§ Q1. Mr. Peter Bruinvelsasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 22 October.
§ The Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Biffen)I have been asked to reply.
My right hon. Friend is attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in the Bahamas.
§ Mr. BruinvelsIs it not highly irresponsible of leading Left-wing Labour councillors like Bernie Grant to refuse to condemn violence against the police? Should not we, and all other parties, be united in maintaining law and order and in supporting our police by giving them adequate protection and the resources to maintain law and order?
§ Mr. BiffenMy hon. Friend is right. The role of the police in those areas is absolutely crucial, because without effective law enforcement there can be no prospect of social cohesion or advance.
§ Mr. SkinnerI wonder whether the Leader of the House will today meet those who are lobbying against world poverty. Is he aware, for instance, that it has cost the world about &800 billion to produce weapons of war, which is almost equivalent to the amount of money that is owed by the poorest countries to the banks, mainly in the Western world? Will he tell the lobbyists that one of the things that the Government will do is to join others and cancel the debts of the lesser developed countries so that we can feed the impoverished people in Ethiopia and countless others in Africa and central and south America?
§ Mr. BiffenI shall be meeting members of the world development lobby from north Shropshire later this afternoon. I have no doubt that they will put the arguments in a much more temperate and convincing fashion that the hon. Gentleman. I shall, in the course of our exchanges, draw attention to the fact that in the last three years the Government's programme on overseas aid has been rising faster than prices. I shall point out the role that the Government have played in trying to produce balanced disarmament.
§ Q2. Mr. Temple-Morrisasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 22 October.
§ Mr. BiffenI have been asked to reply.
I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
§ Mr. Temple-MorrisDoes my right hon. Friend agree that, on the subject of rate reform, the time for decision and indeed for some action is very much overdue? Reviews of this subject are extremely dated. Will my right hon. Friend take on board the fact that a manifesto pledge, yet another on this subject, will be insufficient and will not carry much credibility?
§ Mr. BiffenMy hon. Friend is inviting me to stray into somewhat delicate territory, but I have to tell him that it is very prudent that a consultative document is to be issued by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment on local authority finance at the turn of the year. We shall have to see how matters proceed thereafter, but I know that in the discussion which will follow there will be very keen interest in Herefordshire and neighbouring agricultural counties in seeing which political parties support the rating of agriculture.
§ Mr. ShoreMay I turn the right hon. Gentleman's mind to the depressing subject of the United Kingdom economy? Is he aware that in the three months since he last answered Prime Minister's questions unemployment in Britain has risen by over 111,000, that our visible trade deficit has increased by over £250 million and that the index of industrial production has dropped by 0.5 per cent.? Is it not all too clear that policies and attitudes, as last week's report of the House of Lords Select Committee on Overseas Trade affirmed, need
to change and change radically if we are to avoid a major social and economic crisis in our nation's affairs"?Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the panic and knee-jerk reaction of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to this report, within hours of its publication last Tuesday, was both insulting and irrelevant, and that it is not changes in the presentation of policies that are required, but fundamental changes in the policies themselves?
§ Mr. BiffenIt is an absolute caricature to describe the reaction of my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in the way that the right hon. Gentleman has done. This was an important report, produced by a distinguished group in the other place, and it commanded sufficient public attention to merit an immediate Government response. However, it raises wider issues about the nature of the economy and the fundamental changes that are overtaking not only the United Kingdom but every west European country, because the fall in manufacturing as a share of the total economy can be found in broadly similar terms in both the United States and Germany. My right hon. and learned Friend was merely putting the matter into context by his intervention.
§ Mr. ShoreThe truth of the matter is that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry totally caricatured the findings of the Select Committee in order to try to neutralise, if not obviate, their impact upon public opinion. If the Leader of the House really thinks that it was a report prepared by distinguished people—as indeed it was—does he really think it right, and is it now to be 141 Government policy, for Select Committee reports to be dealt with by immediate, 12-hour reactions rather than to be the subject of considered and serious reply?
§ Mr. BiffenThe Government have a very good and well developed record of considered replies to Select Comittee reports, which compares very well indeed with many of the instant comments which have come from the Opposition Benches. What the right hon. Gentleman is complaining about is that the Government have effectively demonstrated that there is a wider and much more advantageous context into which that report is to be placed. This is a comment that was also made by a whole number of distinguished economic commentators in Fleet Street.
§ Q3. Mr. Shersbyasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagemens for Tuesday 22 October.
§ Mr. BiffenI have been asked to reply.
I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
§ Mr. ShersbyWill my right hon. Friend convey to the Prime Minister the congratulations of the House on the way in which Home Office Ministers are tackling the very serious problem of drug trafficking? Will he also make it clear that the new agreement with Pakistan to end production is widely welcomed? Will he say what further steps the Government intend to take in Britain to end this traffic?
