Mr Bob Cryer: The Minister introduced the order by saying that it was a traditional method of assessing rates. I am familiar with the system of assessing rates because, unlike him, I have been a director of a private railway company and I was the chairman of the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway Preservation Society. It was one of the pioneering railway preservation societies, it was formed in 1962 and it...
Mr Bob Cryer: May I finish the point? The Leeds to Bradford and Airedale branch line has just been provided with new fencing and new bridge parapets for protection, because the 25 kV overhead electrification has been installed and, no doubt, some of the track work has been improved. I should have thought that that would reflect a higher charge. The Minister may regard that as extremely inconvenient, but...
Mr Bob Cryer: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, but the truth is that we simply do not know. The opaqueness of the explanatory note for the order is not exceptional. Government Departments have a certain style—and the orders are always signed by Ministers; it is they, not civil servants, who take the responsibility. Departments seem to consider that one of their aims in life is to...
Mr Bob Cryer: My hon. Friend is right. We have been battling to try to persuade the Government to incorporate expenditure on new rolling stock for the new electrified railway. In view of the massively increased administrative charges under privatisation and the difficulties that will occur in any event, the Government might have taken the expenditure into account in assessing the rateable values, and...
Mr Bob Cryer: My hon. Friend is right. Unfortunately, the Minister for Public Transport mistakenly thought that Menwith Hill station, which is a spy listening station, was a British Rail station. I mention that by way of explanation in response to my hon. Friend's intervention, Madam Deputy Speaker. When the Minister asked British Rail where the station was it could not tell him, for the simple reason that...
Mr Bob Cryer: Would it not have helped the users of the statutory instrument if what the Minister is saying had been set out in the explanatory note? It would have shown that he had some confidence in his assertion and it would have helped the users. The explanatory note is brief to the point of obscurity. As the order will apply to a new organisation in a supposed new era which, I am sure my hon. Friend...
Mr Bob Cryer: Does my hon. Friend think that the lateness of the order may be due to the fact that Railtrack plc in its embryonic non-trading stage will have had to take into account the payments in the order before deciding what sort of charges it will levy to franchisees? Does my hon. Friend agree that the recent announcement about the charges by Railtrack plc, which are much more enhanced than...
Mr Bob Cryer: Does my hon. Friend not agree that the order is entirely inadequate? The legislation was originally designed for a national network, but British Rail is to be broken down into a series of separate operating entities. Therefore, there will, of necessity, have to be a breakdown in the charge for rateable valuation in the order. The public at large will have no knowledge—the order provides no...
Mr Bob Cryer: I wish to speak because I was one of the people who objected to the business motion. I am sorry that I did not hear the opening speeches, but I was chairing the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments, which is why I want to speak later about the rating and valuation order. The business motion, to curtail debate in one case and to extend debate by a very small amount in excess of the usual...
Mr Bob Cryer: Yes; and it applies to all subordinate legislation. We accept that Ministers should be given powers to fill in the nuts and bolts of Government administration, but the Government are abusing the process. They are producing some 3,500 instruments a year, which is more than any other Government in history, whereas they are supposed to be taking legislation off people's backs. Labour...
Mr Bob Cryer: Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government are trying to straitjacket Parliament by limiting debate to one and a half hours for each item, which is artificial and unnecessary? The exchanges on this issue demonstrate that it would have been preferable if a business motion had not been tabled so that we could have first debated rating and valuation and then launched into the debate...
Mr Bob Cryer: I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on this subject. In a curious way, it stems from two Ministers: the Minister of State for the Armed Forces, who claimed that there was parliamentary accountability for Menwith Hill station; and the Minister for Public Transport, who found Menwith Hill station so secret that he was not even aware of it when he was a Minister at the Ministry of...
Mr Bob Cryer: Will the Minister give way?
Mr Bob Cryer: I am not against this money resolution, but I believe that when money resolutions come before the House—except when there is an open and shut case for supporting them, and we know how much finance the House is committing—the Minister responsible ought to give the House an explanation of them. The Bill allows the Parliamentary Commissioner to investigate administrative actions taken by...
Mr Bob Cryer: Private Members' Bills do not offer the same detail as the Government can provide. Government Bills always include information about their financial effects. It provides Parliament with a helpful guide if we are told about those effects. With private Members' Bills, therefore, it is all the more relevant that the Minister should outline the sort of expenditure that he anticipates. I do not...
Mr Bob Cryer: I probably have more experience than most hon. Members in discussing money resolutions. When I started, Ministers were not here, or they were not briefed, but now they are—that is a welcome development. I assure the Minister that I am not attempting to be hostile to his Bill, but I assume that if he had had the financial information before now he would have put it in an explanatory...
Mr Bob Cryer: My hon. Friend, in his brief intervention, has refuted a rather cheap sneer from the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris), who suggested that money resolution debates are not useful. I have always maintained that they are very useful. The time allowed is 45 minutes, but there are some people who want to abolish them. That would be wrong. For many years during my membership of the House money...
Mr Bob Cryer: I would not go down that road in any case, as I am very concerned about the expenditure of money. I have listed the relevant tribunals for the purposes of section 5(7) of the original Act and have related them to this money resolution, which says that it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to that Act in the sums payable out...
Mr Bob Cryer: Will the Leader of the House provide time next week for a debate on transport so that we could incorporate a discussion on early-day motion 939, on the takeover of Yorkshire Rider by Badgerline? [That this House notes the proposed £38 million buy-out of Yorkshire Rider bus company by Badgerline; further notes that Yorkshire Rider is 49 per cent. owned by the employees who have not been...
Mr Bob Cryer: Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. Can you confirm that if a Minister intimidated, or intended to intimidate, hon. Members in the carrying out of their duty, or in any way prevented them from doing so, that could be construed as a breach of privilege? The actions of Ministers are not excluded from the ordinary remedies available to the House—the High Court of Parliament.
