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Professional Standards
3.31 pm
Mr. Roger Evans (Monmouth) : I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the observance of the highest professional standards ; to provide for enforcement and compensation by means of a system of tribunals ; to place a duty upon professions to investigate and pursue complaints against them ; and for connected purposes.
I must at the outset declare my interest, as a barrister. I must also assure the media that this is not an attempt to deal with the Calcutt report at an early stage. I am talking about the traditional professions such as those of medicine, the law, architects, quantity surveyors and engineers.
My Bill seeks to deal with the fact that the traditional professions have been reluctant to deal as a matter of professional discipline with the issue of bad professional work or work below an acceptable professional standard. Professional discipline has traditionally been limited to serious misconduct, such as putting one's hand in the till or engaging in a breach of advertising regulations.
Members of the public wishing to complain about bad professional work are left to sue in the courts. That is resulting in a mounting accumulation of problems. Because the professions will not discipline their members, professional indemnity insurance premiums are rising. While that cost is being passed on in part to the public, both good and bad professionals are having to bear that burden.
Because many of the legal claims involved are settled by insurers privately, nobody knows whether the professional whom one engages has a good or poor track record. The legal aid fund is hard pressed and many just claims cannot be brought because of lack of means. The law in any event does not impose a particularly high standard when judging bad professional work--simply the minimum standard of reasonable skill which some section of the professions to which I referred says is good enough.
The time has come for the great self-regulating professions to put their affairs in order and to set up a proper system to deal professionally with substandard work and for fully compensating the public for losses occasioned by bad work.
The proposals for which I seek the approval of the House consist of several points. First, each profession should set up a tribunal with full powers to try and to determine cases of bad professional work and to award full compensation at law to members of the public where professionals are adjudged not to have carried out work to an acceptable standard. Secondly, as these tribunals would comprise the leading experts in the particular profession, the old, lax standard of "reasonable care" would be replaced in law by a new professional obligation to observe the highest professional standards according to the state of the art at the time and the professions would be required to publish regularly, for their members and the public, updated guidance with regard to the standards.
Thirdly--and this is a crucial proposal--a tribunal, when finding a case of bad work, would not only award compensation but would have a duty to discipline the offending professional. Fourthly, the composition and procedure of these tribunals should be specified and set out in detail by way of statutory instrument. However, I
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suggest that a number of important minimum criteria should be set down in the Bill. Each tribunal should have a member who is not a member of the particular profession and should have a legally qualified chairman. The tribunals should sit in public and their record and findings should be made public. To protect professionals against frivolous and vexatious complaints, there should be a procedure of summary dismissal of frivolous complaints. No fees should be charged for bringing a complaint before any one of these tribunals.Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : Does this apply to Members of Parliament?
Mr. Evans : The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), from a sedentary position, seems to indicate that Members of Parliament are members of a profession. That is a quaint and eccentric view of the law, but this modest measure is not intended to extend to Members of the House.
The hon. Member for Bolsover, bearing in mind the problems of his constituents, might like to contemplate my fifth proposal rather more carefully. My suggestion is that each profession should not only set up this system but also pay for its operation and for a proper system of legal representation for complainants--in other words, a scheme of preparation, investigation and presentation--and that the operation and requirements of such schemes should be set out in a code of practice, which would be laid down by the Lord Chancellor and with which the profession would have to comply.
Sixthly--and lastly--the courts of the land should have power to stay actions and to refer cases and issues in actions to the relevant professional tribunal where a breach of this new professional obligation is alleged.
The professions themselves have moved very slowly in the direction that I am suggesting. The General Medical Council, for example, has set up new performance procedures, but there is no suggestion of public hearings or of compensation. The Solicitors Complaints Bureau has been able to award compensation up to the grand sum of £1,000 in cases coming before it after 1 April 1991. These steps indicate recognition of the problem, but they are not enough. I am seeking the leave of the House to bring in a Bill to restore public confidence in the great self-regulating professions by giving them modern powers and duties to set up a system of dealing with bad professional work and of compensating members of the public fully in cases where bad work is proven. That is the purpose of the measure.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Roger Evans, Mr. Gerald Bermingham, Mr. Gyles Brandreth, Mrs. Jacqui Lait, Lady Olga Maitland, Dr. Robert Spink, Mr. Michael Stephen and Mr. Gary Streeter.
