Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation Bid for BSkyB

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Some chilling words: “This one is my priority,” spoken by Rupert Murdoch about Rebekah Brooks; “There is far worse to come,” spoken by Rebekah Brooks about the revelations; “News International was deliberately thwarting a police investigation,” spoken by Commander Peter Clarke, who was in charge in the investigation and who has never said that in public until now; “I am 99% certain that my phone was hacked,” spoken by Assistant Commissioner Yates, who is in charge of counter-terrorism in this country; and “Have you ever paid police officers?” “Yes,” spoken by not just Rebekah Brooks but Andy Coulson.

Some disturbing facts: News International bullied those who opposed or were critics of the BSkyB empire; the policeman investigating News International went on to work for the company not years but weeks after he had stopped working for the Metropolitan police; Parliament has been lied to time and time again by a series of different people; material was deleted at News International and sometimes squirreled away and kept against a rainy day when a police officer might come knocking on the door to try to incriminate somebody else lower down the chain in the organisation; some people were ditched and thrown overboard, as we have seen throughout this year; and, as the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster) said earlier, one of the most disgusting things that has happened in the past two weeks is that the people slaving away in the boiler room had to carry the can for those who were at the helm. That does not show that that is a decent company with which to do business.

Executive and non-executive directors at News Corporation completely failed in their fiduciary duties to ensure that criminality was not going on at their company and that the organisation was co-operating completely with the police. That involves Mr Aznar, Peter Barnes, Kenneth Cowley, Lachlan Murdoch, Thomas Perkins, John Thornton and Stanley Shuman, who should all be considering their position, too. I believe that this is proof that News Corporation is not a fit and proper body to hold its present holding in BSkyB, let alone any increased holding.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), who has been tenacious over the years on this matter. He said that BSkyB has done much that is good and I am sure all our constituents would agree. They watch lots of Sky television and enjoy their Sky Plus. The company has lots of technological innovation that only a robust entrepreneur could bring to British society, but it has also often been profoundly anti-competitive. I believe that the bundling of channels so as to increase the profit and make it impossible for others to participate in the market is anti-competitive. I believe that the way in which the application programming interface—the operating system—has been used has been anti-competitive and that Sky has deliberately set about selling set-top boxes elsewhere, outside areas where they have proper rights. If one visits a flat in Spain where a British person lives, one finds that they mysteriously manage to have a Sky box there even though it is registered to a house in the United Kingdom.

Sky has a virtual monopoly over many areas of our lives, with 67% of residential pay-TV subscriptions and 80% of pay-TV revenues—with an average spend of £492 a year.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s tenacity and courage over the course of this matter. He has been a credit to Parliament in the way he has pursued this. He is quite right that News International must be brought to justice, but does he agree that we must address the concentration of ownership of the media? If we do not do that, the idea that we have a free press and free media is simply false.

[Chris Bryant]

I completely agree that we failed to address the fact that we have allowed one man to have far too much power in his hands, including four newspapers and all the rights I have been talking about.

It is not just newspapers and broadcasting that have been subject to anti-competitive practices; it is also advertising. Sky spends £127 million on advertising—double what Virgin is able to—in any one year. The fact that it has such a big presence in the market makes it difficult for others to enter. It is anti-entrepreneurial to allow one person to have so much power, which is why no other country would allow it.

I suspect that the people of the country have been way ahead of we politicians on all of this. In the 10 years that I have been an MP, many have come to my constituency surgeries and demanded changes to the system. We have all failed in our duty for far too long, perhaps because we were frightened. If the Murdochs fail to attend the Select Committee next week, I believe that the people of this country will conclude that the Murdochs are waving goodbye to Britain—and maybe that would not be a bad thing.

Business of the House

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

Ministers have made a commitment to publish a water White Paper, and it will be published by December 2011. It will cover England only, but it will be developed in close conjunction with the Welsh Assembly Government.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Of course I welcome the Government’s change of mind on a public inquiry into phone hacking, but may I urge the Leader of the House to ensure that that inquiry is led by a judge, that it is a statutory inquiry with full powers to subpoena evidence and witnesses, that witnesses will be able to give evidence on oath, that it will look not only at the broad issues but specifically at what happened at the News of the World, and that it can start as soon as is possible and practicable to gather the evidence before it is destroyed at the News of the World?

