Official Duties (Hansard, 25 March 1991)

§ 25. Mr. Winnick
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster how much time he has spent in the past month on official business.

§ 31. Mr. Burns
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what official duties he has carried out in the past month.

§ Mr. Chris Patten
I have spent up to a quarter of my time carrying out official duties in the past month. These include signing instruments authorising the appointment, transfer and removal of magistrates, placing a list of future high sheriffs before Her Majesty the Queen and carrying out day-to-day responsibilities as a Government Minister.

§ Mr. Winnick
That is all very interesting, but would it not be the wish of many Conservative Members that the right hon. Gentleman should spend more time on official business, considering the right mess that the Conservative party is in at present? I well understand and entirely appreciate the right hon. Gentleman's apparent wish for the election to be postponed as the smell of death is all over the Government.

§ Mr. Patten
We all know that a large number of Opposition Members spend their evenings, and certainly supper once a week, wondering what to do with the Leader of the Opposition after he has lost another general election, so that remark is pretty ripe coming from the hon. Gentleman. We shall spend the next months and perhaps even a year and a half continuing to govern the country extremely effectively and developing policies to implement during our next period in government.

§ Mr. Burns
During the carrying out of his official duties in the past month, has my right hon. Friend had time to ruminate? If so, will he confirm that the Government will not be bamboozled by the press into an early election simply to make a story for the media?

§ Mr. Patten
rose——

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. These are questions about the Duchy of Lancaster.

§ Mr. Patten
I am not sure that I ruminate as much as I should, but I am sure that if I ruminated as my hon. Friend has suggested I would agree that it is unwise to be bandwaggoned by the media into taking any decisions, let alone decisions about the timing of the next general election. As I said earlier, however, whenever the election comes I am absolutely convinced that we shall win it and I believe that a number of Opposition Members also think that we shall win it.

§ Dr. Cunningham
When the Chancellor next goes to the north-west, will he find time to visit Barrow and talk to the people there about the disaster that will hit the town as a result of the projected redundancies at VSEL? Will he consider the repercussions that that will have throughout the engineering industry in the north-west, including many companies that operate in the Duchy? It is a devastating blow to an isolated community when our economy is sliding ever deeper into the second recession this decade. What hope, from the Budget or from any other aspect of Government policy, can the Chancellor offer the people in Barrow and further afield in the north-west who are to lose their jobs?

§ Mr. Patten
I will, of course, draw the hon. Gentleman's question to the attention of my right hon. Friends who will be concerned about job training and other measures that the Government will be anxious to implement in Barrow and elsewhere. Given the Labour party's policies on defence spending and procurement in the past few years, anyone with any job in engineering or the defence industries would have a great deal to fear in the albeit distant prospect of a Labour Government being elected. The hon. Gentleman knows that perfectly well. We can look forward to a period of resumed economic growth, on the back of low inflation, provided that we stick to the policies on which we are currently set.