Professional Standards
Mr. Roger Evans accordingly presented a Bill to require the observance of the highest professional standards ; to provide for enforcement and compensation by means of a system of tribunals ; to place a duty upon professions to investigate and pursue complaints against them ; and for connected purposes : And the same was read the First time ; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 26 February and to be printed. [Bill 109.]
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Orders of the Day
Opposition Day
[8th Allotted Day]
Rail Privatisation
Madam Speaker : I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.
3.39 pm
Mr. John Prescott (Kingston upon Hull, East) : I beg to move, That this House opposes the privatisation of the railways. The debate comes shortly before what we may assume, according to the leaks, will be a new Bill. Perhaps the Secretary of State will speak about that. We look forward to seeing that Bill because the Government seem to suffer considerable uncertainty about what rail privatisation means. The central plank of their policy is that privatisation, and its competition, allows the pursuit of maximum profit, is eventually to the consumers' benefit, and is far better than a publicly owned utility or a public service. Bearing in mind today's reports about British Airways, such an interpretation sounds rather odd.
We have the example of British Telecom and the crisis in our energy utilities and in the bus industry, upon which it is claimed the new Bill is based. The deregulated bus industry has older buses, charges higher fares and fewer people travel. The service is also inadequate compared with the one that was provided before deregulation. If that is the forerunner to rail privatisation, it is no wonder that many people are getting extremely edgy about the Government's proposal, which Conservative Members are calling a poll tax on wheels. The recommendations and statements make that a likely possibility. Confusion reigns and we look forward to the Secretary of State's interpretation of privatisation. I have had the dubious honour of speaking from the Dispatch Box to a number of Secretaries of State and each of them has professed that he will be introducing a Bill to privatise the railways. That has been the Government's badge of honour in Queen's Speeches and in conference speeches, but they have never been able to define privatisation and it is up to the Secretary of State to explain the White Paper and any changes and say what he intends to implement.
At the beginning of this new year the Government claimed that they would privatise the railways. The new year message by the Prime Minister changed that to semi-privatisation, and the next day the Secretary of State explained that that really meant
commercialisation. Most of the press saw that as a conflict, but I say that it is a policy U-turn. The Secretary of State rushed to his constituency to announce that he was making a speech to circulate his latest interpretation of rail privatisation. It seemed to boil down to some form of privatisation and his belief that franchising the system would lead to better private involvement.
The assumption in all that is that private operation of the railways is far better than leaving it to public operation. That is almost an ideological difference between
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us. We believe that there can be a good publicly operated rail system. I do not suggest that that has been achieved because there are difficulties, some of which I shall address. However, matters will be made much more difficult if the railways are privatised. What is the evidence for justifying privatisation? There is such a system in Argentina, and after a few years of operation there the passenger service is in complete collapse. Sweden is often cited as having a privatised rail system, but only 1 per cent. of its services are privatised and the track and operations remain in the public service. Track subsidies are to be maintained because of very expensive investment. The White Paper says that the track operation must be expected to give an 8 per cent. return. That is one of the factors that will give rise to considerable difficulties, even for the franchise operations. How can the Government expect the massive investment that is needed to give an 8 per cent. return?Mr. Stephen Milligan (Eastleigh) : The hon. Gentleman says that only 1 per cent. of Sweden's railways have been privatised. Would he give the House the benefit of his knowledge on the improvements that have been made to services, the increase in investment and the increase in passengers carried on those services that have been privatised in Sweden?
Mr. Prescott : On the 1 per cent? That is a railway system that is only a teeny-weeny bit pregnant. Such improvement of services, whether private or public, whether in the 1 per cent. or the 99 per cent., requires considerably more financial resources than we are prepared to allocate to our service. I see the hon. Gentleman nodding in agreement.
Mr. Milligan rose--
Mr. Prescott : I have a long speech to make and I want to get on with it.
Considerable claims have been made about the privatised Japanese service.
Mr. Peter Snape (West Bromwich, East) : I apologise for intervening so early in my hon. Friend's speech, but I am provoked to do so by the intervention of the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mr. Milligan). Is my hon. Friend aware that when I met the chairman of SJ, the Swedish railway system, in December, he said that he had recently had discussions with the Minister for Public Transport during which he told him--he gave permission to quote his words--that he thought that the Government's proposals were insane?
Mr. Prescott : More and more people are coming to that conclusion. My hon. Friend shows his considerable experience in these matters. In Japan we are talking not about privately owned companies but publicly owned private companies, such as a municipally-owned bus service. The service is not privately run but is owned by the state or the authorities that are running it. It is not what we understand to be a private company, privately owned. Therefore, that is not a good example.
