Regional Newspapers

Andrew Griffiths Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)]

Members will have noticed the new clock displays in the Chamber. As before, the top display is the current time and the bottom display, when a speech is not being timed, will show the time it started. If it becomes necessary to introduce a speech limit, the bottom display will change, to show the time remaining to the Member who currently has the Floor. As in the main Chamber, the display can now award an extra minute for the first two interventions in a speech.

The first debate this afternoon is on the future of regional newspapers. I call Andrew Griffiths.

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Hood. It is a great pleasure to be serving under your chairmanship today.

I welcome all those colleagues who have taken the time and trouble to take part in this important debate on this busy day. I think that is because we all recognise the importance of our local newspapers in the communities that we represent. We recognise the value and contribution that a daily or weekly newspaper makes to the lives of the people we seek to serve.

The debate is topical because of two important developments in the past few days. First, as colleagues understand, this week the House has been debating the consequences of the Leveson report. None of us can fail to be appalled by the revelations that came out of the phone-hacking inquiries and by the disreputable activities of some members of the journalist profession. It is only right for us to consider the future implications for our free press. What was clear from the report, however, was that the one sector of the media industry that was free from blame was our regional and local newspapers.

[Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he agree that it would be totally wrong for the local press which are not at fault for anything—as acknowledged in the Leveson report—to be punished for the fault of other, far larger newspapers of national consequence? The local press have done nothing wrong whatever.

[Andrew Griffiths]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention and agree with him wholeheartedly, because it is essential that our regional press, which are under the greatest pressure, should not be burdened with expensive and difficult regulation, and the finger of blame should not be pointed at them. As Justice Leveson points out, the regional press are free from such accusations. I draw attention to what he says in the report:

“In relation to regional and local newspapers, I do not make a specific recommendation but I suggest that the Government should look urgently as what action it might be able take to help safeguard the ongoing viability of this much valued and important part of the British press. It is clear to me that local, high-quality and trusted newspapers are good for our communities, our identity and our democracy and play an important social role.”

He goes on to say, in the executive summary, that many local and regional newspapers

“are no longer financially viable and they are all under enormous pressure as they strive to re-write the business model necessary for survival. Yet their demise would be a huge setback for communities (where they report on local politics, occurrences in the local courts, local events, local sports and the like) and would be a real loss for our democracy.”

That is why it is so important for us to have the debate today and why we agree the importance of the Government focusing on providing a sustainable future for our regional press.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. We have touched on the Leveson report and certain comments from it. May I refer to another comment by Lord Justice Leveson? He said that the contribution of regional newspapers to local life is “truly without parallel”. In my constituency, we have the Kent Messenger and the Medway Messenger, with circulation of 370,000 a week and 270,000 hits on the internet site, clearly showing how important their contribution is.

[Andrew Griffiths]

My hon. Friend wins the prize for being the first Member to mention his local newspaper. For anyone who was having a sweep, we were about five minutes into this important debate at the first name check. However, I agree wholeheartedly with him.

The second development that I draw colleagues’ attention to is the announcement in the past few days of the amalgamation of Local World, a new joint venture that we hope will be part of the solution for the future of our regional newspapers. As colleagues know, it is a joint venture with the Daily Mail group’s Northcliffe Media and includes investment from Trinity Mirror. The new company will contain 100 regional newspapers and 60 websites, which is a massive development in the situation of our regional newspapers. This is the first opportunity for the Minister to put on record his thoughts on the future effect of that and on what more needs to be done in the wake of the announcement.

We have to recognise that our regional newspapers are in a pretty poor state. They are under pressure in a way that national newspapers do not suffer. We all recognise that the print media generally are having a tough time, because of the internet and the change in how people are viewing their media, but regional newspapers are particularly hard hit. Let us look at the figures. Advertising and circulation revenue for regional newspapers in 2004 was £3.113 billion; six years later, in 2010, that figure had fallen to £1.599 billion. The number of regional daily newspapers has fallen from 109 in 2002 to only 84 today. Two hundred regional newspapers, including dailies and weeklies, have been lost in the past decade. We all recognise that the loss of a local newspaper is a loss of an important part of our communities.

