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Business of the House

I congratulate the right hon. Lady on that long list of items, which I suspect will be a new record. I shall endeavour to make my way through each point, but I apologise in advance if I do not give as much detail as usual, as she is clearly challenging my powers of explaining the Government’s excellent record on each matter that she raised. I am pleased to report that the Merchant Shipping (Pollution) Bill came out of the Lords rather sooner than anticipated. Given that it is available and ready, it seemed sensible to get on with it. On Afghanistan, the Government have always kept the House fully informed about the deployment of our forces, and in other theatres. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence will take an early opportunity to inform the House about any relevant developments in Afghanistan. The right hon. Lady asked about rendition. I am sure that she is not relying on leaked documents for her assertions, but I draw her attention to the fact that the statements by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary were made after the particular document that has been the subject of some rather excitable media speculation this morning. I encourage her to read my right hon. Friend’s statements in detail, and she will find the facts contained therein. As to NHS funding, the right hon. Lady is relying on a survey that is interesting and important but not especially scientific. It does not set out the full facts, which are clear; as I have told the House on previous occasions, only a small number of NHS bodies are operating in deficit, with some 65 per cent. operating at a surplus. I have a question for Opposition Members. Are they seriously saying that the Government should not act to assist those NHS organisations that are operating at a loss, when the great majority operate at a surplus? I should have expected Opposition Members to come to the House and demand that the Government sort the problem out. We are sorting it out by providing help and assistance to ensure that all NHS organisations operate at a surplus, or certainly do not operate at a loss. The right hon. Lady asked about the education reform Bill. It has never been Government practice to announce dates, but I assure her and the House that the Bill will brought to the Floor of the House at the earliest possible opportunity. It is astonishing for the right hon. Lady to comment about unemployment, given the lamentable performance of the previous Government. In 1992, Norman Lamont—now Lord Lamont—said that unemployment was a price worth paying. I should be interested to know whether that comment was written by the current Leader of the Opposition, who of course was Norman Lamont’s special adviser at the time. Many people in the country suspect that that remark is what the Conservatives believe. I would encourage the Conservatives to look carefully at the remarkable record of improvement in employment in this country, which is as good as any of the other G8 countries and out of sight of anything they achieved during their time in office. I assure the House that the date of the Budget will be announced in due course, and we have debated police reorganisation already and will continue to debate it.