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Business of the House

I shall attempt to deal with the serious points raised by the right hon. Lady. It may not take me quite as long as the various points that she made. A debate on pensions would be useful, as I have previously told the House. I will have to look at the business that we have to fit in, to see whether that can be arranged before publication of the White Paper. I will certainly consider that, as it is an important subject for the House to discuss. On corrections, when the right hon. Lady asked me for a correction, I indicated that that would be done in the usual way. She accurately described the usual process of correction, whereby a departmental Minister taking responsibility sets out the details in a letter, which is then placed in the Library. I commend her for the accuracy of her description, but I do not see how that amounts to some failure of responsibility. I may have missed the subtlety of her point. As far as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is concerned, he has stood before the House on a number of occasions, including yesterday, and set out in considerable detail the efforts being made to correct what he has described as an unedifying situation. It is right for him to continue to do so. Despite the protestations from Opposition Members, I have seen no substantive criticism of what he has been doing to remedy the particular problem. As I made clear to the House last week, it was only as a result of impressive improvements in the working of the Home Office in this area of policy that the particular problem came to light. Before 1999, Governments were not in a position to know whether the problem existed, because no previous Government kept records. It is important for the Opposition to think about those facts before making the sort of blustering comments that we heard a few moments ago from the right hon. Lady, if she will forgive me for saying so. The Government have already held a series of debates on the subjects of public safety and public security, but I regret to say that, from time to time, we have not received the full support of the Opposition in our efforts to promote them. With further regard to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the proposals that he set out yesterday, we look forward to finding out exactly what the Opposition’s position is. They are certainly willing to criticise the Government, but when we make proposals to solve the problems, sadly, they do not always give us the support that we would expect.