We all bemoan the loss of a post office or the local pub—I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary beer group—but we should bemoan the loss of our local newspapers in the same way, because they are the key to information within our communities.

[Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate. I obviously have to mention the Redditch Standard and the Redditch Advertiser in my constituency, which employ local journalists with great knowledge of our area. For example, we have a hospital threatened with closure, and local newspapers allow people to have their say. Does he agree that if we are serious about local democracy and keeping it, we must help our local press?

[Andrew Griffiths]

I am sure that my hon. Friend appears regularly in her local newspapers because she makes important contributions such as that. She touches on two important points: democracy, which I will come on to later; and employment. Not only do local newspapers employ a number of people in our constituencies, they are also the training or breeding grounds for the national journalists of tomorrow. We can all point to august journalists, people with a fine career in journalism, who have earned their spurs, done their apprenticeship and learned the trade in regional newspapers—covering the parish council, the village fête and the flower show. This is a good training ground to understand grass-roots communities and grass-roots’ politics. We lose that at our perils, although losing it we are. Since January 2002, we have lost 13.2% of our local newspapers, and I do not want to lose any more. My hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Karen Lumley) referred to democracy. We all recognise the important role that local newspapers play in holding local authorities and public figures to account for their decisions.

One of the key thrusts of the Government’s agenda is localism. We want to devolve power down to the lowest possible level. We want to empower local communities, through local councils, to make decisions that best affect their communities. If we are to hand down that responsibility, and if we are to hand down that power to elected councillors and officials, such as police commissioners, it is even more important that we have the right checks and balances in place to hold them to account. It is even more important that people scrutinise the work of our councils and police commissioners to ensure that local people are properly represented, that they get the government they deserve, and that local money is spent effectively. How can that be done if local reporters do not attend council meetings?

[Mr Scott]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the biggest assets of a local press—I feel duty-bound to mention the Ilford Recorder and the Wanstead and Woodford Guardian in which hon. Members may read my column tomorrow—is that they print facts, not with glamour or spin, but just the facts of what happens, whether a flower show, a council meeting or any other event?

[Andrew Griffiths]

I will dash to my computer tomorrow morning to find my hon. Friend’s column online. He is absolutely right. Lord Justice Leveson said in his report that although there are sometimes allegations of inaccuracy in local media, they do not have the same political allegiances, and they report both sides of the argument. I am sure that all hon. Members can point to stories that they disagree with, but people cannot hide from their local newspapers, because they have phone numbers and know where people live, and can hold them to account for decisions that affect their readership and our constituents. That is hugely important to us as politicians.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend aware of the distinction between local and regional newspapers, and will he say a bit more for my benefit about what is happening at regional level? My local newspaper, the Isle of Wight County Press, is absolutely fine and is widely read in the county, but what is happening with regional newspapers?

[Andrew Griffiths]

I am sorry to tell my hon. Friend that the picture is the same for local and regional newspapers. They are all suffering loss of revenue, for various reasons. The internet has had an impact on advertising revenue, as has the slow-down in the employment market, the rise in job websites, and the loss of advertising for car sales and estate agents. All that is adding to the severe drop in income for regional newspapers. We must see what we can do to make them more sustainable.

The free weekly newspapers are suffering most, because they are feeling the loss of advertising revenue much more than those that receive a contribution from people who pay for newspapers. There has been some stability in income in recent months, but much of it is because newspapers have been forced to raise their prices. Readership continues to fall, and at the moment newspapers are bridging the gap, but that is not sustainable in the long term, and we must see what we can do to make them sustainable.

[Rehman Chishti]

Does my hon. Friend agree that some newspapers have diversified, such as the Kent Messenger, which has an internet page that receives 292,000 clicks a month? KMFM radio is also available, and if local newspapers are to survive in the long term, they must diversify and attract different audiences. Some are not doing that.

[Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)]

Order. Will hon. Members make their interventions shorter?

