First Among Equals Read online

  On the business front Simon had advised Ronnie Nethercote not to allow his company shares to be traded on the Stock Exchange until the Tories returned to power. “The climate,” he assured Ronnie, “should be much easier then.”

  Charles Seymour was glad to be behind the wheel again after his driving ban had been completed, and he had the grace to smile when Fiona showed him the photograph of the happy Mrs. Blenkinsop displaying her OBE outside Buckingham Palace to a reporter from the Sussex Gazette.

  It was six months to the day of his first meeting with Sir Roger Pelham that Raymond Gould received an account from the solicitor for services rendered—£500. He sent the check by return of post in a parcel that also contained a copy of the recently published edition of Wisden.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ANDREW HAD BEEN warned by his ministerial colleagues that the first day answering questions at the dispatch box would be an experience he was unlikely to forget.

  Questions for the Scottish Office appear on the order paper on a Wednesday once every four or five weeks, and each minister answers on behalf of his own department between two-thirty-five and three-twenty. There are usually four or five ministers of the Crown, not including the law officer available to represent each great department of state. During the forty-minute to one-hour period the ministers would expect to reply to about twenty-five questions, but it is rarely the questions that are the problem; it is the supplementaries.

  Any member can place a question through the table office to any minister, and can word it in a seemingly innocuous way. “When does the minister hope next to visit Aberdeen?” to which the minister concerned may reply anything from “next week” to “I have no plans to do so in the foreseeable future”—but when the member who put down the question rises from his seat to ask his supplementary he can change the subject completely. “Does the minister realize that Aberdeen has the highest rate of unemployment in the United Kingdom, and what new ideas does his department have to deal with this problem?” The hapless minister must then come up with a convincing reply on the spot.

  In an attempt to see that a minister is adequately briefed, his department will spend the morning scrutinizing each tabled question and looking for pitfalls he might encounter. A variety of possible supplementaries will be placed in his brief with appropriate answers. Ministers can, of course, always ask colleagues on their own side what they are hoping to find out from their tabled questions, but Opposition members use question time to test a minister in the hope of discovering some weakness in his armory, thus making the Government appear incompetent.

  Andrew spent a considerable time in preparation for his first encounter at the dispatch box although the more senior and experienced ministers in the Scottish Office had agreed to handle any questions that looked hostile.

  He ended up having to respond to only one question from the Opposition benches, while fielding four from his own. Added to which, the timing was such that question number twenty-three from the Opposition member seemed unlikely to be reached by three-twenty, when the Solicitor General for Scotland would have to start answering questions himself.

  Andrew’s first four answers to questions numbers five, nine, eleven, and fourteen, went smoothly enough. He opened his dark blue file and was pleased to confirm the well-prepared briefs to everything that was thrown at him. By three-fifteen, when question number nineteen was being answered, Andrew sat back on the front bench and began to relax for the first time that day.

  The Solicitor General for Scotland entered a now packed Commons and, moving alongside the table in the center of the Chamber, he crouched slightly to be sure he did not obscure the Speaker’s view of the Government benches on his right. The Prime Minister had been left a place between the Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary and waited for the clock to reach three-twenty.

  The Speaker called question number twenty-one but the member was not present. He called number twenty-two and once again the member was absent. Each had obviously considered that their question had little chance of being reached before three-twenty. At three-eighteen the Speaker called question twenty-three—Andrew’s heart sank—which read on the order paper, “Had the minister been invited to visit the Kinross Nursing Home?”

  Andrew rose, opened his folder, and said, “No, sir.”

  “No one in the House will be surprised by the minister’s reply,” said George Younger, the member for Ayr, “because the nursing home has forty-nine occupants, forty-seven of whom have their own television sets and yet the minister demands forty-seven separate license fees. If they were to congregate in one room, he would expect only one fee. Is this another example of the Labour party’s ‘Care for the Aged’ program that we hear so much about nowadays?”

  Andrew rose to the dispatch box to cries of “Answer, answer,” from the Opposition benches. He had checked his crib sheet while sitting on the edge of his seat. Andrew had a prepared answer for medical facilities, old-age pensions, supplementary benefits, food allowances, medical charges—but nothing on TV licenses. As he stood stranded at the dispatch box he was aware for the first time of the pitfalls that a minister encounters when he is not fully prepared. Such a system might appear wonderfully democratic to onlookers, he thought, until you are the Christian facing the 300 hungry lions.

  A handwritten note was quickly passed along the front bench to him from one of the civil servants who sit in the official box to the left behind the Speaker’s chair. With no time to consider its implications Andrew crossed his fingers and read the note out to the House.

  “This was a decision taken by the last administration, of which the Honorable Gentleman was a member. We have seen no reason to reverse that decision,” he read, thinking how much like a parrot he sounded. He sat down to polite Government murmurs and some considerable relief.

  Mr. Younger rose again and was allowed a second supplementary.

  “Mr. Speaker, this is the sort of inaccuracy we have grown to expect from this Government. The decision he refers to was made by his Right Honorable friend, the Secretary of State, only last year, and I think the minister will find, if he does his research more fastidiously, that his party was in power at the time.” The Opposition howled their delight.

  Andrew rose again and gripped the sides of the dispatch box to avoid anyone seeing that he was shaking in fear. Several members of the Government front bench had their heads bowed. The Opposition had drawn blood and were baying in triumph. Lord Attlee’s words came back to Andrew. “When you are caught out by the House admit it, apologize, and sit down.”

  Andrew waited for the noise to subside before he replied. “The Secretary of State warned me that a new minister will never forget his first question time and I feel bound to agree with him.” Andrew, who knew how the atmosphere in the House can change in a moment, felt such a moment now, and before it could turn back added, “On the question of television licenses in the Kinross Nursing Home, I apologize to the Honorable Gentleman for Ayr for my mistake and I will look into the case immediately and send him a written reply within twenty-four hours.” “Hear, hears” could now be heard from his own benches and the Opposition benches were quietened. Mr. Younger was trying to interrupt again but as Andrew didn’t give way he had to resume his seat, knowing the Speaker would not call on him again once the clock had passed three-nineteen. Andrew waited for silence before adding, “And I blame my grandmother for this who, as President of the Kinross Nursing Home and a staunch Conservative, has always believed in increasing old-age pensions rather than looking for false subsidies that can never be fair to everyone.” By now the Labour members were laughing and all the heads on the front bench were looking toward the new minister, who remained at the dispatch box until the House was silent again. “My grandmother would be delighted to learn that this administration has raised that old-age pension by fifty percent in the three years since we have taken office.” The Labour back-benchers were now cheering and waving their order papers as Andrew resumed his seat, while th