Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 1:31 am on 14 March 1991.
Mr John Bowis
, Battersea
1:31,
14 March 1991
Indeed, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
I am also grateful to my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Arts and to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher) for being here. They have at least one thing in common—both have been recent and most welcome visitors to the Battersea arts centre, in which I must declare a non-pecuniary, if not impecunious interest as a director, unpaid. I also declare my past, even somewhat pecuniary, interest in a company which had an interest in the project for a museum of building.
I am sorry that no Liberal Democrat Member is with us tonight—in fact, none has appeared for any of the five debates so far. I had hoped that one might have come to this debate, because when I was looking at the artwork for the natural history museum logo I noticed a symbol that looked remarkably like the symbol of the Liberal Democrats—the phoenix—and I had hoped that the Liberals would explain that
The Deputy speaker is in charge of proceedings of the House of Commons in the absence of the Speaker.
The deputy speaker's formal title is Chairman of Ways and Means, one of whose functions is to preside over the House of Commons when it is in a Committee of the Whole House.
The deputy speaker also presides over the Budget.
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.
