---

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

I will give way in a moment, because there may be an explanation and I am prepared to listen to it. As the Government have belatedly come to pretend, after 13 years, that they are a reforming Government and are taking an interest in constitutional reform—and as in my experience the present Prime Minister, like the previous one, regards the House of Commons as a somewhat inconvenient press conference that Ministers would rather not attend—can the Secretary of State tell us whether this is an instance of changing custom and that the Government intend that Ministers should attend only to make their speeches and should not have to listen to or participate in the debate to which they are replying?