Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 9:19 pm on 7 April 1998.
Is not the hon. Gentleman using somewhat hyperbolic language in talking about the mania of control, bearing in mind the fact that it was his party which decided that the Millennium Commission should be chaired by one of its own Ministers? When the former Secretary of State for National Heritage gave money directly to the English National Opera, for the Coliseum, on the eve of an election, nobody described the Government as exercising a mania of control.