WESTMINSTER HAUL
Page 7
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LABOUR man John Ellis is bewildered by the Opposition's tactics during the Committee Stage of the Transport Bill.
He has been in the Commons, on and off, since 1966 and during that time has served on quite a few Standing Committees to consider Bills in detail.
But, he confessed last week, Standing Committee B is very different from any other on which he has served.
"I am constantly amazed," he admitted, and proceeded to explain.
It's all to do with the way the Tories are trying to change the Bill. They are not behaving in the orderly manner to which Mr Ellis has become accustomed.
Usually a spokesman for the Opposition Front Bench deals with an amendment, there is a general debate, the Minister replies and then comes a winding-up speech commending the amendment. These transport debates, however, are fragmented, complained Mr Ellis, with Front Bench spokesmen No 1, No 2 and No 3 intervening.
Whereupon there was an intervention from Peter Fry, a vice-chairman of the Tories' Transport Committee and spokesman No 2 (or should it be No 3?) He had not been moving amendments that day because he had been delayed. And, apologising for arriving late, he had blamed one of the problems facing the road haulage industry — the "appalling failure" of the Government to do anything about the twolane stretch of the MI.
More in sorrow than in anger, the No 1 man, Norman Fowler, despaired of guiding Mr Ellis on what was happening — adding for good measure that one reason for the inventions was that the Tories considered the Bill to be of great importance.
Not at all hurt by Mr Fowler's barb, the Labour stalwart retorted that he had been concerned for the Tory spokesman. "I sometimes feel that the dogs are yapping at his heels to take that front seat away from him."
Which, presumably, absolved Ian Gow, one of the most valuable Tories on the Committee. For, as he noted at an earlier session. he had been described as a rat, a reptile, a viper and a toad (where and when this had happened he did not say). None of those creatures yaps at heels.
The Opposition's No 3 man (or No 2?) George Younger did not join in the chit chat. But then he had already said quite a lot — perhaps even more than Mr Ellis, who, as a good TGWU member, had been nearly as talkative as his No 1 and No 2.