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Royal Mail

I beg to move,"That this House welcomes the Hooper review of UK postal services; and urges the Government to implement rapidly the review's proposals for the partial privatisation of Royal Mail." I regret that I am not the spokesman for my party on the subject of Titian or any other great Venetian painter. I am, however, addressing a serious issue, and presenting what I hope the whole House will consider to be a helpful motion. I am aware that over the years I have acquired a slightly clichéd reputation as a rather combative politician, and I sometimes weary of being described as a bruiser, so I decided to table a constructive and helpful motion as the first Opposition motion on the subject of a DBERR responsibility. Lord Mandelson—Peter Mandelson—has rightly described himself as an old political friend of mine. I thought I would table a motion that agreed with an important statement that he had made in December last year, supported his announcement about the future of Royal Mail and urged him to proceed with that policy. My hon. Friends and I will have to ask some very important questions—in two months the Government have failed to clarify aspects of the policy, so there will be serious issues for me to raise—but I had assumed that the motion, as drafted, would stand alone on the Order Paper.