Mr Michael Foot: The Minister spoke not with complacency but with astonishing insensitivity for the feelings of many people in the arts world and beyond. It is strange that he should have spoken in that tone, because he referred to the general background in which a Minister for the Arts has to operate. He is concerned not only with artistic matters but with the cultural background of the country. It is...
Mr Michael Foot: I do not believe that that is a point of order, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will let me proceed. The serious charge in the article reads: If the dismissals are persisted the Victoria and Albert will be more ignorant than at any other period in this century. The museum relies on the advice of its experts. The article concludes: When universities are starved of funds there is no means...
Mr Michael Foot: It is the quality that is important.
Mr Michael Foot: The right hon. Gentleman had better check his facts before he misleads the House about our legislation. He misleads the House badly enough about his own legislation, so he should not mislead it about ours as well. Of course that legislation was set out in our manifesto. That is one of the reasons why it was introduced in the House.
Mr Michael Foot: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The right hon. Gentleman seems to be enlarging his speech in this Third Reading debate to discuss matters that are not in the Bill. Will we all have a full chance to answer that part of the right hon. Gentleman's case, along with our answers to the rest of his case, when he gets round to defending the Bill itself?
Mr Michael Foot: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, although I could, of course, raise this as a point of order. Whatever else may be said about what I have said in the past, such comments are certainly not in order on the Third Reading of this Bill. Will the right hon. Gentleman eventually come round to discussing his own Bill?
Mr Michael Foot: To give the Minister some credit, he showed a certain diffidence in putting his arguments to the House. Perhaps I am being too generous, but he seemed to have some doubts about his proposition, especially in his reply on new clause 5. I would have thought that the Government should be only to eager to accept new clause 5. I am sure that they must understand that health and safety is a...
Mr Michael Foot: I am not suggesting we should introduce new machinery. I am suggesting that, after 14 or 15 years of the Health and Safety Commission, instead of the niggling measures damaging safety rights which the Government bring forward in different Acts, it is time to look at the machinery. We should see whether substantially bigger sums should be provided so that the inspectorate could be expanded. I...
Mr Michael Foot: My hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Ms. Richardson) put our case so powerfully and conclusively from the Labour Front Bench that I thought that the Minister would immediately get up and say that he accepted the new clause, and we could have disposed of it. I can think of no good argument that he can produce against my hon. Friend's speech. It appears, however, that the Government may be...
Mr Michael Foot: As the Minister knows so much about the matter, perhaps he will tell us the exact number of women in part-time employment when the legislation was introduced.
Mr Michael Foot: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Health and Safety Executive and Commission have a pretty good record of work generally? That being so, why, after all these incidents, does he resist so strongly extending their powers properly to cover this whole area?
Mr Michael Foot: Since it seems to be part of the right hon. Gentleman's original complaint that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) turned up a little late on one of these occasions, could he not arrange that we would never start private Members' business without my hon. Friend being given the chance to be here to assist in the proceedings?
Mr Michael Foot: As the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) and others have said, it is inevitable that Ministers and others will change their minds about particular forms of legislation that have been before the House. Nobody would advance the idea that such changes should be denounced just because they are changes. That would be utterly absurd on any day of the week, let alone on a day when my party may be...
Mr Michael Foot: I am glad to hear the right hon. Gentleman say that. Anybody who was listening to him a few minutes ago would have drawn a different conclusion. He was near to applauding the Liberals' most ill-advised proposal that timetabling should be done on a regular basis. I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has had a conversion on this heavily trafficked road to Damascus and that we have plucked...
Mr Michael Foot: If the comparative figures for people in full-time employment are available for England—as they are—why are similar figures not available for Wales?
Mr Michael Foot: Since the right hon. Gentleman seems so eager to cite precedents to defend his action over the guillotine, could I ask him to respond to the invitation that I have given to him on many previous occasions—I am sure that he must clinch the matter now, in view of what he has previously said—to hold a debate so that the House can see exactly what is the contrast between the measures that we...
Mr Michael Foot: The right hon Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) has made a concluding, forlorn appeal to the Government. He knows better than anybody in the House that what future administrators and the courts will take into account is what is written in legislation and not what was said in answer to him or to others in debates. The right hon. Gentleman made a powerful intervention in previous...
Mr Michael Foot: I happily adopt the second part of the right hon. Gentleman's argument because it happens to be the same as my own, but not the first part of it. There is no doubt that in both Houses the weight of the argument has been against the Government's proposition. However, the Government have not taken any account of either House. Therefore, I take the matter slightly further than the right hon....
Mr Michael Foot: When the Secretary of State said at the end of his speech that what he resented was that anybody should question the allegiance of himself and his party to the National Health Service, I say to him right at the start that if he had been present in 1948, as I was, when the service was introduced, he would have known that the Opposition's suspicions were based on a great foundation. The...
Mr Michael Foot: There should be a senior Minister.
