Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: It is the salutary if unwritten convention of this House that when it has been announced that an hon. Member will shortly be leaving it to take up an outside appointment he shall not indulge too violently in controversy. Conscious as I am of my own limitations—as Oscar Wilde said of himself, I can resist anything except temptation—I have not sought to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker,...
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: If my right hon. Friend is adding the £15,000 to the £15,000 I must add the £15,000 to the £50,000 and make it £65,000. The comparable figures, taking in the free allowance if my right hon. Friend wishes—I want to be considerate this afternoon—are £30,000 and £65,000. Our friends in Europe have always regarded our sentimentality about animals as rather comic, but if as a matter of...
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: Will the 2¼ per cent. limit of fluctuation on the new parities be a matter for further consideration in the long-term consideration to which my hon. Friend has referred? Also, under the present arrangements, will the Canadian dollar continue to float?
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: Does my right hon. Friend's statement mean that sup- plementary benefits will be reviewed and increased at exactly the same time as national insurance benefits, at the times of the year that my right hon. Friend has mentioned? Does his statement exclude the possibility of making adjustments in supplementary benefits, if necessary, at other times of the year?
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: Like the right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I can claim to have attended all the meetings of the Select Committee, and a further reason why I am particularly glad to be able to take part in this debate is that, although not a member of the Select Committee of 1952, as what was then colloquially described as Mr. Butler's...
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. He is, as always, helping me. Putting aside the incredible suggestion that the right hon. Gentleman's readers did not bother to read his second article at all having been bored sufficiently by the first, is it not possible that the reason for this diminution in protests was that it became apparent to his correspondents that the editor of this journal...
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: No, not at the moment. As I was saying, hon. Gentlemen opposite may say that this has happened under Tory Governments, but the position was the same under Labour Governments. That was the position when the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) was Chancellor of the Exchequer. It has been accepted for 200 years. On the right hon. Gentleman's other tax point, that of...
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: When the right hon. Gentleman refers to the commander of the Royal yacht or pilots of the Queen's Flight, is he not overlooking the fact that those distinguished officers serve in the capacity for a year or two and then pass on to other appointments in the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force? They are only in that special relationship with the Monarch for quite a short time. But many members of...
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: I argued that there was freedom of choice. I advocated the scheme I put to the Select Committee, which would have been even better than my right hon. Friend's.
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: Before my right hon. Friend abandons the regulatory advantages of a floating £, will he pause to reflect whether the Bretton Woods system of fixed parities has not been as great a disaster to the world as was the return to gold at pre-war parity in the 1920s?
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: Will my right hon. Friend give special consideration to those people who have been on sickness benefit, which is tax free, and who, on reaching retirement age, pass to a retirement pension which is taxable and therefore face a reduction in their already low standards of life?
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what reply he gave to the representations made on behalf of the Spanish Government about the visit of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to Gibraltar.
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: Apart from the naval requirements, did my right hon. Friend and the embassy make it crystal clear to the Spanish authorities that the visit by the heir to the Throne to Her Majesty's loyal Colony of Gibraltar is the business of no foreign Government?
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: asked the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications if he will issue a general direction to the Post Office Corporation to the effect that increases in telephone charges of a kind intended to restrict demand for telephones shall not be applied in the case of old and disabled people.
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: Does my right hon. Friend appreciate that the Post Office has in mind increases in telephone charges over and above what is required as a result of higher wages in order to restrict demand? Would it not be quite wrong to restrict the demand of persons such as the old and the disabled, who really need a telephone?
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: While not underrating the enthralling nature of the answers that my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Advocate might give, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether he is aware that many of us would prefer a rearrangement to enable my hon. Friend who answers for the Civil Service Department to be allowed to give an oral answer once or twice a year instead of being prevented from doing so by...
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: I hope that it is not presumptuous of me to say that I very much appreciate the attitude of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House in indicating that he does not intend to push through any of the individual Motions about which a number of hon. Members have reservations. I wish to speak only to the Motion relating to the Third Reading. Before doing so, however, I should like to say how...
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: I should not like to give my hon. Friend of all hon. Members any advice on parliamentary tactics, but I would assure him that there is a certain technique by which, perhaps with one eye on the Chair and one eye on the Minister, it is possible, if one moves quickly, to make such a suggestion. I would not ask my hon. Friend, unless he suffers from insomnia, to read any of my speeches, but,...
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry why he is altering the present regulations governing origin marking of goods for sale.
Mr John Boyd-Carpenter: Does my hon. Friend accept that the best thing to do would be to restore the pre-existing position, which provided a most useful element of consumer choice?