[Andrew Griffiths]

Thank you, Mr Hood, for that advice. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Newspapers are businesses, and are run by business people. They recognise that they must diversify, and they are looking for alternative income and revenue streams. All our newspapers now have internet sites, and are looking at how to spread their contents on as many platforms as possible. I hope that the Local World venture will help in that objective, but the reality is that advertising revenue through the internet is much lower than what can be expected through the printed medium, and that is disappointing for the many newspapers that have invested heavily in their online presence and advertising. They are competing with a whole host of different bodies, and competing with advertising on Google, Yahoo and other providers. It is difficult for them to compete.

The problem is not a UK phenomenon. The Newspaper Association of America says that industry losses account for some £500 million in a half year, which is offset by only a £20 million increase in online revenue. That shows the position that our newspapers are in. They are trying to be good businesses, and looking for new markets, but those new markets have much smaller margins and revenue income. We must look at what we can do.

I touched briefly on democracy. We all recognise how much more difficult it would be to communicate with our constituents without a local newspaper to get our message across. It is a case of, “If it didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it.” We must look at the implications for us as politicians and as the Government if we lose this important communication tool. I have a hardy band of deliverers in Burton, but my ability to communicate with my constituents would be vastly reduced if I lost my local newspapers, and I would be remiss if I did not mention the Burton Mail. I am lucky to have such a great newspaper. It is a daily newspaper, and run by a fantastic editor, Mr Kevin Booth. I am also lucky to have three weekly newspapers, the Uttoxeter Post and Times, the Uttoxeter Echo and the Uttoxeter Advertiser. Strangely, they all serve Uttoxeter in my constituency.

Those newspapers, particularly the Burton Mail, serve another purpose. They are local campaigning tools. They are the voice for the local community. They do not just transmit information to my constituents; they take up causes on their behalf. The Burton Mail has run a whole host of campaigns on issues such as knife crime, making the town centre safer, and keeping the Margaret Stanhope mental health centre in my constituency open. A plethora of great campaigns have galvanised the community in the way that a Facebook page simply cannot. If we lose our newspapers’ campaigning ability, the voice of our communities will be diminished, and we should care deeply about that if we care about our constituents.

Our local newspapers are the first point of call for people to find information. Although my local councils—East Staffordshire borough council and Staffordshire county council—have fantastic websites, Twitter feeds and Facebook accounts, to try to communicate with the people who pay council tax, those people do not visit the websites daily to look for information, whereas local newspapers are such a repository of information. I said earlier that if we did not have them, we would have to reinvent them.

The Government must realise the importance of our local newspapers in communicating messages to the country. The Government advertising budget is under pressure. We recognise that we must make serious savings, and the Government are looking at communicating through new media, but many of my constituents are older people. Although we have a large number of silver surfers in Burton, many people still do not use the internet, Twitter, or Facebook, and turn to local newspapers for information. If we lose that, it will be to all our detriment.

The Government need to look at what more we can do. I have come up with the phrase “community capital”, and I think there is some community value in what our local newspapers do. In the same way that we support post offices through Government initiatives for the provision of services, and the voluntary sector through the Big Society Bank and investment in voluntary services, we should look at supporting our local newspapers to ensure that that community capital is not lost.

I point to two things. First, I recognise that the Government have taken some steps on tackling the issue of council newspapers. We have all seen the growth of free local council newspapers that go through doors at quite some expense, and my right hon. Friend and chum the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has done a great deal to try and rein in the worst excesses of those councils. However, we are still seeing some councils, such as Cardiff city council, spend huge amounts of money. A newspaper is produced there 13 times a year at a cost of some £33 million to the taxpayer. Is that a good use of council tax payers’ money, or should we be looking at what we can do to support our local newspapers?

Secondly, I touch on the issue of Department for Transport notices. A consultation ended earlier this year, as the Minister will know, on the DFT and its use of advertising notices in our local newspapers to ensure that local residents understand properly what is going on with the transport network in our constituencies. Were that important income revenue to be lost to local newspapers, I have absolutely no doubt that it would lead to the loss of journalists and tip some of our weaker local newspapers, which might disappear for ever, over the edge.