[Sir George Young]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for his initiative in generating the debate on this matter, and indeed for what he said yesterday. The inquiries will be independent and they will be in public. I note what he has said about the specific format of the inquiries, and that will form part of the consultation process in which we are now engaged.

Business of the House

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

May we have a debate on the solving of conundrums? Or perhaps the Leader of the House could solve one for me. The latest figures show that, at the moment, for every job available in the Rhondda there are 84 people seeking that job, whereas in his constituency of North West Hampshire there are only two people seeking each available job. So far as I can understand the Department for Work and Pensions’ view on all this, the way to resolve the situation is for everybody from my constituency to move to his constituency. The vast majority of my constituents own their own home, but their homes are not worth the kind of money they would need to buy a home in his constituency, so what are my constituents to do to try to get into work?

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Gentleman’s constituents would always be very welcome in North West Hampshire, but I understand the issue he raises. I think that the answer to his question is the Work programme, which is the biggest and most ambitious work programme ever to get people back into work. In addition, the Government are taking steps to build long-term, sustainable recovery, which I am sure will reach south Wales as fast it reaches anywhere else.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am sure that the Minister will not take it personally.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

We in Wales know that digital switchover is a great thing, but it is not quite a utopia. The Freeview package that is available in my constituency and many other valleys communities is greatly diminished compared with the rest of the country. This means that Rupert Murdoch has a virtual monopoly not just on first-view American movies and many sports matches but on the actual provision of television services. What is the Minister going to do to ensure that my constituents get a fair deal?

[Mr Vaizey]

I would certainly be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss coverage in south Wales. I have learned from many years’ experience that there is no such thing as utopia, but we can strive towards it. As far as Mr Murdoch’s monopoly is concerned, I know that he will have taken note of Ofcom’s investigation into pay TV, sports rights and other such competition issues.

Business of the House

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that response. The House will note that his performances at business questions are attracting the attention of powerful friends. Last Friday, he was praised by the Daily Mail, which announced:

“Hilary Benn for Labour leader. The campaign starts here”.

After that intoxicating but unlikely endorsement, I looked up the odds on the right hon. Gentleman becoming the next Labour leader. I was disappointed to see him some way behind the pack at 33:1, but if I were a betting man, I would say it was worth a pony on the shadow Leader of the House.

I welcome what the right hon. Gentleman said about the conference on Monday. He will have noted the extra £800 million that the Government have invested in vaccination, and he will have heard the Secretary of State’s statement on Wednesday about our overall policy on aid.

The right hon. Gentleman should not believe everything that he reads in the press. The end of the Session will depend on the progress that we make with legislation. I remind him that the then Government were not telling us 10 months before March last year—in 2009—when that Session would end. According to my recollection, we did not know when it would end until March, when the Government hit the buffers.

The motion to recommit the Health and Social Care Bill would normally have been taken forthwith under the Standing Orders. We propose to make time available for the Bill to be debated, and to recommit the parts that were amended by the Government in their recent statement.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

They were not.

[Sir George Young]

I mean the parts that we propose to amend. The recommittal motion will be tabled in good time for the House to debate it on Tuesday.

As for the right hon. Gentleman’s comments on the Bill, I hope that he read what Lord Darzi said about our policy. He said:

“I certainly don’t see it as a U-turn. I see it as a continuum of reform that the health service has witnessed for the last decade under Labour and it’s moving on into the next decade very much based on the changes in the demand on the health service.”

I hope that that view will be reiterated by Opposition spokesmen as the Bill proceeds through its remaining stages.

The Prime Minister dealt with the First Sea Lord’s comments yesterday when he referred to the statement by the Chief of the Defence Staff that we had the resources to continue the exercise in Libya for as long as it took. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that his party in government deferred the conducting of a strategic defence and security review for a long time. We have conducted one, and we have no plans to revisit it.