§ Mr. BiffenMy hon. Friend will have noted that Home Office Ministers are here this afternoon to take account of his comments, which I believe to be both generous and fully merited, for not only was my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office successful in his recent visit to Pakistan, but I believe that the House will have heard with approval of the decision from the lips of the Home Secretary' yesterday that a further 50 are to be added to the drug squad in London. That is an indication to my hon. Friend of the urgency with which this serious social problem is regarded.
§ Mr. SteelWill the Leader of the House confirm to the House and to his constituents this afternoon that the overseas aid programme has been cut by 17 per cent. in real terms and that this means that, while the United States contributes $37 a head, Belgium $47 and Denmark $88, our contribution is $25 a head? Is this another teeny-weeny contribution to world affairs in which the Prime Minister rejoices, and are the thousands of people lobbying today to be dismissed as yet more moaning Minnies?
§ Mr. BiffenI can confirm that over the past three years the United Kingdom overseas aid programme has been rising faster than prices. Of course, it is true that the per capita contribution from the United States is much greater. It is a question of comparing economies that are quite dissimilar in their inherent ways.
§ Q4 Mr. Gouldasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 22 October.
§ Mr. BiffenI have been asked to reply.
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
§ Mr. GouldBefore the Leader of the House is tempted to dismiss the House of Lords Select Committee, as so many other critics of the Government have been 142 dismissed, as nothing more than moaning Minnies, will he concede the peculiarity of the fact that the damage which the Select Committee documents have inflicted has been done in the name of a monetarism which the Chancellor, in formal terms at least, now seems to have abandoned?
§ Mr. BiffenI am not sure that I would accept that. I have made a balanced comment on the House of Lords report. It is a valuable contribution to the economic debate. The Government are wholly entitled to set alongside it other considerations that put the economy in a more realistic and favourable light.
§ Q5. Mr. Hannamasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 22 October.
§ Mr. BiffenI have been asked to reply.
I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
§ Mr. HannamIn view of the widening split in the National Union of Mineworkers, caused directly by the extremism of Mr. Scargill, does my right hon. Friend agree that now is the time for the leadership of the Labour party officially to recognise the new union in Nottinghamshire, South Derbyshire and South Durham?
§ Mr. BiffenThese are very delicate issues. I do not want to say anything from this Box that would unnecessarily complicate the matter. However, my hon. Friend must be right in saying that the emergence of the Union of Democratic Mineworkers on the basis of the clear and evident balloting that has taken place must necessarily require a response from the Trades Union Congress and the Labour party.
§ Mr. EasthamWhen the Leader of the House next meets the Prime Minister, will he make special reference to ex-prisoners of war who were in Japanese hands? There were many thousands of prisoners who were deprived, suffered and some of whom died. Meagre compensation has been paid out by the Japanese Government. A constituent of mine has received three payments so far, totalling £76, for all the misery that he suffered. Is it not about time, considering the wealth of the Japanese Government, to make representations on behalf of ex-prisoners of war that something be done about that?
§ Mr. BiffenI have great sympathy with the hon. Gentleman's point. I shall certainly draw my right hon. Friend's attention to it. Perhaps we have tended to draw a veil over the extraordinarily intense suffering undergone by British prisoners in the far east in the last war.
§ Q6. Mr. Marlowasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagments for Tuesday 22 October.
§ Mr. BiffenI have been asked to reply.
I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
§ Mr. MarlowWill my right hon. Friend take this opportunity to debunk the bogus mythology of Scarmanism? Is it not the approach that says that one should police only at a level acceptable to the most aggressive minority in a community which has led to a flourishing of drug trafficking in our inner cities and which has been the main cause of the recent riots that we have had to suffer?
§ Mr. BiffenLord Scarman is a distinguished son of Shropshire, and I prefer to leave any debunking to another 143 day. My hon. Friend is perfectly right to say that once a society slides into partial standards of policing, that not only undermines the whole society in the areas that become less policed, but destroys the inherent cohesion of the national society.
§ Q7. Mr. Dobsonasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagments for Tuesday 22 October.
§ Mr. BiffenI have been asked to reply.
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
§ Mr. DobsonHow can the Leader of the House justify the £88 million reduction in aid to Bangladesh under this Government compared with the level of aid going to that impoverished country in 1979?
§ Mr. BiffenThe distribution within the aid budget clearly must be a matter of judgment, essentially on developmental grounds. The total national aid budget over the last three years has been rising faster than prices.
§ Mr. Michael McNair-WilsonIn his busy day, has my right hon. Friend had a chance to consider the consequences of the Law Lords' judgment in the case of Mrs. Victoria Gillick'? Does he agree that the majority ruling of the judges appears to drive a coach and horses through the concept of an age of consent as laid down in the 1956 Sexual Offences Act? If that is the case, will the Government bring forward revised legislation?
§ Mr. BiffenI note what my hon. Friend says on an issue that clearly gives rise to the most deep and delicate feelings. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services is reviewing the guidance to be given in the light of the Law Lords judgment. We had better wait for the outcome of that review.