Hugh Colver, who was public relations chief at the Ministry of Defence before moving to British Aerospace in 1992, has unusually extensive government experience for a political appointee.
Mr Colver is likely to forge especially close relations between Central Office and Downing Street, where he once worked as a press officer under Sir Bernard Ingham. Conservative Central Office has appointed a former top civil servant to the vital post of director of communications. She wrote: “I regard it as the PM’s duty to meet the wishes of the overwhelming majority of members of the House of Commons, even though different Question Time arrangements may suit the PM better.”. “Sorry to sound like an old fogey,” he added.The Baroness will not be taking up the committee’s invitation to make a personal appearance.

In a letter to the committee, she said her own inclination would be “to leave well alone”. “I had to appear in Parliament unruffled and calm, although like a swan I was paddling like hell underneath.”Lord Callaghan said that in his early years in the Commons there had been “much more courtesy” between the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister. Without naming his old adversary, he suggested the element of “personal criticism” had been introduced by Lady Thatcher. But he agreed that the 15-minute sessions had “deteriorated seriously” since television was introduced. “I am told that in America it is regarded as a comedy programme and in Holland they view it with some contempt.” His own views were not far removed.When Prime Minister he was “extremely apprehensive” about Question Time. And on the whole, the rapier was a rather more elegant weapon and produced results which were just as effective,” Lord Callaghan, Labour prime minister from 1976 to 1979, observed. The all-party procedure committee is considering possible reforms to PMQs, but Lord Callaghan, while favouring more substantive questions, clearly did not expect great changes.

“Ever since I have sat in the House, for 50 years, there has always been dissatisfaction with question time,” the 82-year-old peer said. They would want to study its conclusions “and then consider whether it is appropriate to make any legislative change”.Mr Prescott came back: “Whatever Mr Newton may say, is it not the case that the Prime Minister’s support for legislation against these pay excesses is a sham?”On Monday, Michael Heseltine had “once again defended this boardroom greed”, he said – a reference to the President of the Board of Trade’s contention that paying the directors of British Gas nothing would only save each customer 50p a year.”Will this Government realise that what people in Britain want is a fundamental shift so that power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many and not the few?”Recognising the quote – the second half of the sentence was straight from the new constitution – Mr Newton replied: “It sounds to me as if Mr Prescott is going to need to have to undertake another rewrite of Clause IV before the ink on this one is dry.” This time, it was Mr Newton’s grammar that was in order but his meaning unclear.L ater, while MPs gave a Second Reading to a Bill paving the way to privatise the commercial activities of the Atomic Energy Authority, a select committee was told what two former prime ministers thought of Question Time.”I rather feel that the bludgeon has replaced the rapier. Instead he asked a crisp question about executive pay, challenging Mr Newton over a report that the committee under Sir Richard Greenbury would recommend “absolutely nothing to curb the greed of the bosses in the privatised utilities”.Mr Newton said Mr Major and all ministers had made clear they attached importance to the work of the CBI-appointed committee. It could be a collection of Mr Prescott’s conference speeches, not a plug for Jodie Foster’s new movie, Nell Yesterday, however, his syntax scrambler was turned off. But with Tory MPs intent on making hay with Labour’s rewriting of Clause IV, was this the moment for a man whose speaking style is famed for its triumph of passion over grammatical structure?”Language beyond understanding .. life beyond words” proclaims a billboard on London stations. Even so, he has still to ask a question of the Prime Minister.

With John Major in the Middle East, Tony Blair followed recent practice and stood down from the twice-weekly bout, enabling Mr Prescott, Labour’s deputy leader, to take on Tony Newton, Leader of the Commons.
Entering the chamber just before the exchanges, Mr Prescott was cheered by MPs on both sides. John Prescott passed a personal parliamentary milestone yesterday, taking part in Prime Minister’s Questions for the first time in his 25 years as an MP. The giant public services union Unison yesterday signalled the beginnings of a revolt against the Labour leadership’s refusal to set a level for a minimum wage, an issue likely to dominate October’s annual party conference in Brighton.A spokeswoman for the union rejected the idea discreetly floated by Mr Blair two weeks ago that Labour would not even set the level in its election manifesto, but only when it was in government.”It is important that a figure should be put before the British people at the next election,” she said. At the Scottish Labour conference in Inverness over the weekend, a Unison motion demanding a minimum wage of £4.15 an hour was carried unanimously.. They want higher taxes, more spending, and they want to extend state control.”But on Friday, Mr Hurd had warned the Conservatives to be ready to repel boarders: “Mr Blair is trying to board the Conservative ship and run up his own flag on our masthead.” He urged the party to stand its ground, and in effect compete with Mr Blair as the genuine Conservative article – an approach known in Central Office as the “real thing” or “Coke” strategy.When Mr Prescott in the Commons contrasted Conservative tolerance of “boardroom greed” with Labour’s desire to see wealth “in the hands of the many not the few” – a phrase from the new clause – Conservative backbenchers again attacked from two different directions.Jacqui Lait (Hastings and Rye) repeated Mr Portillo’s description of the new Clause IV as “400 words of waffle”, while Harold Elletson (Blackpool North) invited Tony Newton, standing in for the Prime Minister, to “speculate on the possible reasons why the historic commitment to full employment, endorsed by generations of Labour Party members, has now been abandoned by Tony Blair”.Mr Newton, the Leader of the House, said: “What is absolutely clear is that it takes us no nearer at all to what we really need, which is some clarification of Labour’s policies.”Meanwhile, there are signs that the battle in the Labour Party over its direction is moving on to new territory.

In the past few days, Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary, and Michael Portillo, Secretary of State for Employment, have struck sharply different attitudes to Labour’s change.
On Monday, Mr Portillo described the new clause as “400 words of waffle” – before he had seen it – and said: “Weasel words will not disguise the clear truth Labour’s socialist instincts remain. Conservatives appeared divided yesterday in their response to the rewriting of Labour’s Clause IV, while John Prescott was greeted by Labour cheers as he quoted from the rewritten version in the Commons for the first time. It said it has no record of the letter having arrived, but would be happy to provide the information.. These included a “card index system pertaining to military hospitals”.But the MoD failed to respond to a request to give the numbers of servicemen and women dismissed from the forces for being gay or lesbian. material was destroyed in the Second World War, when the War Office repository .. was bombed during the blitz,” she wrote. In a detailed letter, she listed papers at the Public Record Office on war diaries covering the Dardanelles, East Africa and Mesopotamia. “However, you may be interested to know that a large amount of …