Mr Ralph Howell: I am afraid I did not catch that. I believe that that would be a deterrent, and some young people would never start out on a course of crime. It would be of immense assistance in detecting social security fraud as well as other frauds. Our present system is archaic. We all have—if we are drivers—five sets of numbers. We have a national insurance number, a National Health Service number,...
Mr Ralph Howell: I am sure that the card would help employers to know more about the people they are employing. The fact that we would have a register of all persons "ordinarily" residing in this country would be an immense help. An even greater problem than terrorism is the increased fear in which many of our citizens live. Crime has increased sevenfold. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people...
Mr Ralph Howell: I am here to advocate a Bill that I hope will help to stop fraud and tax evasion generally. I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman would applaud my efforts. The Secretary of State for the Home Department has said that a voluntary system might be best, but how do we legislate for such a system? What possible sense could there be in it? My researchers and I contacted the French embassy...
Mr Ralph Howell: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Ralph Howell: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Ralph Howell: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this problem was caused by misinformation and by the incompetence of a Minister? Does he accept that those who have suffered should be fully compensated and that his statement is totally unsatisfactory?
Mr Ralph Howell: Is my right hon. Friend aware that food prices and agricultural support are at their lowest level for 20 years? Does he realise that depressing agriculture prices is doing vast harm to the industry and to the British economy in general?
Mr Ralph Howell: As every Labour Government have operated a means test for all our citizens, is not the Leader of the Opposition talking total humbug—
Mr Ralph Howell: Will my right hon. Friend give urgent consideration to producing one form from which a decision can be made on whether tax should be paid or benefits given to top-up inadequate income?
Mr Ralph Howell: I am interested to hear the right hon. Gentleman's remarks. I ask whether he is being rather complacent. How can we be sure that we are getting value for money in the National Health Service, for example, when there is no real accounting system, which means that there can be no real auditing system? It has been arranged deliberately that there should be no inventory control in many sectors of...
Mr Ralph Howell: In 1985 my right hon. and learned Friend's Department was unable to tell the Public Accounts Committee whether we were employing too many or too few nurses. Can he tell us now whether there are too many or too few?
Mr Ralph Howell: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the resentment that many people on low pay and pensioners feel when they are taxed on incomes well below £5,000 a year in order to give money to the richest people? Surely that cannot be justified.
Mr Ralph Howell: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many farmers will consider these measures inadequate, and that the take-up will be very small? What will be done with the green crop cover, if grazing is not allowed? Is the exclusion of grazing not a further disadvantage to British farmers in comparison with European farmers? How does the £200 maximum compare with that which will be received by the French...
Mr Ralph Howell: Does my hon. Friend accept that the figure that he has just quoted is based on wheat at £50 a tonne and that no such wheat is available? The cheapest wheat imported into Britain is £105 a tonne and wheat from other parts of the EC is as much as £177 a tonne. His figure is wholly fallacious.
Mr Ralph Howell: I find it difficult to understand how it will help our hard-pressed producers if their returns are cut even further when they are below production costs already. And why are we constantly talking down the world price of wheat and saying that it is lower than the price British farmers are receiving, when that cannot be proved? When our millers are paying up to £250 a tonne for American wheat...
Mr Ralph Howell: What does my right hon. Friend consider to be the world market price for milling and other wheat?
Mr Ralph Howell: While I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) on the motives behind his amendment and fully understand what he is trying to do to help those who are over 80 who have not got great resources, I am unable to support him. No category like that should be excluded because it includes all sorts of people, like the late Sir Charles Clore and Paul Getty, who would...
Mr Ralph Howell: Yes, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was trying to say that rather than go down the route which my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South has suggested, there is a way in which we could solve the problem without these strange demarcation lines and exemptions. I do not believe that there should be exemptions. That is why I suggest to my hon. Friends on the Front Bench a system which would...
Mr Ralph Howell: I sympathise with my hon. Friend's proposition, but surely he realises that not all people over the age of 80 are in need of help. The people that he is concerned with are the over-80s who are not very affluent, but some old people over the age of 80 are not in that category. May I commend to my hon. Friend my new clause 5? It would transfer the raising of funds for local authorities to a VAT...
Mr Ralph Howell: As child benefit is more valuable to better-off parents than to others, why have we not made child benefit means-tested in order to save £3 billion?
