That this House notes the unacceptable way that the sale of the Stationery Office was handled by the Conservative Government as HMSO was sold well below its value; further notes the inadequate handling of the sale by officials in the Office of Public Service who failed to advise Ministers to take an active interest in the affairs of the Stationery Office in the light of increasing commercial problems; and believes that this ignorance of the financial crisis within HMSO resulted in a loss of value in the sale.

That this House notes the unacceptable way that the sale of the Stationery Office was handled by the Conservative Government as HMSO was sold well below its value; further notes the inadequate handling of the sale by officials in the Office of Public Service who failed to advise Ministers to...

That this House believes that the offer by First Group PLC to buy out the other shareholders of Great Western Holding Ltd is another example of the privatised railways making individuals into millionaires at the expense of the passengers; further believes that the Franchise Director (a) failed to consult the relevant PTEs before announcing his view publicly, (b) improperly used his position to extract from the acquiring company benefits for a franchise wholly unconnected with the two Great Western Holding franchises, namely Great Eastern Trains, (c) failed to use his position to gain more than 1.5 per cent of the overall benefit for the North West which contains a directly affected franchise and (d) failed to properly consider the competitiveness issues in the north of Greater Manchester; and therefore believes that this acquisition should not be allowed to be completed by the Franchise Director until full consultation has taken place and there is equitable benefit for the involved franchises.

That this House believes that the offer by First Group PLC to buy out the other shareholders of Great Western Holding Ltd is another example of the privatised railways making individuals into millionaires at the expense of the passengers; further believes that the Franchise Director (a) failed to consult the...

That this House notes that the Stock Exchange Surveillance Department has received information in the form of details regarding the working relationship between a group of British Rail managers and senior representatives of the Go Ahead Group; believes that this relationship enabled price-sensitive confidential and privileged information to be made available to the Go Ahead Group in contravention of rules which should have been followed in the franchising of Regional Railways North East Activities; questions why OPRAF have not been reprimanded by Ministers when they are clearly implicated in failing to enforce the code of practice for in-house bidders; understands that the Stock Exchange is seeking to establish why shares in Go Ahead rose from 361 pence on 15th November to 511 pence on 8th January a 41 per cent increase in particular with Go Ahead directors and other personnel holding information they should not have had, were able to leak price-sensitive information for use in share speculation; believes that this privileged access to information in the accounts of Regional Railways North East was used to convince those prepared to speculate that Go Ahead were more likely than other bidders to take over the network; questions why British Rail personnel leaked such information; and calls upon Ministers to make a full statement to Parliament on this major public scandal.

That this House notes that the Stock Exchange Surveillance Department has received information in the form of details regarding the working relationship between a group of British Rail managers and senior representatives of the Go Ahead Group; believes that this relationship enabled price-sensitive confidential and privileged information to be made...

That this House condemns the continued programme of Crown Post Office closures and franchising being conducted by Post Office Counters Ltd. regardless of the will of local communities or the needs of the elderly and disabled; further considers that the timescale and the consultation period of a month is farcical, driven as it is by Government dogma and not by the knowledge and needs of areas such as Newcastle-under-Lyme whose crown post office is one of the latest to be treated in this arbitrary and deplorable manner; and further calls on the Government to instruct Post Office Counters Ltd. to cease this backdoor and underhand privatisation of our post offices.

That this House condemns the continued programme of Crown Post Office closures and franchising being conducted by Post Office Counters Ltd. regardless of the will of local communities or the needs of the elderly and disabled; further considers that the timescale and the consultation period of a month is farcical,...

That this House condemns the waste and injustice of the past 16 years of Government pension cuts and privatisation which has cheated 10 million basic pensioners of ??1,000 a year and bribed 1.6 million people out of state and occupational pension schemes into atrocious private ones; and calls for real pension choice with the reform of SERPS into a funded, independently managed, inflation proof option to provide quality second pensions for all.

That this House condemns the waste and injustice of the past 16 years of Government pension cuts and privatisation which has cheated 10 million basic pensioners of ??1,000 a year and bribed 1.6 million people out of state and occupational pension schemes into atrocious private ones; and calls for real...

That this House endorses the view of the Water Regulator at the launch of his Annual Report on Friday that the water industry is experiencing a loss of public confidence; expresses surprise that he did not accept the Regulator's role in this; deplores the record of the industry since privatisation of increasing prices, decreasing investment in infrastructure renewals and repair and company leakage figures which have actually increased; believes that Mr Byatt's continued obsessive campaign on metering ignores the concerns over the social and health costs of water metering installation, and constitutes undue discrimination against 90 per cent. of domestic customers who pay on the basis of their property value which is an effective way of distributing the cost of the service fairly between rich and poor; and is seriously concerned that the regulatory regime is becoming more concerned to defend its past record than to bring forward tighter regulation in order to restore public confidence.

That this House endorses the view of the Water Regulator at the launch of his Annual Report on Friday that the water industry is experiencing a loss of public confidence; expresses surprise that he did not accept the Regulator's role in this; deplores the record of the industry since privatisation...

That this House notes recent developments in the Government's plans to privatise the nuclear industry; is outraged by reports that a dividend sweetener of ??100 million is to be paid by the taxpayer from a special reserve fund in order to encourage speculative investors to feast off the proposed asset stripping exercise; and calls on the Government to shelve its plans and retain the nuclear industry in the public sector.

