Miscellaneous Amendments and Repeals

Part of Orders of the Day — Rates Bill – in the House of Commons at 9:49 pm on 28 March 1984.

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Photo of Mr William Waldegrave Mr William Waldegrave , Bristol West 9:49, 28 March 1984

For some reason, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) said to me just now, "Can't we find a way of giving the hon. Gentleman another 10 minutes?" I do not know whether my hon. Friend had any reason to be in doubt about the overwhelming majority of the Government at the end of the debate, but I think that the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) was doing his best. If I had to use a single word about his speech, I would say that it was humbug. I say to my hon. Friends who have been critics in terms of the standard of debate, "Thank goodness for you."

It was necessary for the Opposition to establish various matters, and for the Government to establish various matters in the debate. We have established—and the hon. Member for Blackburn admitted it in Committee—that the Bill derives from, and is necessary to, the Government's central economic strategy. Thoughtful critics like my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell) admitted that, and agreed with it. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) made that point strongly, and was right to do so. The essential nature of the Bill to the management of the economy has been established as well by our critics as it has been by our supporters.

We have established that part I of the Bill will enable us to make a reality of the pledges that my right hon. Friend and I gave at the Dispatch Box to bring help to the low spenders because, for the first time, we shall have the power to curb the high spenders, and the Bill is essential for that, too.

With the concession that my right hon. Friend has made today of taking some of the assurances which he made to the Committee, and to the House, and putting them into the Bill, he has made clear that the purpose of the Bill, whether part I or part II, is not to cause problems for those authorities which have sought to do their duty by the national interest, to spend less, and to respond to the guidelines laid down by central Government. I think that my right hon. Friend has reassured many hon. Members who may have had doubts on that score.

We have established that the Bill—and this was established clearly in Committee—is already having its effect on the rating decisions and the spending decisions of those who fear its impact. That point was made strongly by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle under Tyne, Central (Mr. Merchant), in a telling intervention in Committee. I can reinforce what he said from what I have been told by the councillors in my county of Avon, where the same thing is happening.

We established in the course of the debate why the Bill is necessary—and no Conservative is happy to come to the House and ask for such powers—in terms of the weakening connection between voting and spending that has brought the system into disrepute, and has left the ratepayers in too many areas with systems that do not protect them because the source of the money, in terms of central Government grant, in terms of the commercial ratepayer and in terms of the necessary effect of welfare payments on those who pay rates has been such as to weaken the nexus between spending and taxpayers.

We have won that argument, and there is no question about it. That is why we have had to ask the House to put its power and its authority into the balance to protect ratepayers in those areas. That is a traditional duty of the House in such circumstances, of which the House can be rightly proud. Although we would much prefer it if the self-righting mechanisms of local government were doing their jobs by themselves, since they are not, we need have no doubts that it was right that the power of the House should be put into the balance on the side of the ratepayer.

To show that these great gains, which no hon. Member has been able to challenge seriously, were not enough, opponents of the Bill would have had to show that there was something so fundamentally wrong with it constitutionally that it should not be supported. However, I fear that they have not done that.

We have listened with great respect to hon. Members who have doubts on the issue, but no hon. Member has shown any reason to doubt that the House for years has had the right and the duty to control public spending as a whole, and local authority spending is part of public spending. No hon. Member has said that that is the constitutional right and duty of the House. That principal part of the constitutional argument has gone unchallenged.

Of course as Conservatives we fear over-centralisation, and we are right to do so, but when we find a great section of public expenditure which is effectively not responding to the controls laid down by the House, and voted on by the House, year after year, there are two options only. One would have been to take services away from local authorities, and to bring them under the direct control of the House. That would have been a far more centralising course, which would have weakened local authorities much more fundamentally. Surely, given that choice, it is right to seek to make the control of the House over public expenditure more effective by adjustment to the system.

Despite the best efforts of the hon. Member for Blackburn, it has not been shown that the Bill will not work. Thoughtful critics have conceded that point. My right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford did not deploy the argument that the Bill would not work because it would not have been a true argument.

The hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), one of the most intelligent and assiduous of Committee members—I hope that that remark does not cause him trouble—in an exchange with my right hon. Friend yesterday, made it perfectly clear that he well understood that the Bill would have the effect that we claim on the aggregates of public expenditure. No one has been able to show that the Bill will not work.