VIEW FROM THE GALLERY

Mr Whitlock's half-hour holidays

SALLY VINCENT

One of our more endearingly enduring parliamentary traditions is a sort of late- night thirty minute theatre production called an adjournment debate. On four evenings a week, the more consequential matters of government are set aside for another day and the bulk of the House take their creaking limbs to double brandies and Rover cars leaving five or six souls to thrash out matters of slightly less than critical importance, such as the importing of glass dolls' eyes and cor- ruption in the wedding snap trade. It is a humbling opportunity for politicians to re- mind themselves that however vast the affairs of State, they have each a con- stituency to take care of, full of constituents with bees in their bonnets, and that in the course of British justice one man's triviality is another's obsession.

The method of arriving at a topic for one of these happy half hours is as charmingly British as the issue is likely to be. Members wishing to avail themselves of an ad- journment debate put their questions into a hat, where in the fullness of time the Speaker himself will perform a kind of lucky dip to establish whose turn it is to burn the ten- fifteen oil. The trouble with this quaint modus operandi is that by the time your own little whimsy has come out of the hat, you are likely to have spent some of the fervent passion that possessed you at the time of ap- plication. The gilt, as it were, will have rub- bed off your gingerbread, which is why, com- bined with the lateness of the hour, most ad- jourment debates are conducted in a spirit of resigned boredom. • An uncommonly abiding gilt, though, adheres to Mr William Whitlock (Lab, Not- tingham North) whose empathy for those of his constituents who have returned lamen- ting from foreign parts with peeling shoulders and a sense of loss must be heightened by his own misfortunes on the sunny shores of Anguilla. Accompanied on his own side by two extras, one sprawled, one crouching like embryo Brandos, and fac- ing his co-star, Mr Nicholas Ridley, the Under Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, plus a second Tory who looks as though he's forgotten to go home with the others, he outlines his grievances against package tour operators who flagrantly abuse the 1968 Trade Descriptions Act and ruin the holidays of hard working citizens. He presents a somewhat euphemistic tale of woe. Four operators, he says, show a 'marked lack of zeal' in ensuring that people who go on holiday have accurate in- formation about the arrangements that have been made for them. The strident approach IS not Mr Whitlock's style. Fleet Street may well be buzzing with the latest crockery of the tourist trade and how naughty men show potential customers photographs of gay swimming pools in front of hotels which are no more or less than line drawings in January when the booking money is taken, and tend to be building sites when the poor wretches arrive in July. But Mr Whitlock is no fearless People investigator, nor, ap- parently, does he wish to make a federal case

out of Tory free enterprise and how it sometimes affects the gullible. Mr Whitlock prefers the slow burn to the hard sell, which is a pity for the half hour slot. However, what he lacks in dramatic impact he makes up for in gentle pathos and he is well backed up by the sprawling fellow with ankles hooked up on the seat before him, who has a juicy line in tongue-clicking that would not discredit Ena Sharpies.

Mr Whitlock's constituents, it would ap- pear, have been sending their complaints in

to their champion as thick and fast as Costa Brava mosquitoes. All have been cruelly misled by glossy brochures depicting glossy illustrations of glossy people disporting themselves in glossy pools attended by glossy waiters bearing glossy things on glossy trays.

Having arrived at Ibiza or Tenerife or some such exotic spot, they find an altogether different picture from the one on the package (tut, tut, tut) where the thickness of the printer's glaze may no longer deceive the eye. Mr Whitlock has not done much of

an editing job on his constituents' letters and so we learn how one maligned fellow found that what Clarksons describe as 'a hotel' turned out to be no more or less, on its own admission than 'a hostel' (tut, tut, tut).

