Mr James Boyden: I can go a long way with what has just been said. I remember vividly taking building regulations through the House and having to deal with building legislation in Committee. The forum for those matters was better when it involved outsiders than it was with civil servants. I suspect that many millions of pounds have been lost in building activity because building regulations are rather...
Mr James Boyden: In my judgment we must have at least six additional Commitees. For example, Committees dealing with overseas development and race relations should operate parallel to a Committee on foreign and Commonwealth affairs. There is bound to be transdepartmental activity. Loose ends cannot be avoided. Why should the Department of Industry and the Department of Employment be lumped together? There is...
Mr James Boyden: I beg to move,
Mr James Boyden: I do not disagree with that. Perhaps my language was not quite as accurate as it might have been. The actual proposal was for contractual conditions when a person joins the Civil Service.
Mr James Boyden: Or legislation. We are very proud of our Civil Service —at least, I speak for myself. I think that we are also very proud that there is very little corruption. As that is so, we should take steps to see that if there is need for showing publicly that there is less fear of corruption it should be done, and here is an area in which it could be done. It is not the intention of the Expenditure...
Mr James Boyden: Or made their minds up.
Mr James Boyden: I beg to move, That this House takes note of the First Report from the Expenditure Committee in the last Session of Parliament (House of Commons Paper No. 169) on Preventive Medicine and of the relevant Government observations (Command Paper No. 7047). This inquiry of the Social Services Employment Sub-Committee took 14 months. There were 23 sessions of oral evidence from 33 interested groups...
Mr James Boyden: As my hon. Friend says, it is good stuff, and I hope very much that those who are specially interested in the subject and in health services generally will take the trouble to look at some of the evidence from the witnesses and at the documents. One of the features of the Expenditure Committee is that very busy and very important experts are prepared to come to the House and give evidence...
Mr James Boyden: I would have thought that the hon. Member would appreciate the smack of firm government. I have a feeling that the actual recommendation of the Committee—and here I speak personally—was motivated by the need for a certain amount of consensus. Of course this is a weakness of the Expenditure Committee. We seldom have any great party controversy. Throughout this investigation the conflicts...
Mr James Boyden: I am glad to see that the hon. Gentleman, who is a member of the Committee, responds to that comment. My hon. Friend and her colleagues are most diligent—and I make that as a point of praise, not of criticism. The staff of the Committee is very small, and I can think of no better cost-effective exercise than the way in which this Committee operates. I congratulate my hon. Friend, the...
Mr James Boyden: The point is that the Government were not accepting the Committee's recommendation that there should be more research. There was enough known about it—that was the important point.
Mr James Boyden: Perhaps I got the figures wrong. I was talking about fluoridation.
Mr James Boyden: And an empty head, by the sound of it.
Mr James Boyden: I thought that I should intervene briefly, as Chairman of the Expenditure Committee, to explain to the House the situation in which the Expenditure Committee finds itself over this White Paper. I thought that the right hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Sir G. Howe) would be impartial, but he coloured his speech with a certain amount of politics. What he was saying towards the end of...
Mr James Boyden: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That is exactly true. We have a very good system of permanent clerks who are well used to serving the House. They fit extremely well into this system of having part-time experts. There is no jealously between them. They work most harmoniously. We have three permanent experts on these Committees, doing special jobs. The Exchequer and Audit Department has lent...
Mr James Boyden: I am particularly interested in the construction industry, and I have some sympathy for it. Such an approach would be a further blow to that industry, because the money that the Conservatives would want to spend on defence would undoubtedly be taken away from construction. Therefore, I agree with the implication of my hon. Friend's question. The particular subject of today's debate comes...
Mr James Boyden: In view of the great light which obviously the Liberal Party could throw on the reports of the Committee, why does no Liberal Member volunteer to serve on the Expenditure Committee?
Mr James Boyden: Let me tell the hon. Gentleman that there was a place available for a Liberal Member on the Expenditure Committee. I saw the hon. Gentleman's Leader about this. It was not taken up.
Mr James Boyden: No.
Mr James Boyden: That is precisely what I said the Committee was proposing to do. There was no one present on the Liberal Bench to hear me say it.
