Some of us have sympathy for the hon. Gentleman's point.

When we come to power we must use Parliament as it should be used. We must reform the procedures of Parliament and have respect for it. Above all, we must do something that the Government have never sought to do. We must use Parliament as an instrument to achieve agreement and reconciliation wherever possible. In their earlier moments the Government used Parliament as a means to hammer through their policies without any regard to what other people thought. We must learn from that lesson and avoid that fault at all costs.

The period since 1974 has shown the total failure and bankruptcy of Socialism. We have seen two versions of Socialism. We started with Socialism proper. We saw that from about 1974 to the time of the economic crisis in 1976–77. There was full-blooded Socialism, epitomised by such measures as the Community Land Act and the other nationalisation measures that were brought in by the Government. Have any of those measures done anything to contribute to the good of the country? Of course not. We saw the ignominious collapse of mark I Socialism. We moved on to a milder social democracy. The ruled the Labour Government after 1976–77, the intervention of the IMF and the decision that public expenditure must be cut. What positive good has been achieved by social democracy or mark II Socialism?

Perhaps the second form did not do much harm, but there has been nothing in which the Government may claim pride or about which the country may feel that there has been any success. It has been a dismal period, culminating in the experiences of the winter that we have just endured. Socialism has nothing left to offer. It is a wasting disease. It is totally obsolete. It cannot solve the fundamental questions of employment. Nor can it solve the problems of bureaucracy and bigness. Even Government supporters know that that is one of the great weaknesses of Socialism. There can be no Socialism without bureaucracy. Yet bureaucracy is crippling this country.

Even Socialism's ethical base has withered away in the past few years. That fact has never been more apparent than in the shoddy dealings that we have seen over these past few days. Socialism and this Parliament are dying. It would be humiliating to carry on. There is nothing left to discuss, except how long the Parliament will last and when the election will be held. Can it be argued that the country's forum should only talk about that and that we should merely ask one another whether the Government may hang on for another week? The country must go to the polls. I devoutly hope that the general election will be triggered off by tonight's vote.