Sittings of the House (Hansard, 24 March 1983)

§ Mr. George Cunningham (Islington, South and Finsbury)
rose—

§ Mr. Speaker
Does the hon. Gentleman wish to speak on the sittings motion?

§ Mr. Cunningham
Yes, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker: Very well.

§ Mr. Cunningham
I do not wish to speak for long, but I do so particularly because of the substance of the reply by the Leader of the House to the question that I put on business questions. It is relevant to motion No. 2, which relates to the business that the House is to take next Thursday. Next Wednesday the first business will be the Local Authorities (Expenditure Powers) Bill. Thursday will therefore be the first day after that when the Government realise, as I do not think they do at the moment, that they have made an awful, silly mistake.
What will become apparent next Wednesday is that the Government have used the chance to bring forward a Bill dealing with local government expenditure controls without including in it any provision for restricting the discretion in the use either of the present powers or of the new powers that are to be conferred. I wish to suggest that a better use of our time next Thursday would be to try to persuade the Leader of the House to take that little two-page Bill, which by then will either have had or not have had a Second Reading, withdraw it and bring back the same Bill, but with other clauses added to restrict the freedom of local authorities to spend public money, their own ratepayers' money, on political purposes.
It is a standing scandal that local authorities—the Greater London Council is only the best-known example; Islington is pushing for that place at the moment—are spending money for political purposes. There is doubt whether some of those expenditures are lawful. There is no doubt that they ought not to be lawful. Everybody except a certain section of the House agrees that they ought not to be lawful, but they may at the moment actually be lawful.
One would have thought that the Government, knowing that they have a Bill on local authority expenditure controls coming to the House, would take the chance to include provisions on this matter. They have not done so, not because they have addressed their minds to the issue and rejected it—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. With respect to the hon. Gentleman, he should debate this matter on motion No. 3 if he thinks that we should not adjourn before he has had the measure that he would like.

§ Mr. Cunningham
If that were the suggestion that I was making I should have debated it under motion No. 3, but it is not. The suggestion that I am making is that instead of the business of the House next Thursday being what is in the motion that we are debating, it ought to be the subject matter to which I am drawing attention. I have no desire to take much more of the time of the House on 1026 this issue, but I submit that it is in order for me to suggest an alternative use of the time next Thursday to that proposed in the motion. What I am now doing is giving reasons why the House would deserve better of the country if it gave its time next Thursday to debating this matter rather than what is proposed by the motion.
The Leader of the House, in reply to me on business questions, said that the point that I am now making would be suitable for me to make on Second Reading next Wednesday afternoon. Of course, it would not. Next Wednesday we are to discuss whether that Bill as presently constructed should get a Second Reading. If it does, there will be no possibility of adding to that Bill, under the rules and procedures of the House about the scope of the Bill, clauses to restrict the freedom of local authorities to spend money for political purposes. It is no secret that Ministers in the relevant Departments with whom one discusses these matters say that they really would prefer that certain of the activities to which I am drawing attention were unlawful, but they may not be unlawful—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. With respect to the hon. Gentleman, he is going into the details of the Bill. He cannot do that now. He can make his argument that we ought to discuss different business on that day, but he cannot make out his case against the Bill. That is what he would do if we changed the business for next Thursday.

§ Mr. Cunningham
I understand that. I shall not detain the House for much longer. If the House were to accept my proposition that we should change the business next Thursday, it would do so only in the light of a very strong case. That is why I am speaking in these terms, to suggest to the House that there really is a strong case for altering the business next Thursday.
Has the Leader of the House got it? If the Bill stays as it is, changes of the kind that I want, and changes of the kind that quite a number of Ministers want, cannot be added to the Bill because the scope of the Bill is too narrow to permit that. So if the Government do not take the Bill—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman is going too far. He is arguing his case on the change of the Bill rather than the change of the day. I am afraid that he must not continue along those lines.

§ Mr. Cunningham
Because I am asking for a considerable change in procedure, I have to suggest that there is a serious case for doing so. I think that two or three sentences conclude my case. If it goes ahead like this, no change along the lines that I am suggesting is possible, but it is possible for the Government to take the Bill away and then add clauses, bring it back and we can then achieve a restriction of the freedom of local authorities to spend money for political purposes, which a vast majority of the House want and which they cannot achieve by amendments to the Bill.
I seriously ask the Leader of the House to put that proposition to the Prime Minister. It is clear that she has not realised that an opportunity for avoiding an abuse has been carelessly missed here but can be recovered if the Government act quickly enough.