In France, the system is basically state owned. The only private sector service between Paris and Orly collapsed a few months ago. Privatisation did not work too well there either.
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Much is made of the fact that the EC is moving towards the privatisation of the railway system. It is not. It is moving towards transparency and a clear distinction between services which receive public subsidies and those to be operated as profitable services. I support that, as I have said in the House before. The transference of accounts and the capital debt structure of British Rail need to be changed so that British Rail may have access to private capital. We are not opposed to that.The Secretary of State has often chided me for putting that case, but I think that he has now come to adopt our ideas on leasing, despite having told us, along with other Secretaries of State, that they were unacceptable. However, I shall not taunt him with that. I am glad that Network SouthEast now has 40 more trains financed by leasing.
Perhaps the Secretary of State is learning that the Opposition want a good railway system and are prepared to look at the matter in practical terms rather than getting caught up with ideology. That can be achieved equally well in a publicly owned system as in a privately owned system.
There have already been some experiments in the United Kingdom. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. First, the Government started with InterCity. It was made clear that this Administration would no longer pay a subsidy to InterCity : it would have to pay its way. The Government set a 4 per cent. rate of return, but nothing like that has been realised. It has only broken even this year.
However, InterCity has been forced to try to maximise revenue rather than services. Areas have been cut from the InterCity network simply to maximise revenue. Blackpool or Shrewsbury may be next. A number of areas may be removed from the network service. That is wrong. The railways should provide a national service. As soon as they are privatised in that way, with the emphasis on the maximum rate of revenue, there will be difficulties.
It is interesting that InterCity's timetable does not include regional services on its routes because it believes that it does not provide such services, which, under the definition of accounts or as a business operation, it does not. But why should a passenger not know that an inter- city service is being run by a regional railway? That is one example of the difficulties engendered by such a silly arrangement.
Here is another example. When an InterCity train breaks down and a freight train is available nearby, the freight company will say, "It is not our responsibility to provide a train ; find your own InterCity train." That is nonsensical : profit is being put before meeting the needs of the community.
Mr. Michael Fabricant (Mid-Staffordshire) : The hon. Gentleman said at the beginning of his speech that he and his hon. Friends were ideologically opposed to privatisation, and that he believed that privatisation would damage the quality or the value of the service. Does he accept that British Airways was unprofitable at the time of its privatisation, and that it was unprofitable because it did not provide a good service in comparison with other airlines? Does he accept that, because it is now a privatised service, it is now profitable--and that it is profitable because it provides a good service in competition with other airlines?
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Mr. Prescott : The hon. Gentleman had better ask Richard Branson whether he feels that British Rail is competing with his rail companies. The hon. Gentleman made one fair point, however. I concede that British Airways was able to eliminate its losses, largely because it restructured its manpower. There is no doubt about that ; I asked Lord King and others, even before privatisation. Management was not particularly involved in the bringing together of British Airways and British European Airways : it made the structural changes, but it did not make further changes along the line. Lord King was able to do that, reaching agreement with the trade unions in order to provide a more effective service.
The fact that that involved lousy management does not necessarily mean that publicly owned industries have lousy management. There are many examples of private companies with lousy management. What is needed is proper and effective public management. I do not argue that the managements of publicly owned companies are superior to those of private companies ; I simply want the best possible management and the best possible practices to produce the best possible service. I do not have an ideology about the matter. I want our country to have the good public railway system that France and Germany enjoy--modern, reliable and with adequate investment. All the evidence shows that that can best be achieved by a publicly owned system. It is up to the Government to make the case for privatisation.
We have already witnessed some of the results of privatisation. First, we were given Tiger Rail, along with Charterail and Freightrail. The Prime Minister launched that scheme during the election campaign. It lasted less than four months--and who had to come in and pick up the service? Good old British Rail. We were very happy that a publicly owned service could take over when the private sector had failed.
Charterail provided a good service. The trouble was that it got scared about the track costs. The Government started talking about an 8 per cent. return on track costs, and it was clearly going to be difficult to operate on that basis. That is not to say that a private service cannot work on a publicly owned system ; I do not believe that an operation must be either totally private or totally public. The next experiment, Stagecoach, was much more successful : it lasted six months. It was launched by the Minister for Public Transport, who is present today. He described it as a wonderful service--although he did not actually use it ; he went into the sleeper and lay down on his bunk. It was not a new train, although it was covered in glossy new paint. There is one thing that we can expect from a privatised industry : it may not invest in new plant, but by golly, it will invest in a lot of new paint. That does not mean that it will improve the quality of its service. It looks good, but it does not necessarily feel any better.
