals that we are supposed to be taking note of and welcoming. All that we have at present is, first, a draft directive of 1968—nine years ago—and, secondly, an explanatory memorandum from the then Minister for Transport, towards the end of last year, which states that during protracted consideration in the Transport Questions Working Group the text and content of the draft directive have been changed considerably from the original version.
That puts the House in a very considerable difficulty, if not in an impossible situation. It means that the basic material necessary for this debate has not been made available to the House. We can debate the 1968 directive, but we are told on the Secretary of State's own authority that the proposals included in the 1968 directive are out of date. Surely that makes the position of the House quite impossible.
In the last few minutes I have been handed by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove and Redditch (Mr. Miller) information that he has received from an outside organisation, which is in fact the up-to-date directive that we are seeking.
It seems that in those circumstances it is quite impossible to have a realistic and sensible debate on this question. It is quite unfair for the Government to ask us to do that. May I respectfully ask you, Mr. Speaker, whether you can adjourn the debate and will adjourn it until the documents are made available?
§ Mr. Hal Miller (Bromsgrove and Redditch)Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker—
§ Mr. Kevin McNamara (Kingston upon Hull, Central)Further to that point of order—
§ Mr. SpeakerI shall call the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, Central (Mr. McNamara) later. Mr. Miller.
§ Mr. MillerFurther to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I should like to make plain to the House that in attempting to brief myself for this debate I sought the views of a number of organisations, one of which provided me with a draft directive dated 2nd June 1976. It is not the same text as the draft directive available in the Vote Office, which I have just checked at five minutes to 10. I should therefore be most grateful if we could be given some guidance on what we are supposed to be discussing and on what document is the basis of tonight's debate I am considerably puzzled.
§ Mr. Douglas Jay (Battersea, North)On a point of order—
§ Mr. McNamararose—
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. I understand that the Minister is on the point of order. I have promised to call the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, Central, if his doubts still linger.
§ Mr. HoramFurther to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I can explain the position to the House. The draft directive was issued in 1968, as has been pointed out, and certainly the negotiations which have been carried on since then have made it out of date. But we were asked by the Scrutiny Committee in 1975, seven years after the issue of the draft directive, to debate the subject. At the time, the draft directive was already out of date and negotiations had not produced any substantial proposal in a form that could be sensibly debated by the House. We thought it best to wait a little longer.
We waited until 1976, by which time negotiations had reached the stage where there were firm proposals, but they were not the subject of a revised draft directive. If the hon. Member for Bromsgrove and Redditch (Mr. Miller) thinks 1189 that he has a revised draft directive, he is wrong. He may have some working papers, but there is no revised draft directive in existence.
However, we are under an obligation to the Scrutiny Committee to discuss the Community proposals. We therefore put to the House the memorandum of 30th November, which is what we are debating today. It covers the proposals that the EEC Committee has made. This procedure is one that we have adopted before—[HON. MEMBERS: "Wrongly."] Rightly or wrongly, this procedure has been adopted before in the situation where the Scrutiny Committee has recommended that we should have a debate.
We are anxious to have a debate, but there is no directive that is relevant, in the sense that the old directive is out of date and there is no new revised directive. Therefore, we felt it right to go ahead with this debate on the memorandum that the Minister put forward. We did this on 12th November, on the roadworthiness directive, which was in exactly the same position. It was extensively revised and no substantial paper was produced which we could give to the House. We therefore proceeded on the basis of the memorandum, identical to this in form and shape. I hope that the House will think this a reasonable way to proceed now.
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. I shall call further points of order, but I must tell the House that these points of order will come out of the time that would have been available for the discussion of the motion before the House.
§ Mr. McNamaraOn a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Having listened to the statement which the Under-Secretary has made, my mind is still boggling over what exactly we are supposed to be discussing. Are we to discuss the draft directive that originally came out, which says, in Article 4:
Member States shall abolish the taxes or charges mentioned in Article 2 and replace them by a road infrastructure tax."?Looking at Article 2—I am sure our colleagues in Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands have many things to discuss about infrastructure 1190 taxes—there does not appear to be any mention of the United Kingdom. Ireland or Denmark. Paragraph 6 of the Explanatory Memorandum sent to us by the Minister and signed by him states that:The general effect of the changes has been to produce a more flexible system allowing Member States greater discretion.With great respect, Mr. Speaker, what the hell are we talking about?
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder.
§ Mr. McNamaraI beg your pardon, Mr. Speaker. I should be grateful if we could be informed what the subject of the debate is. I cannot see what system we are talking about that has greater flexibility. For example, there is a statement that the axle weight shall rise from 500 to 2,000 kilograms—an increase of 400 per cent., which even in these inflationary days is a record, but we do not know what base rate it is to be applied to.