I am fast coming to the end of the time that I have to speak.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

More!

[Andrew Griffiths]

I thank the Minister for demanding more, but sadly no one behind me is saying the same.

I know that the Minister is a champion for local newspapers. I have seen the number of times that he has appeared, peering out from the pages of the Wantage and Grove Herald, and I know how he supports his local newspapers. However, although he is responsible for this issue in his Department, we need to look at the wider landscape and what the Government can do to support local newspapers, if we are serious about a sustainable future for them. I urge him to look at what he can do to get a council of war together with other Departments. Let us look at what we can do with the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Cabinet Office, in relation to the big society, and at what we are doing with Departments such as the Department for Transport. Let us get all those Departments together and see how we can maximise the benefit of our local newspapers.

I am a Conservative and I hate to use the word “subsidy”—I do not use that word lightly—but there are ways in which the Government can do more to support, rather than subsidise, our local newspapers. We have to look innovatively at how we can channel Government activity and use our local newspapers to their benefit and that of Government.

Trust is hugely important. As we have seen in recent weeks, although Twitter is a fantastic vehicle for getting information out, it is also hugely unreliable. We have seen the implications that that has had for people who have been thrust into the media spotlight through no fault of their own. Local newspapers are trusted in a way that no other form of information is. We as a Government support the BBC, local television and Channel 4 through various mechanisms, and it is important for us to begin to re-examine how we support our local newspapers to ensure that they continue to hold us as politicians to account, continue to be champions for their local communities, and continue to support our local communities in achieving all that they can.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) for securing a debate on this issue, which is unusual in that there is pretty much a consensus on it across the House—clearly, there is an issue about the ongoing demise of regional and local newspapers.

Members will not be surprised to hear that I am going to start by talking about my local newspaper, the Sunderland Echo, which is one of the oldest in the country, having started in 1873. It is still a daily paper, although it no longer has three editions a day or area editions. That, in itself, is a dramatic change to the way in which the paper has operated, and that has all happened in the past 10 or 15 years.

The paper is, however, still a hugely important part of our life in Sunderland; it is the main communicator of news to the people who live in my city, informing them, keeping them up to date with what is going on and entertaining them. That is particularly true of elderly people. Although, as has been said, some elderly people have engaged with, and embraced, the internet, many have not, and many in my constituency cannot afford the facilities to do so. For those people, particularly if they are housebound, getting the local paper of a night keeps them in touch with what is happening in not only the city, but their local community. That is an important part of what the Sunderland Echo does.

Over the years, the Sunderland Echo has been at the forefront of campaigns to secure things for our city. Ten years ago, it led a campaign to secure funding to provide ongoing support for the Durham miners’ gala. The gala is one of the most famous trade union days in the country, and more than 100,000 people turn up to it in July every year. There is not a mine left in the Durham coalfield, but the gala is about history, tradition and a good day out for the people of the area. More recently, the local paper has led a campaign to secure a children’s hospice, which is now being built in my constituency.

Those are important things, but there are also the much smaller issues, such as appealing for information when there are road traffic accidents or when things go missing. The national newspapers simply would not engage in such communication, but it is important.

[Andrew Griffiths]

Does the hon. Lady agree that local newspapers are a catalyst in raising millions of pounds every year for good causes and local charities?

[Julie Elliott]

Yes, absolutely. The children’s hospice I mentioned is funded entirely from donations and is set up as a charity. The work done by local newspapers on such issues is hugely important.

The problems faced by my local paper, however, are massive. As I said, the number of editions has gone down, but we still have a daily paper, which I am keen to keep going. So many dailies have moved to being weeklies, and that is when we lose the real link with local communities, because what a weekly paper provides is very different from what a daily paper provides.

The rise of the internet has been a threat. Although I look at the news on the internet, I like to read a newspaper as well—the two are not mutually exclusive. The loss of advertising revenue has also caused massive problems, as has the loss of readership—people cannot afford to buy newspapers when their price is going up all the time. Those losses have impinged on the quality of newspapers in some areas.

