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.
IF SHE MEANT to be taken literally, our new Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher must have been burning the midnight oil getting down to the real nitty-gritty of the legislation her Government is going to introduce.
Most of the first speech she made as the head of the new administration was plain sailing — helping the taxpayers, private enterprise, the sick, schoolchildren, council house tenants.
All fine, stirring, general stuff — so she could perhaps have been forgiven if she had hesitated or floundered when asked to define the place of work of a lorry driver.
Mrs Thatcher, however, had an immediate answer to this query from Labour man Kevin McNamara . . . "I have given considerable thought to that."
"Considerable thought" — an impressive answer to a question which could well have caught her off-balance. Her conclusion: she doubted very much whether — as Mr McNamara was suggesting — the lorry was an extension of premises.
Her advice was to wait for the legislation, implying that she would be leaving the fine details to others, for she was a tax lawyer — "and the nature of trade was never defined in tax law."
If Mr McNamara was not entirely satisfied with what Mrs Thatcher had tc say, William Rodgers, the former Transport Minister, was probably even more unhappy.
For the Premier recalled several quote: from an article he had written in The Guardian explaining why Labour hac lost. She picked out several criticisms h( had made of his own Party, and summec up her reaction with "We agree witt him."
This was pretty well the only point o agreement reached between the tw( sides of the House, though affairs wen conducted on a much more friendly basi! ' in the Lords.
But one's heart cannot fail to warm to place where ousted Ministers congratu late the newcomers and wish them well.
And who could do away with a HOUSI where, as Lord Hailsham said, the begin ning of a new Parliament means a serie: of quick-change exercises for the Lon Chancellor: from pyjamas into a gre: suit; from a grey suit into a black one from a black one into a scarlet robe; fron a scarlet robe into a golden robe; from .
golden robe into white tie and decora tions; and then back into pyjamas again