Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:45 pm on 7 April 1998.
It must not become part of House of Commons folklore that, somehow or other, the Tory Government ensured that everyone got a fair crack of the whip on a regional basis. The truth is that my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes) checked the figures in the Library not long before the general election when the Tories were running the show. He found that the three constituencies of North-East Derbyshire, Bolsover and Chesterfield—which were represented by three left-wing Members of Parliament—were in the bottom l0 per cent. of recipients of grants handed out in Britain. On the other hand, Westminster received grants left, right and centre. The Tory party handed over the money—£12 million—for the Churchill papers. I am looking to my right hon. Friend to change that bias and award some grants to constituencies represented by my hon. Friends.