Government Policy

Part of Bill Presented – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 14 December 1978.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Sir Peter Emery Sir Peter Emery , Honiton 12:00, 14 December 1978

I shall be as short as possible and try to limit my remarks to five minutes. May I make quite clear that I am always delighted to follow the right hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish). Nobody speaks with greater honesty or greater directness and I believe that he has voiced much of what I shall not be criticising in my speech when he says that it is right and proper that this Government should be ready to go to the people; because it is my judgment, following on from what he has said, that the real problem we are faced with in the House tonight is that of a Government hanging on to power purely for the sake of power itself. This Government are staying in office although they are entirely discredited. There is nothing they can do constructively from now on during this period of office. This Government have been defeated on a major plank of their economic policy. These are not my words but the words of members of the Cabinet, spoken over and over again—that sanctions have to be maintained as a major plank of economic policy.

If that is swept away, there is little this Government can turn to as an alternative, because they have refused to do so in the past and have resisted all the blandishments of the Left wing of their own party who have wanted to see this alteration in policy. They can carry forward no other major piece of legislation. There is not one major item in the suggested Labour Party manifesto of its conference of 1976 that this Government could dare bring to the Floor of the House as a Bill with any possible thought that it could be got through this Parliament at present. We are a hung Parliament. We might well be described, in American terms after the presidential election, as a "lame duck" Government, except that this is not a lame duck Government but a dead duck Government, as the Leader of the House is a dead duck.