Conduct Of Lord Walker (No. 2)

EDM number 1684 in 1992-93, proposed by Rhodri Morgan on 24/03/1993.

That this House calls on the President of the Board of Trade to proceed no further with the appointment from 1st April of Lord Walker as Chairman of the Urban Regeneration Agency, nor as his adviser on job-creation in pit closure areas, because of the new evidence which has come to light with the publication on 17th March of the minutes of evidence and memoranda of the Committee of Public Accounts investigation into the 1991-92 Accounts of the Welsh Development Agency (HC, 1992-93, 353-i), where on pages 48 and 49 (Appendix 5) details are disclosed of merchant bankers Barclays de Zoete Wedd submitting a preliminary report to Lord Walker, then Secretary of State for Wales, on future options for increased private sector participation in the activities of the Welsh Development Agency and specifically to the choice between placing a majority of shares in the Agency with financial institutions together with a Stock Exchange listing, or on the other hand an outright flotation of all shares in the Agency, all knowledge of which privatisation proposals was denied by the self-same Secretary of State in the course of Welsh Questions on 17th July 1989, Official Report, column 5, when he gave the answer 'no Sir' followed by 'the honourable gentleman is totally wrong' to the question by the honourable Member for Carmarthen, asking specifically about the existence of discussions between Barclays de Zoete Wedd and the Agency and whether the agenda in those discussions included both possible 50-50 public-private structure and 'outright privatisation'.

This motion has been signed by a total of 44 MPs.