In those circumstances, surely it would be in the interests of the House for you, Mr. Speaker, to suggest that the Minister should take this directive away and return to the House with something that he could discuss and debate and about whose implications perhaps even the Ministry in its temerity might have spoken to the trades unions involved. Then perhaps we should have before us something we could talk about. At present it is nothing.
§ Mr. SpeakerIn answer to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, Central may I tell the House that it is not for me to explain to the House what it is discussing? It is for the Minister to do that in his speech.
I must announce to the House that I have not selected the amendment, but the hon. Gentleman, if he catches my eye, will be able to make his point during the debate.
§ Mr. Neil Marten (Banbury)On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Following on the previous points of order, may I point out that paragraph 15 of the Explanatory Memorandum states that
Organisations representing manufacturers and haulage operators are now generally content with the draft directive in its revised form.1191 Surely in that case there must be a draft directive in its revised form. If that statement is incorrect, we cannot assume that the other matters in the memorandum are correct. Therefore, what are we debating? It is a document that is incorrect. The only thing for the Minister to do is to withdraw the document with good grace and return to the House with a proper one. He will gain great respect from the House if he takes that commonsense course.
§ Mr. HoramFurther to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I should like to be able to make a speech on this subject and then perhaps I could clear up some of the detailed points—[Interruption.]
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. Is the Minister rising on a point of order?
§ Mr. SpeakerThen I shall be glad to hear it.
§ Mr. HoramI thought that I was allowed to get one graceful remark out before I embarked upon the point of order.
On the point of order, we are discussing the Explanatory Memorandum that is before us. That is the proposal to which the motion relates. We are not discussing anything else. We are not discussing the draft directive of 1968.
§ Mr. Ian Mikardo (Bethnal Green and Bow)On a point of order, Mr. Speaker—
§ Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South)On apoint of order, Mr. Speaker—
§ Mr. MartenOn a point of order, Mr. Speaker—
§ Mr. SpeakerI call Mr. Mikardo.
§ Mr. MikardoMy hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State has answered the point made by the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten). The memorandum that the Under-Secretary states that we are to discuss clearly states than there is a draft directive. If there is a draft directive, the only thing competent for 1192 us to discuss is the draft directive. That draft directive is not available to Members, but I understand that it is available to the hon. Member for Bromsgrove and Redditch (Mr. Miller), who, of course, would not be permitted by the rules of order to quote from it, because nobody may quote from a document without laying it before the House.
It is therefore clear, as the hon. Member for Banbury said, either that the memorandum is wrong in stating that there is a draft directive—in which case we can attach no credence to it—or, if it is right, that we should have that draft directive before us. Since it is not before us and since no one may use it in support of any argument, I therefore support the suggestion that the only proper procedure is that you, Mr. Speaker, should accept a motion that the debate be adjourned.
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. I have in my hand the document that we are supposed to be discussing. If the House does not like what the Minister says, its remedy is in the Division Lobby. The remedy is not to have points of order for the duration of the time allotted for this debate.
§ Mr. JayFurther to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. The motion before the House asks us to take note not of the Explanatory Memorandum, but of "the latest proposals". These proposals relate to the draft directive, not the Explanatory Memorandum to which the Minister has referred. Therefore we are in difficulty.
Does this situation not show that the method by which EEC legislation is conducted is so profoundly unsatisfactory that it borders on the disreputable? First, the Council of Ministers meets in secret and purports to legislate without any record at all; secondly, this House is asked to give its views without having the substantive documents before it; and, thirdly, we learn tonight that a draft directive, which apparently is not a draft directive, is in the hands of one side of the House but not the other. That seems an absolutely impossible situation for the House to proceed to a debate.
My suggestion, in line with that made by the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler), is that the Government should take this matter back, resume the debate when they have the substantial document in their possession, and, in addition, give an undertaking that they 1193 will not meanwhile accept any decision or regulation made in Brussels until this matter has been properly debated by the House.
§ Mr. HoramFurther to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. The reason for our going ahead with the debate today was a desire to have the subject debated. I think that the House would probably accept that, in essence, this is a noncontroversial subject. [Interruption.] We had a demand from the Scrutiny Committee in 1975 to debate this matter and we felt that we ought to honour that request now. However, I have taken on board the feeling of the House.
Clearly there appears to be some misunderstanding about the revised draft directive. There is no revised draft directive, as such, but there are working papers. In order that the matter may be clarified in a sensible way and that we may bring forward this measure at a better time, when we have had an opportunity of having further talks about it—I am not anxious to stir things up on what I regard as a very worthwhile measure—I shall certainly withdraw the motion.
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. There is nothing to withdraw yet. It has not been proposed.