Mr Dave Nellist: In warmly welcoming the right hon. Gentleman's statement as a sign of the approaching general election, may I say that it would be entirely inappropriate, in the discussions that he has through the usual channels or elsewhere, to urge the Government to use the mandate of 1987 in the entirely different political circumstances of 1992 to push through under the guillotine the measures on...
Mr Dave Nellist: I said that it is the HSE's own assessment that 90 per cent. of fatalities in the construction industry are preventable and that 70 per cent. could be prevented by management action. If the laws were in place to allow prosecutions to be tested in the courts, I cannot believe that some employers would not go to prison. I am not suggesting that every case can be proved in a matter of minutes or...
Mr Dave Nellist: I wish that I could bring one or two Bills before the House and see them passed in the few minutes it took us to deal with a worthy measure, which has some bearing on the remarks that I wish to make today. The Offshore Safety (Protection Against Victimisation) Bill is designed to limit the amount of victimisation that takes place against safety representatives and workers on offshore oil...
Mr Dave Nellist: With the permission of the Member concerned, Friday next.
Mr Dave Nellist: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I detected a note of incredulity in your voice and saw the incredulity on the faces of some hon. Members. It would have been useful if, when the Bill was briefly in Committee, I could have caught your eye to ask its sponsor to explain, in a few sentences, what he wanted the Bill to achieve. Instead, the Bill was rushed through in a matter of seconds....
Mr Dave Nellist: Will the Leader of the House ensure that, if an announcement is to be made in the middle of next week, the first day's debate on the Budget statement lasts until at least 10 o'clock on Tuesday so that I have a chance to ask the Chancellor whether he is aware of a chamber of commerce survey in Coventry some 15 months ago on the health of 150 local firms? When the chamber of commerce tried to...
Mr Dave Nellist: I shall be brief, because I have made my points earlier. We are debating the transitional enforcement provisions and the admissibility of evidence. I ask the Minister to reply to the following three points. First, may we have a clear statement on the question of retrospection? According to the letters that I quoted earlier from the Department of the Environment and the Home Office, the taking...
Mr Dave Nellist: My understanding is that, while the judicial review usually takes place within three months of the question in the lower courts that needs to be examined occurring, it is at the discretion of the higher court. What is the Government's position on that? Secondly, this group of amendments, particularly No. 30, speaks of regulations being brought in. I understand that, once the Act receives...
Mr Dave Nellist: Surely the Minister realises that the committal procedure was originally intended not as a punishment, but to force people to pay up. How can he say that, if the bailiffs have not found sufficient goods for a debt to be met, an authority should proceed immediately to committal?
Mr Dave Nellist: Today we have been given a very short time in which to deal with the most unpopular piece of legislation that has ever been brought before the people. That legislation is universally hated. There can be no doubt about that, given that 14 million people in England, Scotland and Wales are now subject to legal proceedings. The vast majority of them have never been dragged before a court before....
Mr Dave Nellist: My hon. Friend is right. Perhaps it would strain your patience too much, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if I were to use the example of the Caribbeans who had their debts written off two or three weeks ago by the Minister for Overseas Development, or the £14·5 billion-worth of debt written off for privatised companies. However, I do not intend to stray any further down that road, as I do not wish to...
Mr Dave Nellist: I wish to correct something which is raised in these debates time after time. I am the one with all the information on that issue—statistics collated from Home Office computer information in the Library, on a quarterly basis.
Mr Dave Nellist: If my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) doubts that, we can check it later and go through all the parliamentary questions that I have asked in the past few years. For the record, there are 11,051,000 summonses in England and Wales, to which must be added 2·75 million sheriff's warrants in Scotland. So 14 million people are being dragged through legal...
Mr Dave Nellist: On the point made by my hon. Friend the. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer), it is interesting that Mr. Ernest Saunders was let out early because of the circumstances described, having served one day in prison for every £30,000 that he was alleged to have defrauded and found guilty of having defrauded during the Guinness scandal. However, Mr. Cassidy, a pensioner from Northumberland, was...
Mr Dave Nellist: My opposition to the guillotine motion is not based simply on the fact that it perpetuates the poll tax for a further year—it will not be abolished until 1993. My opposition is more specific. I think that we should devote far more time this afternoon to discussing Lords amendment No. 57, which relates to computer evidence. I am advised by those who helped my constituents David and Eleanor...
Mr Dave Nellist: One of the classic definitions of the cause of inflation is that it occurs when too much money is chasing too few goods. Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman recognise that the danger for the 1990s is that the fall in production, especially in manufacturing, and the fall of almost 35 per cent. in two successive years in fixed capital formation, could mean that inflation could return,...
Mr Dave Nellist: Is the Home Secretary aware that what we needed today was not a statement but a confession as to why, after all the Government's massive spending on the police, courts and prisons, crime has doubled during the lifetime of the Government? People outside this place are not conned into thinking that the talk of toughening laws and filling up the prisons two weeks before an election will deal...
Mr Dave Nellist: Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Home Secretary to come back to the Chamber this afternoon and make a statement on this morning's High Court ruling in favour of my constituents David and Eleanor Bullard, and against the Government's persistent illegal use of uncorroborated computer printouts in poll tax cases in magistrates courts? The ruling puts a question mark over 11 million...
Mr Dave Nellist: Is the Minister aware that, representing a seat in a city which is more heavily dependent on defence contracts than almost anywhere else in the country—he knows that because of the questions that I have asked him in the past few years —I believe that defence expenditure ought to be radically cut and that that expenditure ought to be shifted, in a planned way, to civilian projects, not...
Mr Dave Nellist: I have been expelled from it.