Most recently, the Sunderland Echo has suffered significant job cuts. It is owned by Johnston Press, which is doing its best in difficult and challenging circumstances. However, since the summer, we have lost 13 jobs in sub-editing and design. Significantly, we have also lost the printing press. Our paper was printed in Sunderland until the beginning of November, as it had been for the entire time it had existed. Sadly, the printing has now moved to South Yorkshire, which is two and a half to three hours away by car. People might think, “Well, the paper’s still being printed,” but 83 jobs have gone, and such changes also have an impact on the quality of the newspaper. Previously, the deadline was on the morning the paper was printed, but if it takes three hours to take the paper somewhere, the deadlines go back, and the freshness of the stories declines. I totally understand the economic arguments for that rationalisation, but it undoubtedly has an impact on the paper.

Local papers are some of the most popular printed materials. Some 33 million people read local papers every week, which is a huge number. There are 1,100 regional newspapers, although that is significantly down on where we were even two or three years ago, never mind 10 years ago. Local papers are a large employer, employing 30,000 people, and that is quite apart from the value they add in terms of the people working in newsagents and other things related to newspapers.

As colleagues have said, local newspapers are a good training ground for journalists. Many quite prominent journalists on national papers started their careers in local papers.

[Andrew Griffiths]

The hon. Lady makes an important point about local newspapers. Most corner shops and newsagents are under pressure, and newsagents get 27% of their income from the sale of newspapers and magazines, but that will be lost if we lose our local newspapers.

[Julie Elliott]

Absolutely. I could not agree more. I always try to buy my local paper in my local shop, and not in supermarkets, which have a much broader range of products to sustain them.

Sunderland has a university with a large, well-respected media department. When people leave, some go straight into the national media, and we get a lot on to national training programmes, but many like to go into local news, because it is almost an apprenticeship in the art of journalism. People learn how to investigate properly and how to communicate properly with people. If they go to a national, they will get the very small stories, but in a local paper they have the opportunity to pick up anything they hear about living among the people they write for. That will all be lost if the demise of local papers continues.

We must remember that once papers go, they rarely come back, so we must do everything we can to secure what we have. Local papers are too important to our communities to lose. I cannot imagine how people in Sunderland would find the information they need to go about their daily lives if we did not have the local newspaper. We must do all we can to save papers such as the Sunderland Echo and the others that have been mentioned.

I wholeheartedly support what colleagues have said about an initiative to bring Departments together. There are things the Government can do, and statutory notices, which have been mentioned, are a hugely important part of local papers’ funding. There must be other things we and the Government can look at to try to secure the future of local newspapers. I might have a different view on subsidies from the hon. Member for Burton, but in this case, the value of something that is partly a service, rather than just a business, must sometimes be taken into account when looking at imaginative ways of doing the things that central and local government do in any case, to help keep local papers as they are.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I extend my congratulations to the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths). I know that he has an exceptionally beautiful constituency, because once upon a time I applied to be the Labour candidate there. I am sure that we will take it back from him—notwithstanding the good speech he made this afternoon.

Many hon. Members have pointed to the great importance of local newspapers to local communities. That is partly because such newspapers hold democratic institutions—councils and health authorities—to account and report on courts. If local newspapers are not there, no one will do that vital work. It is also partly about building local identities. Notwithstanding whatever marvellous local newspapers hon. Members have, none could be better than the inestimable Teesdale Mercury. Like The Northern Echo, which has run some extremely successful campaigns—it is running campaigns against the cuts from the Department for Education as we speak—it is a fantastic local newspaper.

We have consensus over the importance and significance of local newspapers, but these are challenging times. Circulation of local newspapers has fallen in every year since 2005 and it is difficult for the newspapers to deal with the secular trends. The move to the web is obviously a major structural challenge, not only in terms of people getting their news from the web, Twitter, social media and so forth, but due to the very significant loss in advertising revenue from people advertising on websites—to my mind somewhat foolishly. If someone has a piano to sell, for example, it is much better to advertise in the local newspaper, because somebody who is near enough to come and collect it might decide to buy it.

