Business of the House

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I am afraid that I did not read yesterday’s Morning Star, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend for providing me with an abbreviated edition. The ownership of newspapers was the peg on which he hung his question, and that is a matter for the Leveson inquiry.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I associate myself with the tributes to Malcolm Jack? Not only has he been a brilliant, innovative, modernising Clerk, but he shares with me the privilege of having graduated from the London School of Economics.

On our return after the recess, may we have an urgent debate on what is going on in Iceland? It still owes this country billions of pounds, which it refuses to pay to local authorities and individuals, and it is becoming quite a rogue state in that it is colluding with Japan in killing minkes and other whales and is now making arrangements with the Chinese Government to exploit the natural resources that are the inheritance of us all.

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Gentleman, using some fairly stark language about Iceland, has raised a number of issues, some of which fall to the Treasury, while others, I suspect, fall to the Department of Energy and Climate Change. I will raise them with my colleagues. I am unsure whether there is any direct action that we can take on any debts of the Iceland Government, but he will know that there are some consequentials from the failure of the Kaupthing bank.