Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Agriculture, Fisheries and Food – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 20 June 1991.
David Maclean
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food)
12:00,
20 June 1991
Ever since I became an Agriculture Minister, we have been saying exactly the same thing every month at the Dispatch Box. We will fight for the retention of minimum values and we will continue to fight for a welfare regime for animals in Europe that uses the best examples of the British system. We have our own excellent rules. We have been standing firm; we are standing firm; and we will continue to stand firm.
If you've ever seen inside the Commons, you'll notice a large table in the middle - upon this table is a box, known as the dispatch box. When members of the Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet address the house, they speak from the dispatch box. There is a dispatch box for the government and for the opposition. Ministers and Shadow Ministers speak to the house from these boxes.
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.
