Early day motion tabled by primary sponsor Lord Campbell-Savours (Labour), on Thursday, 15 February 1990, in the House of Commons. It is signed by 4 members in total.

---

Mr Tiny Rowland and The Observer

That this House takes note of a widely circulated letter of 6th February 1990 to Mr John Wood, Director of the Serious Fraud Office, from Mr Tiny Rowland, director of Lonrho and Chairman of The Observer; sees that Mr Rowland's five year obsession over his sale of an essentially controlling interest in House of Fraser continues unabated; draws attention to Mr Rowland's description of the Department of Trade and Industry's inspectors in the affair as 'experienced and impeccable' and 'impeccably qualified to avoid legal quagmires'; wonders whether these can be the same inspectors accused by Mr Rowland, in a letter of 28th October 1987, of bias and of conducting a 'perversion of the inquiry'; recalls that in his letter of 16th November 1987 he accused the same gentlemen of negligence and said that one, Sir Henry Brooke, should be disqualified for being part of a conspiracy; further recalls repetition of these allegations by Mr Rowland in writing on 20th November, 25th November and 8th December 1987; is driven to conclude that Mr Rowland is either alarmingly inconsistent or forgetful; believes that neither attribute is desirable in the controller of a national newspaper; finds it easier, as a result, to understand the sad decline of the paper during his stewardship; and calls upon Mr Tiny Rowland to divest himself of control of The Observer.

---

Secondary information

Type

Early day motion

Reference

546 

Session

1989-90

Subjects

Company investigations Newspaper press The Observer House of Fraser Lonrho Rowland, Tiny

Link

View this Early day motion on www.parliament.uk