Government Printing And Publicity In Wales

EDM number 1214 in 1992-93, proposed by Rhodri Morgan on 21/01/1993.

That this House thoroughly deplores the emergence of evidence of fraud, bribery and corruption right at the heart of the Government's publicity machine selling Tory party policy to the people of Wales at the tax-payers' expense, with allegations being made of preferential placing of contracts for printing and stationery supplies, combined with padded invoices in return for backhanders to key personnel extending from free Ford Sierra cars, free private education for the children of three Government officials and free holidays in a villa in Spain, itself acquired by the printing company proprietor via the padded invoices for the work on the entire wasteful and rotten mountains of glossy leaflets produced to publicise the meaningless Valleys Initiative and the fraudulent Citizen's Charter, and likewise the supply of ring-binders handed out free to school governors under local management of schools; finds the Welsh Office and Her Majesty's Stationery Office guilty of appalling laxity in allowing this type of racketeering and kickbacks to go on for years uncorrected, as Government advertising and self-promotion expenditure soared out of control; and appeals to the Government in Wales to confine itself in future to printing strictly non-partisan information, since, if it is not trying to bribe the Welsh people with their own money, its publicity set-up is less likely to be bribed by bent printing companies.

This motion has been signed by a total of 22 MPs.