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8.22 pm
Mr. Patrick Thompson (Norwich, North): I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate because, like the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett), I have some constituency interest in the matter. HMSO is based in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, but many of my constituents--I do not know exactly how many--work at HMSO.
I share one thing with the hon. Gentleman, and possibly more. My constituents' worries are no doubt the same as those of his. After all, I am sure that one could not distinguish between the letters which he has been receiving from his constituents who work at HMSO and the letters that I have been receiving. It would be silly of me to suggest that there is some kind of difference in concern across the constituency boundary.
I want to be frank with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy--there is, if not universal concern among the employees of HMSO, certainly considerable concern. That is why it is important for the matter to be debated and, to that extent, I must support some of the hon. Gentleman's remarks.
The Government should think long and hard about the way in which they go about this change. It is my first duty to get across to the Government that any change must be in the interests of my constituents. Any other constituency Member of Parliament would say the same. However, I differ from the Opposition Members who spoke in that I would say that there is a hard commercial case to be looked at. If there is time, I shall refer to this matter again. The market has been declining, and HMSO has had to take a long look at the question of possible staff reductions. Therefore, it is wrong of the Opposition to suggest that everything can be left exactly as it is, and that everything will proceed if that is the case.
The right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster) complimented me by comparing me to a turkey. I may have got his comparison wrong, but it had something to do with Christmas. The hon. Gentleman would have disappointed my constituents. This is not a party political point. He spoke for some 37 minutes, but he did not say a great deal about what the Opposition would actually do to address the commercial difficulties and problems which HMSO is facing. After all, my constituents are concerned with the distinction between public and private service, but they are also concerned about jobs and prospects. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy is right to say that something needs to be done to improve the opportunities within HMSO, or any succeeding organisation, and those arguments must be taken seriously.
It is appropriate that we talk about constituency issues--or Norwich issues--in this debate, even though it is a wider-ranging debate about Parliament and Hansard. Luke Hansard lived in Norwich and served his apprenticeship there before moving to London in 1774. All of us who have read up on the matter know the history. It is important that, in debating HMSO and Parliament, we bring Norwich into it, and I make no apology for doing so. There are other issues which I would like to address briefly in a moment.
The issues are being considered by the House of Commons Commission and by the Finance and Services Committee. The hon. Member for Norwich, South also referred to parliamentary issues in his speech. I referred to some of the issues in an Adjournment debate in April of this year, when I talked about the cost and distribution of Hansard, the reporting of parliamentary debates and other important matters. I shall not go into great detail, but I hope to refer to those matters as well as talking about Norwich.
I would be very unhappy if I felt that there was any chance at all of the main headquarters of HMSO moving out of Norwich. That may sound unreasonable, but--as a constituency Member of Parliament--I would have to be unreasonable if I thought that there was any chance of that happening at all. How could I or the hon. Member for Norwich, South say anything else? The Norwich tradition is tremendous, and the strong connection with Norwich must continue. I make no apology for pressing my right hon. Friend on that particular point, as it is important. It is important that the people of Norwich retain their jobs, and also the strong, traditional and historic links which HMSO has with Norwich. I make no apology for pressing that point over and over again. It is important to me, and it will remain important to me if we debate the matter further at a later stage.
As I said earlier, many of my constituents have written to me to express their concerns about what they see as the Government's plans. I would like to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy for the way in which he has kept me--and, I have no doubt, my colleagues in the House--fully informed about how the Government are going about this. My right hon. Friend has so far kept in touch with the management, staff and trade union side at HMSO, and has done so superbly. I think that he has visited Norwich twice--I know that he has done so at least once--and that he intends to do so again. One cannot fault him on this, and I hope that he will continue to keep fully in touch with everyone involved at HMSO.
When my right hon. Friend visits Norwich, I hope that he will find time also to visit CCTA which, curiously, stands for the Government Centre for Information Systems. I defy any hon. Member to work out that one. CCTA is situated in my constituency, and of course it is also facing changes. I hope that my right hon. Friend will approach the changes at CCTA in the same courteous way in which he has approached the changes at HMSO.
Many fears have been expressed in the correspondence that I have received from my constituents. Some of those fears are not well founded, but some need serious answers.
My constituents are rightly concerned about the effect on the Norwich economy. It is no secret that we have had serious job losses in Norwich in recent years. I hope,
therefore, that my Government colleagues will take seriously the fact that the Norwich economy is an issue at the moment. Communications to Norwich are an issue and jobs in Norwich are an issue. Those points are relevant and my constituents are right to address me on them.