There are secular trends and background issues, but, as my hon. Friends the Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) pointed out, the behaviour of some of the large newspaper chains has not helped the situation. One problem has been that they were looking for rates of return that were simply not sustainable. Twenty years ago, some local newspapers were making 30%, so the big international chains, which my hon. Friends mentioned, borrowed money from the banks to buy more newspapers. They promised the banks that those huge returns, which I shall set in context, would continue.

Last year, Johnston Press made a 12% return before tax. In any other area of economic life, 12% would be a fantastic return. Compare it to Tesco, the most successful retailer in Britain—from a profit point of view—which made 6%. The reason the newspaper industry is in a mess is because its business model requires it to keep paying masses of interest to the banks. That is why they are stripping out the assets, stripping out the quality journalism, which my hon. Friends mentioned, and getting rid of the printing presses, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) described, all of which reduces the quality.

I support hon. Members who called for a meeting to discuss the issues, because we need to look constructively at financial models that reflect economic realities. The economic reality is that they are making 12% and people want to buy their local newspaper, but the finances have been messed up—to put it as politely as possible.

I shall turn to the proposals in Lord Justice Leveson’s report. The Minister has been involved in recent negotiations between the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and the newspaper editors, so I wish to ask him a couple of questions about how the negotiations are coming along. Across the parties, we are agreed that, after the tragic treatment of the Dowlers and the McCanns and the scandals uncovered by Lord Justice Leveson, we need to move to a new system. We are agreed that we need independent self-regulation, but the Opposition have yet to persuade the Government that that should be underpinned by statute. Lord Justice Leveson has set out how that might be done.

I hope that the Minister will not suggest that the independent self-regulation he wants will be less burdensome than the statutory backing that we are looking for because, if I may say so, that would undermine the Government’s case that the independent self-regulation they are negotiating with newspaper editors will be sufficiently tough. In this discussion, let us not pretend that statutory underpinning would have a significantly different economic impact on regional newspapers. I remind hon. Members, who may not have read all 4,000 pages of the Leveson report—

[Andrew Griffiths]

Two thousand.

[Helen Goodman]

In thousands of pages, Lord Leveson has proposed that when newspapers that have joined the independent body are sued for defamation, they should first go to a simple arbitration system—that would be much less burdensome for people than going to court—and, in such cases, newspapers would have the advantage of lower costs, as would the victims who were seeking redress. Signing up to the system would therefore reduce the cost of fighting defamation cases for newspapers, which is the incentive for them to join it.

The quid pro quo that Lord Leveson has suggested is that, for the new arbitration system to be regarded as valid, the new independent self-regulator must be truly independent and must follow certain criteria. We are agreed that we do not want the new regulator to be particularly bureaucratic or burdensome. As we have heard, although such newspapers as the Teesdale Mercury are owned by individuals, others are part of large chains that have resources. We need to attend to that argument, but it is not a clincher.

It is reasonable to consider whether fines should be proportionate to turnover, rather than the Daily Mail being given the same fine as the Teesdale Mercury, which is plainly not sensible. We should look at that, as we should at having less bureaucracy. We also need to consider the possibility raised in The Observer at the weekend about whether, within the Leveson framework, local newspapers might have a different independent self-regulator. I do not know whether that is a good idea, but it should be explored in the cross-party talks.

Will the Minister agree that independent self-regulation is not a punishment? It is not about punishing people, but about setting up a stable new system that will balance the importance of a free press with the need for a proper system of redress for victims. I hope that he will also confirm that whether or not we have statutory underpinning is irrelevant to how bureaucratic the new system is, and that we are all looking to have as unbureaucratic a system as possible.

Finally, to return to previous discussions about local newspapers, I do not think we have yet heard the Government’s view on traffic notices. I am sure that the Minister will recall that utilities and local authorities are currently required to put notices about digging up the roads into local newspapers, which is a major source of income for some of them. There has been some concern about the suggestion that those notices should move to the web, meaning that that income would fall.

I again congratulate the hon. Member for Burton on securing this debate. I was pleased to hear my hon. Friends’ analysis of the situation, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s answers to my questions.