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Crown Employment (Nationality) Bill

The Minister spent some 51 minutes setting out her reservations about the Bill. Given that it has such a historical background and has been considered iteratively over many weeks, months and years, it comes as a bit of a surprise to find that the Minister—who is at this moment talking to the Bill's promoter—or her predecessor did not spend more time talking to the promoter to find a form of words more acceptable to the Government. As the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) said, this was originally a Government hand-out Bill, but the Government have had second thoughts, probably because some focus group told them that extending employment to non-British nationals in the present economic crisis, brought about by the Government, would not sound very good. That is probably why the Minister is now pouring cold water on the Bill, but she identified so many shortcomings that it is hard to understand how the Government would change their approach if the Bill went into Committee. As the hon. Member for Hendon knows, I have had reservations about this and previous Bills under the same broad title that were debated in previous Sessions. My concerns are different from those articulated by the Minister. My current concern is that she, having poured enormous buckets of cold water on the Bill, now says that it is worth expending a lot more parliamentary time on further consideration in Committee. The Minister made a good point about recruitment, which I have also made on previous occasions—namely, whether we really need to open up the civil service to a wider group of people who are not currently eligible to join its ranks. I must say that 487,000 full-time equivalents in the civil service is rather too many. The Minister says with some pride that it is the lowest it has been since 1999, but I would like to see the number reduced to the levels under the previous Conservative Government, if not further reduced. She is on to a good point there. She made some other points about fairness, particularly when some 10 per cent. of posts are reserved in the Netherlands, whereas they have already been reduced to 5 per cent. here. I shall not speak at length, but I would like to put my reservations—not necessarily the same reservations that the Minister articulated—on the record. I congratulate the hon. Lady on learning the skill of articulating reservations at great length, albeit that she read them from her brief. We welcome her as a new recruit to the Government Front Bench on this subject. Perhaps next time she will be able to articulate at similar length without having to refer to any notes.