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Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle): My right hon. Friend will know that the European Commission has proposed a ban, from 1 January 1999, on four antibiotic compounds that are used as growth promoters in animal feed. I understand that the issue will be discussed at the Agriculture Council on Monday and Tuesday next week. I know that we have a crowded schedule next week, but the issue is important to many of us. Will it be possible for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture to make a statement to the House on the Government's position?
Mrs. Beckett: I hear what my hon. Friend says and I understand his view that the issue is important, although I must admit that I had not appreciated that it was to be discussed. I cannot promise him to find time for a statement, but I feel confident that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture will be happy to acquaint him with the Government's view on the matter.
Mr. Peter Brooke (Cities of London and Westminster): Will the Leader of the House consider publishing next week a list of the all-party parliamentary groups that have satisfied the House authorities of their viability? The number of such groups has exploded in this Parliament to the congestion of the Whip and to some conflict, to the extent that outside bodies can be disappointed by the number of Members of Parliament who turn up.
Mrs. Beckett: I was not aware that it was within my sphere of responsibility to publish such a list, but I am happy to consider the right hon. Gentleman's proposal. I take his point, because it is difficult to strike a balance, and it must often be struck afresh in a new Parliament. So many entirely well-meaning and worthy people have a passionate interest in this or that subject and urge Members of Parliament to set up or join various groups. I will not conceal from the right hon. Gentleman that I have long since replied to such people that there is a limit to the number of causes that I can support, and I have declined to join many of the groups that I could have joined. I take his point that it leads to disappointment when not as many Members attend events as was hoped, but that is also a feature of the enormous pressure on the diaries of hon. Members. No one could possibly undertake everything that people would like us to do.
Mr. Paul Flynn (Newport, West): When may we debate the horrific abuse of medicinal drugs in care homes? A debate could examine the successful exercise conducted by the school of old age psychiatry in Manchester. The researchers went into care homes and examined the use of neuroleptic drugs on the elderly. They found that in more than half the cases in which signs of dementia were shown by patients, the cause was not senility, but the over-use of neuroleptic drugs. Other trials in Glasgow have found that many people end their days in misery and confusion because care homes wish to minimise trouble. Many elderly people are defenceless victims of such over-use of drugs and it causes them
immense damage. The exercise carried out in Manchester should be replicated throughout the country. When may we have a debate to ensure that that is done?
Mrs. Beckett: The whole House will share my hon. Friend's concern. I cannot promise him time in the near future for a special debate, but I can remind him, first, that it is health questions next week and, secondly and perhaps more helpfully, that we will have the recess Adjournment debate in which any issue can be raised. My hon. Friend may be successful in catching your eye, Madam Speaker.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): In the light of the unsatisfactory replies given by the Secretary of State for Health to the House on Tuesday, will the Leader of the House arrange for an early debate on the subject of the mentally ill? Does she recognise that an early debate would afford an opportunity for the Government to give the categorical commitment, which the Secretary of State failed to give on Tuesday, that all new psychiatric units will exclusively comprise single-sex wards?
Mrs. Beckett: I am a little surprised by the hon. Gentleman's tone. Having heard a large part of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's statement and its aftermath, I understood that it had been widely welcomed everywhere, except on the Conservative Benches. I certainly heard my right hon. Friend robustly affirm his views about the undesirability of single-sex wards.
Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North): Could my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary be asked whether copies of the United Nations charter on human rights, which celebrates its 50th anniversary today, could be distributed by the British embassy in Chile to anti-British and unruly elements who are demonstrating? Perhaps that would explain to them the decision made yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.
Mrs. Beckett: That is a most interesting suggestion, and I shall bring it to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, who will, I am sure, be most grateful for it.
Mr. Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge): The right hon. Lady's statement on the provisional business for the first week of next year contained no reference to the Bill on the national health service. Would she confirm that the Government's pledge to wind up fundholding by 31 March would require that Bill to pass into law before that date? Does the absence of the Bill from the provisional business for the first week of next year imply that the Government have finally abandoned the attempt to keep the pledge of abolishing fundholding by 31 March?
Mrs. Beckett: The Gracious Speech referred to a Bill to reform the health service, and a Bill will be brought forward. I cannot immediately recall the issues relating to a specific deadline, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the Government clearly believe that we must dispense with the bureaucracy and waste that fundholding brought. We intend to ensure that doctors have the freedom to prescribe high-quality health care for their patients.
Mr. Peter Bradley (The Wrekin): My right hon. Friend will be aware that the local government ombudsman
yesterday published a damning finding against Westminster city council. He found that the council had subjected vulnerable homeless families to unspeakable living conditions in the Clarendon Court hotel in Maida Vale, while paying £750,000 of taxpayers' money in housing benefits to the proprietors of that dubious establishment. Will my right hon. Friend join me in commending my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) for exposing that scandal and putting an end to it?
Does my right hon. Friend recall the instruction given by Conservative leaders of Westminster city council to officers to be mean and nasty to the homeless, shortly before families were forced into asbestos-riddled tower blocks not five miles from here? Does she also recall that not one right hon. or hon. Member from the Conservative Benches has so far uttered a syllable of regret or remorse for, or condemnation of, the doings of their colleagues at Westminster city hall?
Does my right hon. Friend share my sense of outrage at the fact that every local authority in the country is subject to a levy that the Audit Commission has been forced to impose to help it to meet the legal costs of contesting the appeal of Dame Shirley Porter and David Weeks against surcharge? Would it be appropriate to find time in our schedule for a debate on the appalling affairs of the flagship Tory authority, which would at least offer Conservative Members one last chance to express some remorse or regret?
Mrs. Beckett:
I share my hon. Friend's views. Labour has every right to be proud of those colleagues who, as councillors at Westminster, did so much to expose what was happening to people and to bring to a close the appalling situation whereby people were made to live in such dreadful properties. I well recall that my hon. Friend drew his concerns about the matter to my attention during the general election campaign.
I share my hon. Friend's sadness at the knock-on effects of the problems raised by the cases brought against Dame Shirley Porter and others. We believed the behaviour of Westminster city council, quite aside from its dreadful human consequences, to be illegal--as has since been proved. Whenever it was raised in the House--time and time again--during the previous Parliament, we heard repeated assertions from members of the party then in government that, if any wrongdoing were proven, they would certainly condemn it. To this day, those Members have not done so. Some of my hon. Friends wrote on the matter almost a year ago to the Leader of the Opposition and to the former Secretary of State for the Environment, the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), but they have not elicited any reply.
Mr. Nicholas Soames (Mid-Sussex):
Is the right hon. Lady aware that the United Nations weapons inspectors were yesterday obstructed in the course of their business? Is she further aware that not only Christmas but Ramadan is approaching, and that the opportunity exists for Saddam Hussein to make a good deal of trouble with which it would be extremely difficult to deal? Will the right hon. Lady give some consideration to asking the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary to make a statement about the situation in Iraq before the House rises? If that is not possible, will she let me know what possible
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