WESTM NSTER HAUL
Page 7
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
Put six ordinary people in a drawing room to talk over a matter and they will do so quite adequately in simple language which everyone can understand.
But not Members of Parliament. They employ expensive draftsmen to turn the talk into language which most do not understand and then use other expensive men to turn the gobbledegook back into the ordinary English language of the drawing room.
At least that is how Labour man Ken Weetch sees things. And anyone who listened to him and his colleagues at the start of the Committee discussions of the Transport Bill — unless, of course, he was a Parliamentary draftsman — would find it hard to disagree with him.
The two sessions, each lasting two and a half hours, were mostly taken up by procedural wrangles. Right at the end of the five hours discussions were begun on an amendment to the Bill — that the word "and" should be left out. As Labour's number two transport man John Prescott admitted, there was "some delay".
It all started innocently enough, with Transport Minister Norman Fowler suggesting, quite unexceptionally, that the Committee should meet on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and his opposite number, Albert Booth, saying how pleasant it was to begin on a note of agreement with the Minister.
There the accord ended. In one long speech after another, Labour MPs made it all too plain that they objected to this, that and the other.
For instance, they did not want to meet on Thursday mornings, at least to start with. For this would conflict with Cabinet meetings, and although Mr Fowler is not a member of that august body he might well be summoned to attend, and could not be in two places at once.
And Labour Members left him in no doubt which should be his number one priority, although it was conceded that if he were in Committee he would be wondering what was happening in Cabinet and vice versa.
So insistent were they upon Mr Fowler's presence that, were he not the un assuming man he is, the Minister might well be thinking he is the best thing since air-filled tyres.
But, though he confessed to being flattered, Mr Fowler did not give way. And was not there on the Thursday.