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Business of the House

The first point that the right hon. Lady asked me about concerned the equality Bill. I very much welcome her new interest in equality, particularly on the question of equal pay. However, I remember that she voted against what was, in itself, the biggest contribution to narrowing the pay gap between women and men: the minimum wage. Nevertheless, I welcome her commitment to equality. As far as the Bill is concerned, the original plan was to issue a consultation and following that to publish a draft Bill this spring for inclusion in the Queen's Speech of November 2008. Following the response to the consultation, a number of proposals have been made that we think are worthy of consideration in order to improve the Bill. As I told the right hon. Lady previously, we want to keep our slot for a new equality Bill, fit for the 21st century, in 2008. It might not be possible to publish the whole Bill in draft, but we would seek to publish some draft clauses. I attended a reception at the TUC in September—the House was not sitting at the time—where I gave that answer to a question about our response to the consultation on the equality Bill. If the House had been sitting, I would have taken the opportunity to come to the House to make that point. The right hon. Lady asked about motorway hard shoulders. There was a written ministerial statement on that, and I am not aware of any request for an urgent question from hon. Members, but there will be Transport questions in the future—[Interruption.] I apologise; an urgent question was requested, but not accepted. The right hon. Lady asked about capital gains tax. There is an opportunity during consideration of the Queen's Speech for the Opposition to choose the subjects for whole-day debates. I have no doubt that the economy will be one of them, and hon. Members can revisit those issues. The right hon. Lady accused the Secretary of State for Justice and the Prime Minister of briefing the newspapers before the statement given by the Secretary of State. The information that was new in the Secretary of State's statement was first announced in this House, but a lot of the information discussed in the papers this morning was in the Green Paper, ““The Governance of Britain””, which had already been given to the House by the Prime Minister in July. That information was already in the public domain. Although we can discuss things already in the public domain in the newspapers, if Ministers have new information, I regard it as important that they bring it in a statement to this House. As I understand it, that is what the Secretary of State for Justice did today. The right hon. Lady raised the question of the Scottish elections. It is deeply regrettable that 150,000 or so people did not have their vote counted in those elections. The point is that everyone should have a vote and we have always wanted to increase the turnout from its diminishing level. One of the reasons why proportional systems, which operate in the European elections, and in London, Wales and Scotland, were introduced was the belief that it might increase turnout, based on the argument that every vote counted for more. As we have seen, the reality is that it makes the system more complex. I remind the House that in the 2004 London elections, 220,000 votes were ruled out because we had the European, the Greater London authority and the mayoral elections on the same day. We tried to have a perfectly fair system for each election, but the result was too much complexity. The Electoral Commission is on hand to deal with the matter, and we established that independent commission to assist with election questions when we came into government. However, the question of how the new electoral systems are knitting together is the subject of a review that is being led by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice. On the question of Burma, I am sure that the House will welcome the fact that a Minister in the Foreign Office has been in talks in the region, in Singapore on Monday, and with Chinese and Indian Ministers in Tonga, so work is going ahead—[Hon. Members: ““Who is the Minister?””] I shall get to that in a moment. I know that the matter is very important, and I wanted to report to the House the work of Ministers on the important question of Burma. We hope that it is a sign of progress that Aung San Suu Kyi has been called for talks by the Burmese authorities, and the Foreign Office are still considering who will lead an important debate on the matter on Monday. As far as Labour's immigration policy is concerned. I will repeat what I have said before. This country was built on successive waves of immigration. No doubt, many Members would not be in this House if it were not for immigration, and I am sure that they play a very important role in this country. If they want to debate the issues further, they can raise them on the occasion of the Queen's Speech debate.