Orders of the Day — Gaelic (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:44 pm on 13 February 1981.

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Photo of Mr Iain Sproat Mr Iain Sproat , Aberdeen South 12:44, 13 February 1981

I am obliged to my hon. and learned Friend. I recall that my hon. Friend the Minister used the words "over 10", although I do not understand why there should need to be this distinction between those over 3 years, those not over the age of 10 years, and those exceeding the age of 10 years. However, I am glad that that point has been cleared up. The figure, for all practical purposes, is about 240.

I am glad to see that my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) has returned. He raised the important question why we switched from the nomenclature of the post-1975 local government reform Act to the pre-1975 Act. At the beginning of my speech I said that I thought that that was an example of an unfortunately frivolous approach taken by the drafters of the Bill to a serious subject. We have had no satisfactory explanation. It would have been quite possible to define the Gaelic-speaking areas in terms either of the regions or the districts of Scotland. As it is, we hop about from one to the other.

I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. McQuarrie), to use another quaintly anachronistic nomenclature, is sitting beside me, because I read with interest in the media that he was complaining that the Grampian region was not included in the Bill. He apparently said that it had been deliberately excluded. The curious fact is that it is only in the Grampian region that I hear the Gaelic language spoken. At 10.30 on Friday and Saturday evenings we have a Gaelic language programme on Grampian Television—Seachd Laithean—which gives the news in Gaelic. If that is good enough for Grampian Television, covering Aberdeen and also South Angus, which is similarly discriminated against—no doubt the city of Dundee is also discriminated against—it seems extraordinary that the television companies, without prompting from the right hon. Gentleman, should elect to broadcast voluntarily although the area is excluded from the right hon. Gentleman's Bill.