Although Stagecoach lasted only six months, the leasing arrangement was for 12 months. What compensation did British Rail receive from Stagecoach? It did not receive any : it let it go, and negotiated a new deal. Stagecoach became a sort of holiday operator, offering some seats on British Rail. There was no through ticketing ; a ticket could not be used on Stagecoach and then on British Rail. There was a good deal of publicity for the new Virgin service. There was to be a new train running up to Scotland--or, rather, not a new train but a 125 diesel, running on the most modernised electric lines, on which publicly
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owned trains travel at 140 mph. His trains, which admittedly would have had televisions, would have run at about 120 mph--about 20 or 30 mph slower than existing fast trains. Despite all the publicity, as soon as he found out that he would not get a subsidy for the track he pulled out. We now wait to see whether the Secretary of State will propose another version.Given the Government's belief in privatisation, one would have thought that capitalists could talk to capitalists. The authority at Heathrow was prepared to pay 80 per cent. of the Heathrow rail link ; British Rail was expected to pay only 20 per cent. The Government were not prepared to allocate BR the resources to meet that 20 per cent. commitment, which would have been a good deal for the taxpayer. Instead of him having to pay 100 per cent., 80 per cent. would have been provided by the private sector and 20 per cent. by the public sector. Why did not we do that ? The proposal has collapsed again because of the problem of the track cost and the commercial ideology of the Secretary of State.
The extension of the Jubilee line was an example of the Tory Government talking to bankers--their friends in the City. The extension of the line was not London's greatest priority, but it was chosen to save the face of docklands ; that is what it boiled down to. It was proposed that the private sector might pay about 5 or 10 per cent. of the total cost. Despite some clever fiddling of the statistics, we still do not know what the total cost will be. However, the extension of the line was promised in the autumn statement as part of the recovery. It is another green shoot on the Jubilee line that has not materialised. That is amazing.
Yet again, negotiations about the line highlighted the incompetence of the Department of Transport and the Government. Who would have announced in negotiations that they intended to carry out the project and move civil servants from A to B as part of the recovery programme ? If I were a banker offering the money, I would say, "Tell me what the deal is. You want it and you have committed yourself to it politically. I will not give you the money that I said I was going to give before." That seems to be elementary negotiating practice. The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. John MacGregor) indicated dissent.
Mr. Prescott : Then why have we not got an agreement ?
Mr. MacGregor : I was wondering what the hon. Gentleman was talking about when he said that we had made offers in relation to transferring civil servants from the Department of Transport. I do not know what he was talking about in that regard, because I never did.
Mr. Prescott : That is a clever little dance around the point that does not answer the issue. Why have we not got an agreement on the Jubilee line?
Mr. MacGregor : We made it absolutely clear in the autumn statement that we had made provision for the Jubilee line. Discussions are being held between London Transport and the administrator for Olympia and York. We have made the objectives clear, and it has been accepted that the discussions must be held on the basis of
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the arrangements that were made with Olympia and York. I very much hope that a deal between London Transport and the administrators will be completed before long.Mr. Prescott : The same answer has been given for the past 12 months. All I am saying is that the Secretary of State has made it difficult for the Government to negotiate with the bankers, who are now likely to say, "We shall not give as much as we offered before." As an ex- trade union official, may I say that it seemed a silly negotiating position for the Government to take. None the less, we wait with bated breath to see whether we get the Jubilee line. One thing is certain : Londoners are suffering from the absence of the line.
So much for what has happened under the Government's privatisation programme. We are now told that the White Paper is the latest expression of the theory of privatisation. We wait to see whether the Bill is consistent with that. The White Paper certainly proposes the most complex machinery that we have ever seen to ensure that the market works. The cost will be phenomenal, the bureaucracy will be considerable--and simply to do what? To ensure that the market works, when there will be no competition to achieve the best service for passengers. No other country has achieved a good rail system with such stupid thinking.
