Mr Michael Foot: I am glad to have the chance to follow the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery). I am sure that the whole House listened with great care and attention to what he said. We have heard him speak often, but even when we do not accept his wisdom it is worth listening to. I should like to disagree with parts and agree with other parts of his speech. The whole House will have been...
Mr Michael Foot: I am very glad to have the chance to participate in this debate. I should like to discuss my own constituency first and then move on to some larger matters which also impinge on what is happening there. The Secretary of State for Wales referred to the garden festival which we are to have in Ebbw Vale. I certainly agree that it will be a great event for my constituents and for Wales. In fact,...
Mr Michael Foot: I see that the Secretary of State has achnowledged that. I hope that the Secretary of State will be equally forthright about the question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Edwards), who referred to the opencast mining operation which British Coal would like to operate at Pwll Du. It would be an utter absurdity for our valley if, having seen the possibilities under the...
Mr Michael Foot: I hope that the first speaker from the Government Front Bench will be kind enough to return to the House. In years gone by, we had an old custom that the main speakers in a debate used to stay to listen to replies to their questions, but perhaps that has changed. Possibly the Chief Secretary will return. I shall try to discover why this debate has taken place. It is certainly something of a...
Mr Michael Foot: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman in a moment if he is so anxious to interrupt. I should have thought that any normal person listening to the two speeches by the Chief Secretary and the right hon. Member for Hertfordshire, North would have been insulted. I thought that the House was insulted by the speech from the Treasury Bench but, as is the custom, the speech by my hon. Friend the...
Mr Michael Foot: I recommend that the hon. Gentleman reads the case put by my hon. Friend—[HON. MEMBERS: "He cannot."] If he could not hear her, I hope that his eyes will be able to rectify the position and that he will study exactly what she said. Anyone comparing the two cases put by the Front Benches could see the difference, and could see that my hon. Friend's was a first-class case. I have discovered...
Mr Michael Foot: I am glad to have the chance of following the hon. Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery), the Chairman of the Procedure Select Committee, although I strongly disagree with his suggestions, for reasons that I have given before and hope to repeat this evening. The House of Commons would make a great mistake if it accepted the proposition that this is the right way for it to operate. I understood...
Mr Michael Foot: Hon. Members will not be able to have a proper debate on a guillotine motion without me. I hand on some of my experience of these matters to both sides of the House. My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin talked of the boot being on the other foot. I thought that rather an inelegant phrase and I shall return to it. I do not intend to speak for hours, but I should like to make a few further...
Mr Michael Foot: The right hon. Gentleman gave a reply a few minutes ago about the agruments between the licensees and the brewers, and he referred especially to the possibilities of arbitration. Will he take into account the fact that many of the cases that have been brought to our attention show that the offer of arbitration is an absolute fraud and that individual licencees have often been thrown out of...
Mr Michael Foot: The hon. Member for Romford (Sir M. Neubert) has raised a most important question—in some respects, the most important question arising from recent events in Europe and in the world. Although I disagree very strongly with some of the things that the hon. Gentleman has said and with some of his recommendations, I am of the opinion that it is good for the House to have an opportunity to...
Mr Michael Foot: The hon. Gentleman makes a telling point, and I hope that the Government feel some contrition. I trust that the Government do not need my next warning, but one can never tell. In view of the common revulsion that was felt throughout the country and the world at the policies pursued by Iraq against the Kurds and others, I hope that there will be no rush to support Iran, as if that is the way...
Mr Michael Foot: It is difficult to persuade any country to surrender its nuclear capability when Britain argues that it is the only defence. It is not. On several occasions in the history of the world British Governments have taken a different and wider view than the hon. Gentleman, who merely says, "Let us go on reiterating the policy that we have followed for years—and whatever happens in Pakistan or...
Mr Michael Foot: That is the gospel of despair. If such a doctrine is adopted by our country and our Government, there will be no possibility of ending the nuclear arms race. We should be much wiser than that—particularly at what we all understand to be a new moment in history. I am just about the only hon. Member who was present at the 1945 San Francisco conference: I was there as a journalist. That, too,...
Mr Michael Foot: I entirely agree. That is one of the biggest gaps in what the Government are now saying. A test ban treaty is one of the means whereby we might secure the more general agreement for which we are aiming. Conservative Members have said that that is impossible, but there have been occasions in post-war history when the world has been more ambitious—for instance, in 1945 and 1946, when we were...
Mr Michael Foot: I am glad to have the chance to follow the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen), whom I certainly regard as far and away the most successful Leader of the House in all my time here. It was following the right hon. Gentleman's removal from that high post that the Government fell apart. I accept that it has taken a few years for the process to be completed, but everyone who...
Mr Michael Foot: I did not know that the right hon. Gentleman had that black mark on his past, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing it out. It shows that none of us is perfect, not even the right hon. Gentleman. I hope that it will be a lesson to him in future. It is a reason not for more guillotines, but for fewer. The truth of the matter was expressed by the hon. Member for...
Mr Michael Foot: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is catching up. He should understand that I was in favour of a social charter in Europe before there was any such thing as the European Community. I hope that, when he is reporting our debate in Oxford, he will tell the House who won the vote. It would be satisfactory to have such a vote in the country.
Mr Michael Foot: I happily concur with the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Speed) about the general conduct of the Treasury. It seemed that his remarks commanded the assent of the whole House. I hope that his message will be properly conveyed to those concerned. I should like to join in the debate on employment, but so little is left of the Minister after he has been torn apart by my hon. Friend the Member for...
Mr Michael Foot: The right hon. and learned Gentleman shakes his head. We shall see. He is not always right in these matters. If we are not lagging behind, why do we not lead the way, as we started to do under the Labour Government? Some countries are now well ahead of us. We should try to catch up. If the Government are so mean-minded as to think that we do not need modern legislation to provide proper...
Mr Michael Foot: I am glad to be able to enlighten the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Janman), especially when he talks in terms of what has happened to the numbers of unemployed during Labour Governments. There has never been a Labour Government who have had to face unemployment on this scale. Never in the history of recorded figures have a Labour Government tolerated unemployment on this scale, whether in...