I announced that there would be a debate on circus animals next Thursday, in Government time, and the Government will make their position clear during that debate. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that that is yet another issue on which his party in government failed to take any action, leaving us to sort it out.

I was slightly surprised when the right hon. Gentleman raised the subject of bin collection. I remember his rather humiliating U-turn on waste only two years ago when, as Environment Secretary, he had to back down on his own proposals. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, we are backing local authorities that want to increase the frequency and improve the quality of their bin collections, and we have abandoned Labour’s guidance to the Audit Commission which penalised local authorities that carried out weekly collections.

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[Sir George Young]

Or, indeed, next year.

I endorse my hon. Friend’s general proposition: that there is no monopoly on 2012, and we are at liberty to refer to it. However, I would hesitate before engaging in what appears to be a legal dispute between two companies, as I believe that would be better sorted out by the courts than by Ministers.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

May we have a debate on the fiduciary responsibility of members of boards of directors? Both UK and United States law makes it clear that directors are bound to

“exercise reasonable care, skill and diligence”

in ensuring companies act lawfully, yet this clearly has not happened in relation to News Corporation, the owner of the News of the World, where criminality has gone on extensively. That now leaves people such as José Maria Aznar, Andrew Knight, Kenneth Cowley, Rod Eddington, Thomas Perkins and Stanley Shuman in real legal peril.

[Sir George Young]

I believe that the hon. Gentleman has just asserted that somebody had acted unlawfully. If that is the case, it is a matter for the police.

Business of the House

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. There will be time for a debate on the NHS when the Health and Social Care Bill returns to the Floor of the House. He reminds the House that an extra £3 billion is being invested in the NHS this year—an investment that Labour would have denied it.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

A constituent of mine is particularly worried about the Government’s plans for the NHS in England because her daughter has a rare condition that can be treated only in hospital in London. She will therefore be interested to know that the Government are talking about recommitting the Health and Social Care Bill to Committee. However, will there not be a real problem for members of that Committee, who may have to vote for exactly the opposite of what they voted for only a few months ago? Will the Leader of the House make sure that if there is to be a recommittal, the Committee has a new set of Government Back Benchers so that the original members do not have to lose any integrity or credibility?

[Sir George Young]

A nice try! If the Bill is recommitted, there will have to be a fresh Committee of Selection to appoint a new Committee. I have every confidence that Back-Bench Members of my party and of the Liberal Democrat party will use their best judgment on that Committee and continue to work with the Government to drive up standards in the NHS so that we have a world-beating health service in this country.

Business of the House

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I welcome the progress being made with the establishment of academies, following the legislation that we put on to the statute book. I should personally welcome such a debate, which I hope would have cross-party support, given that many people who were in the Labour party strongly support our academies programme. I hope also that all hon. Members will support those schools in their constituencies that are in the process of becoming academies.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

May we have a debate in Government time about Government policy on singing “Jerusalem” at weddings? If a heterosexual couple get married in church, many clergy will refuse to allow it to be sung, because it is not a hymn addressed to God; if a straight couple get married in a civil wedding, they are point blank not allowed it, because it is a religious song; if, however, a gay couple have a civil partnership, under Government plans they will be allowed to sing it. So can we make sure that “Jerusalem” is not just reserved for homosexuals?

[Mr Speaker]

I want to hear the Leader’s reply!

Business of the House

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Friday 18th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

Yes, that is indeed the position. If my hon. Friend looks at the statement that I made—I think—on 10 March, he will see that it refers to emergency action that might be necessary.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I agree with the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin). Having taken the temperature of the House today, it is clear that the Government have more or less the assent that they would broadly need.

It is unusual for us to discuss matters of great import on a Friday morning. We tend to have lengthy, protracted—sometimes deliberately so—debates on private Members’ Bills. Hon. Members have private Members’ Bills tabled for debate on 27 days over the next few months when the House does not intend to sit, 19 of those Bills come from one individual Member, and because of the two-year Session, the last day on which the Government have thus far announced Friday sittings is 17 June. When will the Leader of the House give us the next dates, or preferably change the whole system?