I was amazed at the number of quangos to be used. I remember that in the early 1980s the Government made great play of getting rid of quangos and all bodies of civil servants which they considered to be the dead hand of bureaucracy. We now know what the bureaucracy will be because the information is contained in the White Paper. The Secretary of State informs us that there will be a regulator to control access to the tracks. We know from the advert that companies do not need experience of transport but that will be in line with the Department of Transport. There will be a franchising authority to deal with the allocation of franchises, a rail track quango with responsibility for timetabling and maintenance, and a joint industrial board to co-ordinate ticketing and information systems. There will also be a railway clearing house for the settlement of accounts between companies--we last had one of those in the 1930s. There will be a health and safety executive, a railway advisory safety technical standards body and a central transport consultative committee to deal with timetabling and facilities but not, of course, fares. There will be an office of fair trading to ensure that it works. The passenger transport authorities will be expected to discuss section 20 grants, local authorities will be required to consult about timetables, the good old Department of Transport and all its civil servants will be responsible for a policy framework--it has not yet achieved that--and the Treasury will control the external financing limits.
That means that there will be 13 quangos to ensure that the market works properly, set up by a Government who do not like bureaucracy or quangos and who believe in the invisable hand of the market running the railway system. There is no invisible hand but 13 quangos. It is tragic that more people will be established as civil servants to run the quangos and will be paid for by the sacking of people dealing with maintenance, the manning of stations and the operation of the railway system. Civil servants and bureaucrats will take the place of professional railwaymen who are desperately trying to provide a service.
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It is clear to anyone listening to the evidence given to the Select Committee that no one supports such a scheme. To be fair, however, the Secretary of State gave evidence yesterday and he supported it, but he has to. It is his real test : if he is to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he has to appear with flying colours in transport matters. I have not yet seen a Secretary of State do so, but we live in hope.The White Paper refers to open access for competition. Where in the world is there open access for competition so that railways can compete with each other? I was interested to read an article by Simon Jenkins in The Times on 6 January. A person was appointed by the Government to be a director of British Rail and to modernise and privatise it. Mr. Jenkins went abroad and, on his return, was amazed about what was happening. He wrote :
"To want to license rival operators on each line is illiterate. Trains do not work that way."
That seems a simple enough proposition. He also wrote : "Meanwhile that earnest Dr. Frankenstein, John MacGregor, has been working night and day to create Railtrack as the most monstrous nationalised industry ever, thus avoiding the proper rail privatisation "
He advised the new private train operators
"to spend all their time lobbying for higher subsidies". The Secretary of State has said that open access is in fact an open cheque book. He will be paying subsidies to the private and public sectors to run services, which will cost the taxpayer an awful lot more. We have yet to see what happens with the franchise system. As for the Railtrack authority, do we believe that requiring an 8 per cent. rate of return will encourage people to run rail services on the infrastructure? That is what the Secretary of State wants to do, but an 8 per cent. return will add a heck of a mark-up for those who will operate the system. Sir James Sherwood of Sea Containers has already made it clear that he would like some of the lines but would close others because he wants only the profitable ones. He would close the coast line affecting hon. Members who travel on the Southampton and Bournemouth line who will become supporters of the publicly owned system as soon as the private cherry-pickers finish the system and meet its national requirements.
On safety, I protest to the Secretary of State. I understand that the Secretary of State is to announce that the Health and Safety Commission report on the privatisation of rail was available to us from 3.30 pm. That does not make it easy for the Opposition, who are opening the debate, to read and to digest a report on an important aspect of the privatisation of rail. There was talk about professional standards. The Department of Transport could learn a bit more about providing reports. Even if they were provided only half an hour before the debate, we could make some assessment for the debate. It is a deplorable practice. Yesterday, we did not even get a copy of the statement made in the House by the Secretary of State for Transport. That is the nature of the Department of Transport. In view of my comments, I suppose that I cannot expect a great deal of charity from the Department. If I ever get in, the Department will not expect a great deal of charity from me.
I remind the Secretary of State of what was said in the Hidden report about the safety of the railway system and about the development of a business culture in the railway system which would undermine it. I quote Maurice Holmes in the Hidden report in January 1988. He said :
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"there are signs that the past high safety standards at local level achieved by giving a high priority to a safe railway' above other issues are starting to be eroded by the change in railway culture. If continued, this will strike at the root of our structure. I would not like a major disaster with loss of life to be the reason that forced British Rail to invest in modern safety aids."He said that 10 months before the terrible crash at Clapham. Hidden took the point and made the following comment in his report : "investment into safety-related projects, such as ATP, was not being progressed."
