Mr Alan Clark: In the fulness of time, if my right hon. Friend will allow me to finish my sentence. And for all that time, the Catholics in Ireland have suffered, or believed themselves to have suffered, repression.
Mr Alan Clark: rose
Mr Alan Clark: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and of course I bow to your ruling. This is a Second Reading, on which some latitude is often permitted. I do not feel that I am straying any further than the hon. Gentlemen who spent many minutes of the time of the House discussing the future and validity of higher education in Belfast. Whether or not you want me to deal with my right hon....
Mr Alan Clark: In his interesting dissertation on traffic conditions in cities, my hon. Friend may care to consider the propensity, indeed the habitual practice, of some cyclists of using the pavement, which is the proper precinct for pedestrians.
Mr Alan Clark: It is to protect civil servants.
Mr Alan Clark: Will the Minister give way?
Mr Alan Clark: I am most grateful to the Minister for giving way, particularly as I have only just walked into this debate, although I listened to some of the earlier speeches. Can the Minister confirm that documents will come into the public domain under the 30-year rule? That is a rolling process, and we hope that any advice tendered to his predecessors will soon be available for public scrutiny.
Mr Alan Clark: Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. This subject was discussed at discursive length this morning in the comfortable ambience of the "Today" programme, whereas hon. Members on both sides of the House would like to question the Foreign Secretary on the economic, industrial and diplomatic consequences of a drastic change in policy, as this apparently is. Having inquired at the Foreign...
Mr Alan Clark: Hear, hear.
Mr Alan Clark: Name them.
Mr Alan Clark: The hon. Gentleman should elaborate on that remark. He is making an interesting speech, to which I am paying great attention. He started it by saying that there were no Conservatives in the Chamber because they had all gone fox hunting, which is a slightly bizarre exhortation in the month of July, but we shall pass that by. He then said that he wished that Conservatives on the Opposition...
Mr Alan Clark: I hope that the Minister will not issue a directive. Which guru will judge what is a minor or major work of art? The purpose may be to raise money, but, as the Minister well knows, it is not long since paintings from the Alma-Tadema and pre-Raphaelite schools were regarded as worthless, but now they are fetching millions. If such a directive were issued, in about 20 years all the Lowry...
Mr Alan Clark: Skateboarding!
Mr Alan Clark: The debate takes place in the immediate aftermath of the great countryside rally in Hyde park, which I attended. The countryside is under threat from a range of influences, which my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring) has described. Stupid bureaucrats, greedy speculators, rogue gangs and cultural and material vandalism have all placed the countryside that we all love and...
Mr Alan Clark: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is listed in the Register of Members' Interests that my family trust is a shareholder in Boeing aircraft. I believe that by no stretch of the imagination could Boeing be considered as an alternative supplier to EFA. The House may feel that I should have declared that interest at the outset of my speech, and I apologise for not having done so.
Mr Alan Clark: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Alan Clark: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and particularly grateful for the candour with which he declared his political affiliation. I did not give way to my hon. Friends because I had completed my speech. Further to what my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) just said, I want to distinguish between manufacturing skills and design capability. In the same...
Mr Alan Clark: A rumour is going around that the defence review will be shelved or diluted out of sight. I very much hope that the Minister can deny that. I welcome the projected defence review for several reasons—partly because it was long needed, and partly because the Secretary of State said that it would be policy-driven, not Treasury-driven. It is high time that proper consideration of policy in its...
Mr Alan Clark: Not at the moment. Everyone knows that EFA's life expectancy, even if it has a dominant capability, is only four or five years; and the likelihood of our involvement in the kind of conflict where it would be needed is probably more than four or five years distant. I am not arguing for the elimination of the whole project. I am saying that producing these aircraft and buying them at colossal...
Mr Alan Clark: I have finished my speech.
