Mr Dave Nellist: Will the Leader of the House arrange for a further statement from the Foreign Secretary after the one that he is to make this afternoon to mark the fact that this weekend will see the third anniversary of the intifada in the occupied territories in which more than 1,000 people have been killed, many of them children, and tens of thousands have been injured? Why have the Palestinians waited...
Mr Dave Nellist: rose——
Mr Dave Nellist: The right hon. Gentleman talks about accountability. I should like to ask the question that one of my hon. Friends tried to ask. The Minister's right hon. and hon. Friends spoke of everyone having to pay something towards local services or they would lose the right to vote. Can he explain why those same Tory Members voted for the Government to spend £425,000 to extend the vote to 18,000...
Mr Dave Nellist: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr Dave Nellist: rose——
Mr Dave Nellist: In previous debates, I have compared the former Prime Minister's description of the poll tax as the "flagship" of her third term to the Titanic. Her Titanic met its iceberg in the form of the 28 million people who are worse off under that tax, almost half of whom have refused to pay it. The captain has already gone overboard and the officers are now reshuffling the deckchairs a bit. That will...
Mr Dave Nellist: I shall not give way now. Teenagers have been summonsed. Once someone has been through the courts, the bailiffs—mediaeval thugs—are called in. They represent a system which the National Consumer Council, and even the Tory-appointed Law Commission of four years ago, reckon should be abolished. The first family in Coventry to be threatened by the police coming to arrest it, a court...
Mr Dave Nellist: Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr Dave Nellist: Is it not a fact that, had it not been for the 14 million who have yet to pay the poll tax, the Secretary of State would not be here this afternoon announcing a review suggesting changes or possibly abolition? Furthermore, if the right hon. Gentleman is so concerned about people on low incomes, why—despite his announcement of a two—year review-is his right hon. Friend the Secretary of...
Mr Dave Nellist: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many British service personnel are now in the Gulf; and if he will make a statement.
Mr Dave Nellist: Does the Secretary of State for Defence recognise that I have repeatedly tried to get comments from the former Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and himself on the estimates that have been made the likely level of casualties if war were to break out? What has the right hon. Gentleman to say to Brigadier Patrick Cordingley, commander of the Desert Rats, who believes that if a war breaks...
Mr Dave Nellist: The right hon. Gentleman should not have sold them the arms in the first place.
Mr Dave Nellist: Is not the essence of the Bill the fact that Lambeth said this summer that it could not see itself collecting any more than 85 per cent. of the poll tax and that the Government said that it should be able to collect 100 per cent.? The Bill gives the Secretary of State power to set poll tax levels that local councils would not be able to vary. Has the Under-Secretary of State looked, as I...
Mr Dave Nellist: Is not it a fact that directors who are earning £70,000 a year are paying far less tax than they were 10 or 11 years ago, to the tune of more than £1,000a week? Is not the only difference that Labour authorities,which freeze the cost of school meals or bus fares, are looking after our folk, and that the hon. Lady's Government, with tax cuts for the rich, are looking after her folk? The...
Mr Dave Nellist: That is probably one thing on which the hon. Lady and I would agree. I do not like Labour authorities employing people on five or 10 times the wages that local people get. There is an old saying in what is known as the good book about taking a beam out of one's own eye before taking a mote out of anybody else's. The hon. Lady is talking about somebody who was once an elected Member moving on...
Mr Dave Nellist: I have asked the Minister's Department very many questions during the past three years, in an attempt to ascertain what estimates the Department was using for the non-collection or the non-payment of the poll tax. During all that time, I was told that it was impossible to make such estimates. However, on 26 November, the Department at last gave me the figures, albeit missing out Birmingham,...
Mr Dave Nellist: I cannot allow that remark to go by. How does the Minister explain the situation in Tory Bath, whose Member of Parliament is the former Secretary of State for the Environment? Bath's collection rate so far this year is only 77·1 per cent. Is it not the poll tax, and the fact that millions of people have been made poorer by it, that makes collection so difficult, rather than the inherent...
Mr Dave Nellist: That is not what we said.
Mr Dave Nellist: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr Dave Nellist: It is on the point that my hon. Friend has raised.