Mr Dave Nellist: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wondered whether you would take the opportunity, perhaps through one of the channels that are available to you, to remind Ministers for the future that, if investigations are taking place, as the Minister for Trade said in his statement, that is entirely different from the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Ewing) about court...
Mr Dave Nellist: Leaving aside how British troops in the Gulf must now feel towards the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Clark), and the fact that the occasion of this statement is not only a good occasion for his resignation but another good reason for not drifting senselessly towards war in the Gulf, how can this Minister now face the 89 workers and their families from Matrix Churchill in Coventry who...
Mr Dave Nellist: I support the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) about the need for a debate on British Aerospace's disgraceful announcement today of 4,500 redundancies. In that debate we ought to be able to question the Ministry of Defence on the need for alternative work and contracts so that defence workers do not have to pay the price of defence cuts. In preparation for...
Mr Dave Nellist: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr Dave Nellist: Policies can be hypocritical, not people.
Mr Dave Nellist: On a point of order, Miss Boothroyd. Do you know whether the House is to receive a statement later today? Now that the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) has been made Secretary of State for the Environment, he may like to take this opportunity of making real the promises he made in the dying hours of yesterday morning's contest when he said that he intends to abolish the poll tax.
Mr Dave Nellist: Who is the Foreign Secretary getting into bed with in this deal with Syria? What has convinced him that the Syrian regime today is any different from the regime which ordered the murder of 20,000 Muslims in the city of Hama in 1982, which harboured the Lockerbie bombers, and invaded and colonised parts of Lebanon in what is now greater Syria? The Syrian secret police are no less efficient...
Mr Dave Nellist: Of what benefit would education vouchers be to parents who face teacher shortages, particularly in London? Did the Secretary of State see last night's television report or read in this lunchtime's Evening Standard that 1,600 teachers in London have left schools in the past two months, which has affected the education of tens of thousands of pupils? Is not it a fact that it is not education...
Mr Dave Nellist: If things are as good as the Prime Minister is outlining, why are her colleagues not happy for her to continue in the job of defending that record?
Mr Dave Nellist: If the Secretary of State will not accept it from me, as the Prime Minister would not accept yesterday, that it is possible for the Ministry of Defence to estimate casualties were a war to take place, what does he say to Colonel David Hackworth, the most decorated American soldier in Vietnam? He has estimated that there will be 50,000 casualties in the first two weeks of the war—only 7,000...
Mr Dave Nellist: What did the Prime Minister mean when, during the Paris conference, she said that more British service personnel were to be sent to the Gulf—when and how many? Does the Prime Minister realise that, given the latest estimates of a full-scale war meaning 400 British dead each day, drafting a political epitaph pales into insignificance compared with the real epitaphs now looming on the...
Mr Dave Nellist: Given that the Leader of the House has full control over the announcement that he made this evening, why did he not announce a two-day debate for Wednesday and Thursday? That might have given the Prime Minister two chances to drag herself away from the ballet to come here and justify the past 11 years of attacks on working class people.
Mr Dave Nellist: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 20 November.
Mr Dave Nellist: Is the Lord President of the Council aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) was outside Committee Room 12 this morning at 10 o'clock when he conducted a most authoritative exit poll of a certain contest? Among the first—[Interruption.]
Mr Dave Nellist: Among the first 200 Tory MPs who emerged, 200 admitted to voting for the Prime Minister and 200 admitted to voting for the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine). With all the duplicity and general savagery of the past few days, does the Lord President agree that it would be better to follow the advice of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Rutherglen (Mr. McAvoy) and call a general...
Mr Dave Nellist: I join the Minister in marking the fact that, 50 years ago tonight, some 600 people died in Coventry and several thousand houses were either damaged or destroyed. Of all the remarks made about Coventry that the Tories could have made today, of all days, the remarks about defaulters by the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson) were the last that we expected. Is the Minister really so...
Mr Dave Nellist: When preparing the statement on the Gulf that the Prime Minister has said was agreed in Rome, was the right hon. Lady aware of the existence of publicly available estimates by American chiefs of staff that within 12 days of combat there would be 30,000 allied casualties, and that 10,000 of them would be fatalities? If she disagrees with the American estimates, can she tell us what estimates...
Mr Dave Nellist: The Americans have.
Mr Dave Nellist: On a different point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will be aware, as most hon. Members are, that the other place has a strange, but presumably on many occasions useful, procedure by which the House adjourns during pleasure. It is a quaint and rather nice phrase. Will you, Madam Deputy Speaker, accept a motion from the Floor that our proceedings be adjourned for a similar period, which I...
Mr Dave Nellist: Good one.