I think that it will be for the convenience of the House if I intervene in this important debate at this point.

I am glad that my hon. Friend the member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson) succeeded in his Standing Order No. 9 application and that we have this debate today. It is right that the House should take the earliest possible opportunity to discuss the questions raised in the document placed before the House last Thursday—the Fay Report, the Stevenson Report, the Government's statement and, of course, my own statement to the House. It is also right that the House should exert its own will and discuss the matter at this early opportunity. But the essence of the case, as I said last week, is a failure of public accountability, and that means a failure of the Executive to account to Parliament.

The House may find it useful if I enlarge upon, and explain, certain critical aspects which are likely to engage attention during the debate and, indeed, to which my hon. Friend has already drawn attention. First, I should like to outline the exact position concerning the loss of more than £200 million by the Crown Agents. It is an opportunity—which I have not had before—for me to give the House full information about the matter.

We should refer to a probable loss, a loss which should be accounted for as such. However, there is no question of an immediate transfer to the Crown Agents of £200 million which might otherwise be used for infinitely more desirable social purposes.

In the later months of 1974, after I had appointed the new Chairman and constituted a board of the Crown Agents, and after Cooper and Lybrand Limited had been commissioned to examine and analyse the accounts—it should be recalled that the accounts for 1972, such as they were, were not finally available until January 1975—it became clear that there was a serious risk of a liquidity crisis. I should point out that the Government then moved urgently, and only a short time passed from the day that Mr. Cuckney informed me of the position to the decision which I announced to the House on 18th December 1974, that the Government were providing a grant of £85 million, that there would be a Bank of England standby of £50 million, and that the Government stood behind the Crown Agents—as we do, and shall do.

As I said to the House last week, the £85 million grant is still intact, and the Crown Agents have not yet had to draw on the £50 million Bank of England standby. However, every month of further detailed investigation since then into the actual state of the Crown Agents' own-account finances—completely distinct from their normal and traditional services—and the further collapse of their unsecured lending and the property and secondary banking investments in which they had indulged, from which, according to my directive of July 1974, they were disengaging, showed that the residual losses could be much greater.

The latest assessment, as the Fay Report says and as the Crown Agents' accounts for 1976 show, suggests a deficit of some £212 million on the earlier own-account disastrous investments. That, therefore, is the figure that the House must have.

But, as the accounts also show, the Crown Agents now have reserves—that is, reserves in their normal business—of £45 million. At the same time, as Fay clearly indicates and explains, there is a major Australian property investment which was undertaken in 1970 and 1971. From this the Crown Agents, with my agreement, are disengaging gradually. Its written-down value at 31st December 1976, almost a year ago, was assessed at £127 million. It consists largely of office block and other commercial property.

It is clearly important to disengage from this investment on the best possible terms, and it may take several years to do so in order to minimise the cost to us. The £212 million includes the amount by which the Australian investment has been written down, but it may be possible to recoup that amount or more. We cannot know at this point.

More than half the estimated loss, therefore, is already covered by the £85 million grant in 1974 and the Crown Agents' reserves of £45 million—or they may now be a little more. That leaves about £80 million, some or all of which will almost certainly have to be made good sooner or later. There is no doubt about that. I am trying to steer a course between realism and optimism, with an awareness that optimism was too dominant in the past. Parliament has a right to know now the full facts as we have them.