There is worry about the fact that British Rail does not have the estimate of the costs. The Secretary of State has told the Select Committee that he does not yet know the costs of the safety requirements to be implemented after the Hidden inquiry of three years ago. That is totally unacceptable. The Secretary of State only has to ask for that information for it to be provided. I have asked constantly here for that information. The fact that the information has not been given undermines the priority of safety and the recommendations made by Hidden, especially the recommendations about the automatic train protection systems.
There are matters of grave concern about safety. We have had the Newton crash and the Bellgrove crash. All the inquiries show that the pursuit of saving money, either in maintenance or in track realignment, contributed to the crashes and to the loss of life at Newton, at Bellgrove and in other incidents. It is clear that the business culture began to overtake the priority for safety in the railway system.
Mr. Gyles Brandreth (City of Chester) : I salute the hon. Gentleman for his commitment to old-fashioned socialism. This is marvellous. The safety issue is critical. Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that, with the privatisation of British Airways, safety standards were endangered? Privatisation does not go hand in hand with a lessening of safety standards. Our experience does not suggest that. The hon. Gentleman is scaremongering.
Mr. Prescott : If old-fashioned socialism means a better and safer railway system, I am happy to claim to be an old-fashioned socialist. If the hon. Gentleman studies the privatised railways of the 1930s, he will see the incidence of deaths and accidents, and the reduction in safety, because they are clear for all to see. It is one of the reasons why we nationalised the railway system, quite apart from modernising it. The evidence is there. If the hon. Gentleman cannot agree with what I have said, may I give some quotes from the grandees of the Tory party?
Mr. Phil Gallie (Ayr) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Prescott : No, because I am having problems with time. I quote Lord Ridley, speaking on the "Panorama" programme. He said :
"Clearly, I think we picked all the plums out of the privatisation pudding"
That is certainly true. Lord Ridley said that he never believed "it was really possible to do very much, if anything, with the railways because they were basically loss making."
Lord Whitelaw, whose family had experience of chairing a railway system in the private times, said :
"The old companies made no money."
How true. Lord Whitelaw then said :
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"If privatisation was to be carried out, it would have to be a success. And if you say to me, am I absolutely sure it will be a success'--No, I am not."Even Lord Young, in an article in the Director today--I should not have thought he would have said this--said :
"like everything else in human nature"--
he is talking about privatisation--
"the pendulum swings too far and now I begin to wonder if we aren't trying to privatise some things which basically can't or shouldn't be privatised. I wonder a bit about whether we should be thinking of privatising coal or the railways."
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) : On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Here we go again. Reference has been made to reports that are supposedly in the Vote Office. When I went yet again to ask for the report in question, I was told by the very courteous person in the Vote Office that he could not give me a copy until the Secretary of State for Transport had responded and resumed his place. I understand that the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Adley) has a copy. Can you clarify the position for me? Where shall we be if some hon. Members receive reports while others are refused them?
Mr. MacGregor : Further to the point of order, Madam Speaker. I shall, indeed, refer in my speech to the report. It is a report which will require a great deal of study and which we shall be able to examine thoroughly on Second Reading of the privatisation Bill. As a matter of courtesy, I sent a copy in the normal way this afternoon to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) and to the Chairman of the Select Committee. I shall make the report available to the whole House as soon as I have finished my speech. Several Hon. Members rose--
Mr. Prescott : Let me tell the Secretary of State that I telephoned his office today--
Mr. Martin Redmond (Don Valley) : Further to the point of order, Madam Speaker.
Mr. Redmond : The Secretary of State says that the document will be made available after he has sat down. Given that the Opposition have used one of their Supply days for today's debate, will the right hon. Gentleman guarantee that we shall be given another day to debate that document?
Madam Speaker : That question might be put to the Leader of the House at business questions. It is not a point of order for me.
Mr. Peter Bottomley (Eltham) : Further to the point of order, Madam Speaker. We are used to the fact that, when statements are made in the House, the accompanying documents are sometimes made available when the Minister has sat down. But it strikes me that we are to hear not a statement but a speech from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. May I put it to my right hon. Friend, through you, Madam Speaker, that it might be convenient, as well as a courtesy to the House, if the report were unlocked and made available--
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Madam Speaker : Order. The hon. Gentleman is trying to debate through the Chair.
I recognise the Secretary of State's courtesy in handing out two copies of the report, but I feel that, given that we are to have a major debate, it would have been courteous to the House had it been made generally available rather than being sent to only two hon. Members.
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