– in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 13 December 1973.
Dennis Skinner
, Bolsover
12:00,
13 December 1973
asked the Prime Minister if he will place in the Library a copy of his public speech on industrial and political affairs at Nelson on 23rd November.
Mr Edward Heath
, Bexley
I did so on 27th November.
Dennis Skinner
, Bolsover
Does the Prime Minister remember that in the speech that he made on that date he referred to the miners' dispute which had just commenced—the overtime ban? Does he also recall that only three weeks prior to that speech he stood at the Dispatch Box and blamed a £2,000 million deficit on the balance of payments, a 40 per cent. increase in food prices, and a 13 per cent. minimum lending rate, and all that goes with that, not on the miners but on world prices and the weather? Does not it take a Prime Minister with a split mind to change in such a short time?
Mr William Clark
, East Surrey
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is the avowed intention of the Communist Party to cripple the capitalist system? Would it not therefore be a good idea to publish a list of those people within the trade union movement who have Communist affiliations, so that the silent Majority in the trade union movement can realise what sort of people are leading them?
Mr Edward Heath
, Bexley
I should not have thought there was any doubt among politicians about the real purpose of the Communist Party. As regards the second part of the question, I think that this information is available to everyone who studies these matters.
If you've ever seen inside the Commons, you'll notice a large table in the middle - upon this table is a box, known as the dispatch box. When members of the Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet address the house, they speak from the dispatch box. There is a dispatch box for the government and for the opposition. Ministers and Shadow Ministers speak to the house from these boxes.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
A group of workers who have united to promote their common interests.
The term "majority" is used in two ways in Parliament. Firstly a Government cannot operate effectively unless it can command a majority in the House of Commons - a majority means winning more than 50% of the votes in a division. Should a Government fail to hold the confidence of the House, it has to hold a General Election. Secondly the term can also be used in an election, where it refers to the margin which the candidate with the most votes has over the candidate coming second. To win a seat a candidate need only have a majority of 1.