My constituents have referred to other issues about which other hon. Members have already spoken so I do not need to say too much about them. They refer to the possibility of asset stripping and to the possibility of splitting HMSO into units. They also talk about security, to which other hon. Members have referred. I am not saying that those concerns are necessarily well founded, but I know that people are worried about them and Ministers must answer those points.
Mr. Garrett:
If there were a vote, would the hon. Gentleman vote for or against the privatisation of HMSO?
Mr. Thompson:
I would want to find out first whether my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster had answered my concerns. As I said a moment ago, he has gone about things sensibly. We shall have to wait and see whether he continues in a sensible way. In spite of the remarks by the right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland, we do not know whether we shall have an opportunity to vote. My right hon. Friend has suggested that the proposal could go through in a Standing Committee. I feel--here I agree with the hon. Member for Norwich, South--that the proposal needs thorough debate and airing in Norwich as well as in the House. It is important, therefore, that I and colleagues here express all our concerns as well as--here I disagree with the hon. Gentleman--the advantages that may accrue from privatisation or from some similar change.
Several hon. Members have referred to security. I have some sympathy with the idea that there is a risk, if the civil service is left out of it all, that there will be extra leaks. The only trouble is that we seem to have an awful lot of leaks even with our present governmental system.
Mr. Beith:
It is the politicians.
Mr. Thompson:
I shall not respond to that.
In June 1994, I received from HMSO its newsletter, which comes out at regular intervals. Its controller and chief executive at that time was Paul Freeman; I am not sure whether that name has any significance for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Mr. Freeman headlined his article with the words "Streamlining to survive" and then made the following key points:
My right hon. Friend is probably right, therefore, to suggest that the freedom to trade within the private sector will lead to opportunities for business growth and could well lead to better employment prospects in Norwich. That possibility is, of course, subject to my earlier point
about the headquarters remaining in Norwich. New technology means that the staffing requirement may reduce and the volume of production by the printing presses and so on may need to increase. That is why I support the hon. Member for Norwich, South when he talks about expanding HMSO's activities to printing for the European Parliament and for organisations overseas. That must be good news whatever we do politically and it is an important point.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack), who is not now in his place, referred to public service. I too have some difficulty here because I am a traditionalist at heart and a conservative, as many of my constituents are. Although I fully see the commercial arguments in favour of privatisation--perhaps jobs are the issue that will really count in the end--I have some sympathy with those such as my hon. Friend who say that public service is important in itself. That does not mean that I go along with the old Labour view that everything in sight should be nationalised, but I believe that there is a concept of public service. Those of us who have served in the professions, as I have, will not allow our party colleagues to sweep aside the concept of public service. I will certainly not have that. Those in HMSO who are genuinely arguing, not in political terms, for the concept of public service should not be dismissed out of hand. To be fair, I do not think that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster dreams of doing that. I must, however, put on record that the concept of public service is an issue that we have to address.
I have made most of the points that I wanted to make on behalf of my constituents. To sum up, I believe that my right hon. Friend is handling the matter well. He is keeping people in Norwich fully informed and, as I know, he has a lot of support from those who are responsible for HMSO and for taking it forward into the future. However, my right hon. Friend has a lot of work to do to convince the employees as a whole of the rightness of this move.
The point of my speech is to persuade my right hon. Friend to do all that he can to ensure that there is, if not here in Parliament certainly within HMSO, a thorough debate about the future. Subject to all that--here I respond to the hon. Member for Norwich, South--I would have no difficulty, if the matter came to a vote, in voting for the proposals as long as I was convinced that they were in the interests of my constituents. If I were convinced of that, I could override any other reservations that I might have or any old-fashioned ideas that I might have--which unfortunately I have not got rid of altogether.
There is a parliamentary issue as well. Hansard, which is printed and published by HMSO is important. It should be distributed more widely and that is why I initiated an Adjournment debate on that subject some months ago. I was keen that the price of Hansard should be reduced. On 6 December, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) confirmed in a parliamentary answer that there would be reductions. There had been an earlier reduction in the price of the weekly Hansard from £22 to £12 as long ago as May. Within the past week, there has been an announcement of a reduction in the prices of the daily Hansard, Bills and Select Committee reports. That is a move in the right direction.
"Up to 30 per cent. of current jobs may have to go for HMSO to remain competitive. Corporate services to be reduced to around 150 staff. Voluntary Early Retirement to continue."
I could reel off his key points. Anyone who suggests that HMSO's problems start as of this debate is misleading my constituents and the House. There are continuing problems which the management of HMSO have to address and which my right hon. Friend is trying to address. We must try to push some of the more obvious party political controversy to one side and to look at the serious issues.
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