[Sir George Young]

I anticipate a written ministerial statement before the Easter recess outlining the Fridays on which the House will sit beyond those we have already identified.

Registration of Members’ Financial Interests

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I commend the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for bringing an important matter to the attention of the House. I am sure that many will want to pursue the issues that he raised in many different places, not least the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes). I want to correct the hon. Gentleman on just one word that he used. He referred inadvertently to the all-party parliamentary group “for” Islamophobia, but I think it is the all-party group “on” Islamophobia. Sometimes even prepositions are important.

I confess that motion 2 is on the Order Paper perhaps because several right hon. and hon. Members think that I got the matter wrong when I was a Minister. I see the Leader of the House winking at me now, possibly because he agrees that I got it wrong. I commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) for his stewardship of the Standards and Privileges Committee. The hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) said earlier how important it is that my right hon. Friend is not only a long-standing Member of the House but a long-standing member of that Committee, and that that is an important element in his work. For that matter, he was also the Chair of another Select Committee.

The answer that we have come up with in the motion is, I believe, the wrong answer. I do not intend to press it to a Division, but I believe that we have the wrong answer, and I shall explain why. There is no great problem with the rules as they are currently drafted. The Leader of the House and the Deputy Leader of the House disagree with me, as they did when I was a Minister, but I believe that they have presented the nature of the problem wrongly.

The Deputy Leader of the House was absolutely right about the entry of the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson). There was no need for her to record the receipt of Girlguiding centenary merchandise, flower festival flowers and all the rest of it. Nor was it necessary for the Leader of the House himself to record that he was presented with a bottle of 2008 Beaujolais Villages valued at approximately £10—incidentally, it can be bought in most places in Rhondda for about £6.50—after he spoke at Bishop Wordsworth’s Church of England grammar school for boys for 45 minutes. If that was honestly the advice that hon. Members were given by the registrar, I think it was inappropriate advice.

A distinction should be made to identify clearly those cases in which a reasonable person would think that somebody was being given remuneration for providing a service, and in none of those cases would it seem to a reasonable person that somebody was being remunerated. I would use this rule: if I had not been given that bottle of wine, pen or whatever, would I still have made the speech? Would I still have opened the Girlguiding centre or whatever? The honest truth is yes, I would. It would not have made the blindest difference to me. That is the rule that a reasonable person would follow. I know the registrar, I have always followed her advice and I respect her enormously, but she might have used a legalistic understanding of the rules that would not in all honesty be followed by any of our constituents.

Let us imagine for the moment that the registrar is right and that all those cases should have been registered. Has it done any great harm that they have been registered? I do not believe it has done any harm to anybody. There is a greater sense of transparency, and I do not think that that is a problem. However, let us say for argument’s sake that we should not make a distinction between gifts and remuneration. There is an argument for that. It could be argued that any gift we receive for doing something—after speaking at a meal, for example—whether to the value of £400, £500 or whatever should be considered in exactly the same way. However, that is not the proposition before us this evening. The proposition is that a gift should be registered if it has a value in excess of 1% of salary, and that remuneration should be registered if it has a value in excess of one tenth of 1%. [Interruption.] I think that the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee is disagreeing with me. If he wants to intervene, I am happy to give way—but he does not. I can see an argument for not making a distinction at all and for having exactly the same level for gifts and remuneration. However, I cannot see an argument for introducing a new concept at £65.

[Simon Hughes]

The hon. Gentleman might have just answered my point. To people reading and listening, talking in money terms is as relevant as percentages and tenths of percentages. Out there, people just want to know how much money we are getting or what the monetary value is.

[Chris Bryant]

That is another good point. To be honest, I think it makes more sense to have a fixed amount. The old rule used to be £125 for registration. At the moment, the limit is zero, but if the motion is passed tonight, it will move to something in the region of £65 or £66. I would prefer the number to be fixed, so that it is perfectly intelligible to every member of the public.