That this House notes recent developments in the Government's plans to privatise the nuclear industry; is outraged by reports that a dividend sweetener of ??100 million is to be paid by the taxpayer from a special reserve fund in order to encourage speculative investors to feast off the proposed asset...

That this House notes that the Railtrack prospectus is to be published on 1st May, and that ??1,229,418,952 of loans transferred to Railtrack from British Rail are to be written off to aid the flotation; considers the Government's debt write off policy for industries awaiting privatisation which now totals ??25 billion to be a national scandal in that public assets are being sold off at bargain basement prices; and urges potential shareholders in Railtrack to think again and give the share issue a wide berth.

That this House notes that the Railtrack prospectus is to be published on 1st May, and that ??1,229,418,952 of loans transferred to Railtrack from British Rail are to be written off to aid the flotation; considers the Government's debt write off policy for industries awaiting privatisation which now totals ??25...

That this House condemns the British Railways Board for reneging on the seven year deal with the 33 London boroughs to provide free travel on London's railways for over a million elderly and disabled people across the capital from 1st April 1995 and which will now end on 1st April 1997; further condemns the Government's rail privatisation programme which is blamed by the Board for its inability to bind successor rail companies to the agreement; believes that this is further proof of the false promises made by the Government over the so-called benefits of privatisation; and calls on the Secretary of State for Transport to use his power before the rail sell off to guarantee the original full term of the scheme.

That this House condemns the British Railways Board for reneging on the seven year deal with the 33 London boroughs to provide free travel on London's railways for over a million elderly and disabled people across the capital from 1st April 1995 and which will now end on 1st April...

That this House is concerned that the Government intends to reduce British Energy's financial liability to process spent AGR fuel from an estimated cost of ??4 billion down to ??1 billion in order to facilitate the privatisation of the nuclear power package; regards this as an unacceptable burden on the taxpayer; and calls on the Government to honour its promise to ensure that all attendant liabilities would follow the assets intended for privatisation.

That this House is concerned that the Government intends to reduce British Energy's financial liability to process spent AGR fuel from an estimated cost of ??4 billion down to ??1 billion in order to facilitate the privatisation of the nuclear power package; regards this as an unacceptable burden on the...

That this House notes that the Government is in negotiation with Duke Power to arrange the fire sale of the British nuclear industry; notes that Duke Power are notorious for their outrageous decision, rule unacceptable by the US Labor Department, to pay their workers to keep silent about safety fears; regards such behaviour as unacceptable in any company that serves the public and a threat to the lives of millions of people; and regards it as typical of the Tories to put their desperation to sell of the nuclear industry above the safety of the people they purport to represent.

That this House notes that the Government is in negotiation with Duke Power to arrange the fire sale of the British nuclear industry; notes that Duke Power are notorious for their outrageous decision, rule unacceptable by the US Labor Department, to pay their workers to keep silent about safety fears;...

That this House congratulates Steve Letza and Clive Smallman, of Bradford University Management Centre, on their joint paper, Is Water Thicker Than Blood ? Overcoming the Conspiracy of profit Over Social Responsibility in Privatised Utilities; notes their paper proposes a shift in public policy away from the greed is good ethic, returning the water industry to public ownership with democratic accountability and a revival of long-term planning and investment; further notes the alternative is of an Orwellian vision of the future, featuring water as the new global currency, rather than oil - and one which, in the case of the United Kingdom, is controlled by private organisations; believes that handing water supply over to profit driven shareholders was not only unethical but also a recipe for bad management, under-investment and unfair pricing; further acknowledges that the relations between water bosses, their shareholders and the Government represents an implicit conspiracy whose baneful effects were exposed by last summer's water supply crisis; criticises huge increases in water company profits, share dividends and directors' pay and perks; and questions Yorkshire Water's reliance on freak weather conditions to explain last summer's water shortages when the previous winter in West Yorkshire was the wettest for 34 years, rainfall was below the long-term average for 17 of the last 21 years and drought orders had been in place for five of the last seven summers so demonstrating unusual weather was not entirely unknown.

That this House congratulates Steve Letza and Clive Smallman, of Bradford University Management Centre, on their joint paper, Is Water Thicker Than Blood ? Overcoming the Conspiracy of profit Over Social Responsibility in Privatised Utilities; notes their paper proposes a shift in public policy away from the greed is good...

That this House condemns the Department for Education and Employment's privatisation programme of competitive tendering for the Careers Service which, following GrandMet's withdrawal, has severely jeopardised the provision of careers guidance in South London from 1st April 1996; further condemns the preferred bidder status allocated to GrandMet by the Department for Education and Employment despite irregularities revealing the highly inadequate nature of GrandMet's bid; notes with concern that the Department for Education and Employment imposed significantly less stringent guidelines and expectations on the private bid than on the bid made by the consortium of the four London boroughs of Lewisham, Greenwich, Southwark and Lambeth together with Sainsburys and The Woolwich Building Society; further notes that the GrandMet fiasco raises concerns about the other private companies running careers services with no relevant experience; reaffirms the critical economic and social importance of the Careers Service as a mechanism for preventing skills shortages and enhancing employee potential; urges the Government to take immediate steps to rectify the chaos caused to the Careers Service by its privatisation programme; and further urges the Government to recognise the professional nature of the consortium bid in South London and grant it preferred bidder status forthwith.

That this House condemns the Department for Education and Employment's privatisation programme of competitive tendering for the Careers Service which, following GrandMet's withdrawal, has severely jeopardised the provision of careers guidance in South London from 1st April 1996; further condemns the preferred bidder status allocated to GrandMet by the Department...