Column One: At last, some plain English from Mr Prescott

IT WAS a poor kind of consolation. Returning from India in the small hours of yesterday morning Mr Prescott might have felt his spirits momentarily lifted by the news that he'd won an award.

True, the afternoon threatened an endurance test so prolonged and cruelly personalised that even a Japanese game show might hesitate to transmit it, but at least someone out there appreciated him.

Unfortunately Mr Prescott's plane had touched down on Plain English Day, an annual celebration of straight-talking, and the Golden Bull which he can now proudly display on his ministerial desk, is not a recognition for head-down tenacity, but for sheer incomprehensibility. On the very day Mr Prescott most needed to marshal his sometimes wayward powers of public speaking, he was to be singled out as a patron saint of gobbledygook.

This was a little unfair on two counts. For one thing Mr Prescott doesn't have that many problems with plain English - in the afternoon he told Tory MP Julie Kirkbride to "Shurrup and listen" with an easy fluency that would have made Noel Coward envious.

Plain English he can do. It's any other kind of English that gives him problems. For another thing, Mr Prescott wasn't being honoured for his own contributions to public bafflement, impressive though they are, but for the efforts of his department in drafting a consultation paper on implementation of a new directive.

The winning passage read as follows: "In the application by virtue of this paragraph of subparagraphs (4) and (6) to (10) of paragraph 3 to an application or proposed variation: a/ the notice served under sub-paragraph (2) of this paragraph shall be treated as the notification required by sub-paragraph (4) (a) of paragraph 3.

b/ The reference in sub-paragraph (6) of paragraph 3 to the day on which the notification under sub-paragraph (4) (a) of paragraph 3 is made

shall be treated as reference to the day on which the notice served under sub-paragraph (2) of this paragraph is given."

This is magnificent in its impenetrability - but Mr Prescott's can't really take the credit for it. Unlike Glenn Hoddle, another prize-winner, he could not claim authorship. The England manager had been nominated for the cloud of unknowing he generated when Trevor McDonald asked him about his controversial remarks about disabled people.

"I do not believe that", said the former England manager, "At this moment in time, if that changes in years to come I don't know, but what happens here today and changes as we go along that is part of life's learning and part of your inner beliefs". On a good day, of course, Mr Prescott can easily match that - towards the end of yesterday's debate he assured MPs that he wanted to take transport funding "out of that political football that affects it" - so perhaps we shouldn't quibble about the exact reasoning behind the award.

Jack Straw, who won a similar award last year, wrote in mitigation that those to whom the passage was addressed "had first class honours in gobbledygook". Mr Prescott's acceptance speech should be worth waiting for.

Parliament, page 8