From such cool beginnings we hear stories of high prices, dirty accommodation, uneatable food, stinking drains, belching stackpipes, taps that fail to produce water and ceilings that do, uncleanly clad staff, a monstrous catalogue of squalor and disillusion for people promised a bit of heaven. One poor chap (whose letter is clearly unexpurgated) went to paradise to find his portion inhabited by verminous beds and a rat 'that ran around the hotel upsetting the guests until finally it was run to ground

on the third floor'. The third floor and nothing about it in the advertisement. And

from all this misery there has been no come- uppance for the crooked tourist trappers (tut for the rat and tut for that, too). For a bit of action, Mr Whitlock waves a shiny brochure on which the word 'guaranteed' is over- printed in commanding letters. It is, says our champion with quiet contempt, no guarantee at all. Tut, tut.

Maintaining his role as the chief tragedian, Mr Whitlock fades softly away, leaving the hard line to his friend, Mr Lewis Carter- Jones (Lab, Eccles) who smartly explains that the whole ,purpose of this debate is to button up the Trade Descriptions Act a little more tightly than he an others had managed in 1968, thereby discouraging more effectively the tendency for unscrupulous tour operators to rook innocents abroad and get away with it.

But before the Minister can fully absorb the power of Mr Whitlock's nightmarish tales, the left-over Tory leaps to attention and immodestly informs his startled col- leagues of the life and hard times of some of his constituents. British Rail, he cries, are selling first class tickets to people travelling between Waterloo, Weymouth and Bournemouth on Friday evenings and all they are entitled to is standing space in the corridors along with second class passengers. It's outrageous. How dare they ! At this the tutter unwinds his ankles from their resting place and exposes himself as Mr Leslie Huckfield (Lab, Nuneaton) beard and all. Employing best parliamentary language and using no less than seventy-one words, he complains that British Rail and its passengers are not relevant to the case under discussion. The left-over Tory is by no means shamed by his trick of sidling in on someone else's lucky dip ticket; far from it, he uses the op- portunity to crow that he can jolly well say what he jolly well thinks fit in an ad- journment debate and proves it by restating his gripe all over again. All of which merely serves to cut down on the time left for the Minister to say no.

To an untutored or even an honest ear such as Mr Whitlock doubtless possesses, the Minister's speech sounds remarkably like a man playing the game of guess the question to the answer I am giving.

Of course, he allows in his avuncular fashion, the sort of people (he describes them as 'millions', not peasants) who avail themselves of package tours do, indeed, need to rely very heavily on the accuracy of in- formation set out for them in holiday brochures. But without such tour operators the 'millions' would never have been able to afford the thrills of the Mediterranean in all their lives. Now, he argues, if tour operators didn't give a good service they wouldn't be in business for long, would they? For all the 'millions' would be disillusioned and stay at home, would they not? And the business would lose customers and have to pack up, would it not?

Mr Whitlock sits dejected on his lonely bench, gloomily rolling and unrolling his guarantee brochure while all his points are skated over like thick ice.

Rather than make any change in the ex- isting law, the Minister prefers to suggest that dissatisfied holiday makers can always seek vengeance through civil action—as though the poor folk he was describing in the first place may not know Calais from their elbows, but are erudite in matters of civil law. Mr Whitlock plunges his face into his hands. The Minister makes placating noises. Of course things go wrong, he allows. Of course they do. Why, aeroplanes get delayed by fog and heating systems go wrong and chefs walk out on hotel managers, all sorts of annoying little things go wrong with the best laid plans. it's only human. He doesn't men- tion the vermin, or the rat, or the drains for that matter.

With all the pathos of an honest man, Mr Whitlock again brandishes his unscrupulous brochure. 'But it could,' he pleads hopelessly, 'be dealt with by the honourable gentleman's department now.' Could the honourable gentleman not, under existing common law arrangements take action—perhaps under the Prosecution of Offences Act, 1908? He believes it could be. Mr Huckfield stops tut- ting and is moved to emit a few 'here heres' gamely trying to make himself sound like a crowd. An attendant yawns hugely and eyes the clock. Mr Ridley says No. Mr Whitlock holds out his brochure still, like a man advertising Clarksons on television. All is lost. Mr Huckfield suddenly decides to join in but the attendant can not only tell the time, he also recognises the moment when he can assert himself. He scurries to the mace, lifts it smugly from its place and disappears with it. Mr Whitlock gets up and sadly walks away.