Lonrho, The Observer And The Dti Report

EDM number 547 in 1989-90, proposed by DN Campbell-Savours on 15/02/1990.

That this House notes in The Mail on Sunday of 4th February that, in connection with the unauthorised leak of the Department of Trade and Industry report on House of Fraser to Lonrho and thence to The Observer, the police 'recently arrested a German national in London and questioned him about a bound copy of the Department of Trade and Industry report which was seized in Bangkok'; concludes that the German in question is Mr Hermann Moll, long-time associate of Mr Samuel Evans who wrote the pamphlet, A Hero from Zero, for Mr Tiny Rowland; is surprised that an unpublished Department of Trade and Industry report appears to be more readily available in the sex shops of Bangkok than in the Library of this House; asks whether it has any idea of how many other copies might be found in the increasingly mysterious Orient; asks the Department of Trade and Industry to confirm whether it has been established forensically that the source of this illicit publication following the issue of a court order on 30th March 1989; recognises that the honourable Member for Workington has a reportedly irresistible craving to brandish documents in the Chamber and urges the Secretary of State to pass a copy of the Bangkok volume to him so that his craving may be satisfied and his reputation maintained; and calls upon Mr Tiny Rowland to divest himself of control of The Observer.

This motion has been signed by a total of 4 MPs.