Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Education and Employment – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 17 February 2000.
Malcolm Wicks
Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Education and Employment
12:00,
17 February 2000
One of us has to learn Opposition and, as the Minister for lifelong learning, I have a good guess who it will be. It is difficult to keep up with the Conservative U-turns. The Conservatives used to be against Scottish devolution; now I think that they are in favour of it. What their current position is on tax expenditure I do not know. I raise that because we would not think it sensible to spend hundreds of millions of pounds implementing Scottish proposals.
We would not be prepared to take that money from nursery education, the school system or the national health service budget. I am not sure whether the Conservative Opposition are now proposing doing that.
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.
The Opposition are the political parties in the House of Commons other than the largest or Government party. They are called the Opposition because they sit on the benches opposite the Government in the House of Commons Chamber. The largest of the Opposition parties is known as Her Majesty's Opposition. The role of the Official Opposition is to question and scrutinise the work of Government. The Opposition often votes against the Government. In a sense the Official Opposition is the "Government in waiting".
The Conservatives are a centre-right political party in the UK, founded in the 1830s. They are also known as the Tory party.
With a lower-case ‘c’, ‘conservative’ is an adjective which implies a dislike of change, and a preference for traditional values.
