Mr Michael Foot: I join those who have demanded that there should be a debate in Government time on the National Health Service. The right hon. Gentleman must have been present in the House a few minutes ago. Does he not recognise how objectionable it was to the House and to its procedures —he must have been a party to it—that, instead of making a proper statement about the Government's proposals for the...
Mr Michael Foot: Will the Minister give way?
Mr Michael Foot: I have heard almost every word of this debate. Would the Minister be good enough to give us the employment and unemployment figures for 1979 and the figures for today and tell us what conclusions he draws from the comparisons?
Mr Michael Foot: Only an hon. Member who had attended so few of our debates over the past few days could have reached the conclusions reached by the hon. Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Devlin). I prefer to refer to the speech of the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery). Those on the Government Front Bench looked uneasy under his questioning, not only because of the way in which he was led to...
Mr Michael Foot: This debate is a further illustration of how objectionable it is that the House of Commons should be considering a Bill of this nature under the restrictions that have been imposed on it. We are now approaching the parts of the Bill—indeed, we have reached them—in respect of which the truncation started at the Committee stage, when debate was curtailed by the falling of the guillotine....
Mr Michael Foot: How does this cover ministerial memoirs and reports? Are they covered by the phrase "only in rare and exceptional cases", or is the present situation to continue? The right hon. Gentleman has not made it clear.
Mr Michael Foot: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. What the Leader of the House has just said is grossly misleading. If we proceed on the basis on which the Government have presented the Bill to the House today, the Bill will go to another place in this defective form. It is not merely a question of what has happened here.
Mr Michael Foot: The change has not been made in the Bill before the House. Therefore, what the Leader of the House has proposed in not a remedy. For the right hon. Gentleman to say that there is no fault on the part of the Government in bringing a defective Bill before us adds to the offence. It certainly does not ease the problems.
Mr Michael Foot: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Now that the House knows the scale of the single word to which we refer, it is clear that it is not a minor matter, but a matter on which there was considerable discussion in Committee. The Government sought to claim that they were making a big concession by agreeing to the alteration of that word. Having made that big concession with which they...
Mr Michael Foot: That might be one way of dealing with the matter. There was a question raised when somebody was arguing about the operation of the Official Secrets Act 1911 only a few months ago. An editor asked a Minister, "How should we deal with such a question?" The reply was, "Ring up No. 10 and see whether you can publish". Some of the other journalists did not think that that was the most sensible or...
Mr Michael Foot: The Government have not even caught up with the telephone, let alone with the other modern inventions, which are beyond me. They do not seem to know that journalists use that extraordinary modern instrument. The clauses need to be properly examined, and that is what a proper Committee stage would have achieved. Instead, we have had an absolute travesty of a Committee stage. These clauses are...
Mr Michael Foot: Although the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) has introduced his amendment as if it were a minor amendment, it has many implications and it touches on other clauses which we should have the opportunity to discuss. I accept that problems arise with the guillotine and I have some sympathy with the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan). The Minister's...
Mr Michael Foot: It is a great delight to follow the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath), who is in such excellent form, and getting his troops off to bed as he used to when he was Chief Whip. He is doing so a little earlier tonight. It is dangerous for any Conservative Members to interrupt him, because they will be sent off 'without any chance of returning with a sufficient retort for...
Mr Michael Foot: I shall give way in a moment. The Independent, The Guardian and The Observer, three reputable newspapers, had to choose whether to risk prosecution. Newspapers do not like to be prosecuted because they are considered to be guilty of injuring the defence of the nation. All those newspapers had to take the decision whether to reprint matters that were widely published in other parts of the...
Mr Michael Foot: I am grateful for the Home Secretary's intervention. I was going to come to my bargain, although I do not have the permission of the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) who moved amendment No. 37, so I would have made it my own proposition. The Home Secretary has come to a proposed bargain before, but this is not a satisfactory bargain. The House must decide such...
Mr Michael Foot: I hope that the Home Secretary will consider the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker), which relate to additional matters that Parliament should carefully consider. Since the Sandys case, the way in which the Select Committee on Privileges operates has been altered in a way that I thought provided for greater protection and should make the...
Mr Michael Foot: I am glad to follow the hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) in the case which he was putting. I hope that the Government will give serious attention to the amendment or to one that could achieve the same absolutely clear effect. This is one of the most important aspects of the Bill that we still have to debate. I am not saying, however, that some of the proposed amendments do not also...
Mr Michael Foot: Further to that point of order, Sir Paul. May I say from the Back Benches that we have rights to protect in this sphere, just as much as have spokesmen from the Front Benches. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) agrees with that. We are in great difficulty. Obviously, this was an improper point of order in the first place. I am not...
Mr Michael Foot: If, as appears from the right hon. Gentleman's statement a few moments ago, the Prime Minister is refusing to speak in the debate next Tuesday, can he tell us who in the Government is responsible for co-ordinating the policies of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Department of Health?
Mr Michael Foot: Indeed, that is the case to which I was referring. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The Labour Government of 1923–24 fell primarily because of opposition in this House to the way in which the Attorney-General had used his authority. There was a great dispute about whether he had allowed his political sympathies to influence the way in which he used that authority. The hon....
