WESTM NS TER HAUL
Page 7
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EXACTLY what did happen in the corridor? Labour MP David Watkins is sure: Tory skullduggery.
Conservative member Roger Moate has a different version: his splendid Party was helping out an incompetent Government.
Intrigued? Then, gentle reader, read on ....
The setting — an upstairs room in the House of Commons, where a committee of MPs had gathered to consider changes in the Passenger Vehicles (Experimental Areas) Bill Consternation! There was not a quorum!
Now the plot gathers pace.
According to Mr Watkins, not noted for his vidid flights of fancy, it went this way. Tory MPs, determined to embarrass the Government. waited outside the room until the last possible moment.
One could easily visualise their sniggers and rib-pokings, until the cry "Let's go, chaps" sent them inside to jeer at glum opponents faced with the prospect of yet another thing going wrong for the Government.
Mr Moate doesn't see it that way at all. According to him, once it was realised that Labour management had fallen down the alarm call went out, and Tory members of the committee were summoned from afar, so that business could proceed.
Who was right? The question is left unanswered, for MPs were not called upon to decide the truth of the matter when they were told of these goings-on during a debate on the Bill.
If Mr Watkins is right, the Tories were playing with fire on the very morning when they wanted to make changes in the Bill.
If Mr Moate is to be believed, then why were he and his friends not clamouring for the doors to be opened, so that they could get down to business?
An exploration of these inconsistencies would have been more entertaining than the workmanlike debate which followed.
Who, for instance, was rivetted in his seat by exchanges like: Mr Moate: "Does 'may" mean 'must"?
Mr Horam: "In effect it means 'will'."
And Mr Moate did not have them rolling in the aisles with sentences like: "Paragraph 13 refers to resolutions passed by a local authority in pursuance of paragraph 2, 3 or 10, but not in pursuance of paragraph 5. If we are making paragraph 5 subject to the provisions of paragraph 13.
resolutions of a local authority passed under paragraph 13 should also refer back to paragraph 5.'
But, then again, to be able to come out with that sort of thing at midnight speaks of a clarity of mind and a determination which merited admiration, if not enthusiasm.