Legislative Reform

May I first declare an interest? I own a small newsagent's in Swansea. I thought that I would cover myself just in case I said something in favour of local papers in this debate—or in the next one, for that matter. I should like to pass on apologies from my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope), who intervened on the Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs at the beginning of the debate. Sadly, he is chairing a Committee and cannot be here, but I am sure that he will read Hansard diligently tomorrow to see the answer to his question. The focus of the debate is tight; I will try to make my contribution as exciting as I can, but the subject is a bit turgid, to say the least. However, clearly the issue has an impact on a number of people, because the requirement to place two advertisements in local papers has probably been about for a long time. I see that the London Gazette was first published in 1665; the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) probably remembers reading the first edition when he was a child, but perhaps not. Things have moved on just a little bit since 1665. I was reflecting only today on where we are now, compared to where we were when I first became a Member of Parliament. It is not so long ago that I had my first mobile phone. It was the weight of a brick, and the reception was so poor that, at times, it was as useful as a brick. I then got my first computer, so I threw away the typewriter and the Tipp-Ex, which was all rather exciting. Then the internet came along. We can all remember the days when we would try to download the first page of a document on a dial-up. We could go and bake a cake, or do something else, while that page was downloading. Now, we are talking about 100 megabytes a second. So times have moved on, and newspapers are moving along with them. A lot of the newspapers that we are talking about are online, but we are not quite at the stage at which many of them will be able to survive the recession. Things are pretty tight for them. I suppose that the big question is whether we are talking about retaining an obligation on liquidators to advertise in two local newspapers as a means of preserving local newspapers. That is clearly not why the obligation was created in the first place. The aim was to get the information out to the creditors, and clearly in 1665 advertising in two local papers, and using the London Gazette, was the way to do that. I do not know how many people read the London Gazette these days. I suspect that it is not a lot. I suspect that more people read it online than buy copies of it. I would not even know where to buy a copy of it. Speaking as a former newsagent, I do not think that we ever sold a copy. I do not think that we even stocked it. I certainly do not remember any of my customers coming in and saying, "Have you got the London Gazette?"