We all use a layer of common sense. I am chair of the all-party group on Russia. As hon. Members might know, I have adopted a very hawkish attitude towards the Russian Federation. I believe that there are many abuses in Russia and, as chair of the all-party group, I have tried to advance that argument. Now, I must confess that I was given a bottle of vodka by the Russian embassy at Christmas. I did not believe it to be a remuneration for the questions I had asked or the tenor of the debate I had conducted in the House, so I did not even bother to ask the registrar whether I should have registered that bottle of vodka. I have always been a bit suspicious about some gifts so, as it happens, I have not even opened that bottle of vodka, which is still sitting precisely where I put it when it arrived. I suspect that I will probably not get any more bottles of vodka from the Russian embassy.

If one pursued the Deputy Leader of the House’s logic, one could argue that if a Member is invited to dinner by an embassy and, somehow or other, they speak at that dinner—whether or not they are actually the speaker at the dinner—that is remuneration. However, I just do not think that that meets the common-sense test. I honestly believe that the proposition before us this evening is the wrong proposition. I can see an argument for perfect equality between gifts and remuneration, but I cannot see the argument for what is before us this evening.

Finally, on all-party groups, I agree with the hon. Member for Harlow in that when I became the chair of the all-party group on Russia, a large number of people suddenly started ringing me offering to work in the secretariat. I am sure that some did so with perfectly good intentions; I am also sure that some did so with not-so-pure intentions, because they wanted to grind an axe in relation to Britain’s attitude towards Russia. The more that all-party groups can assert some genuine independence, the better. That is why the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that it is important to look at the process for providing an all-party group with a secretariat.

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[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) and others. I am not certain that security vetting solves all problems. The number of people who have been assassinated by their own bodyguards suggests that there might be a weakness in that.

[Chris Bryant]

It is worth bearing it in mind that the person working as the secretary for the all-party parliamentary group on Russia, prior to my becoming the chairman, is supposedly being thrown out of the country by the Government, yet managed to get a security pass here.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I recall that about 25 years ago, the London representative of the Palestine Liberation Organisation was assassinated for being too moderate. Many people who take part in public affairs are at risk, which is one of the risks that an open society faces in peacetime just as it does at times of war.

Let me say to the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) that, although I do not intend to try to divide the House on the first motion, I think it would be better to specify 0.2% or 0.3% of the parliamentary salary. A long time ago, when I was a Minister, I visited a country in south-east Asia and was presented with a tin bowl. I saw the same bowl in a shop priced at the equivalent of £130 in local currency, so I gave it to my private secretary. At the airport on my way home, I saw it again priced at £65, so I asked for it back. [Laughter.]

There will be boundary problems of that kind whatever limit is set, but my general view is that a limit of £130 or £180 would be better, and that it would be even better to make the limit the same as that applying to gifts presented to Ministers. As for the question of Members’ including on their websites gifts whose value was below the minimum, the registrar could advise us if we tried to include details that were not required according to the interpretation of the rules.

In view of your ruling, Mr Deputy Speaker, I shall not add to what has already been said about the motion on all-party groups. If it is possible for me to attend the meeting of the all-party group that has been mentioned, I will happily do so.

Let me, in passing, pay tribute to some people in my constituency. When I was involved with students from the Three Faiths Forum, I was delighted that the senior Jewish woman in my constituency was willing to meet us, as were representatives of the local Islamic society and mosque, the Salvation Army and the Worthing Churches Homeless Projects. It was immensely valuable that people were able to share that experience, and learn along with members of other faiths and people with different views. I also pay tribute to members of my local mosque, who have been pleased to attend the holocaust memorial event in Worthing. I hope that its organisers will at some stage focus on the massacre at Srebrenica. It should be borne in mind that the most recent modern massacre in Europe was a massacre of Muslims, both secular and otherwise, by people claiming membership of other religions.

I have no strong views on the issue of all-party groups, but there seems to have been a bit of “creep”. Paragraph 13(b) on page 5 of the “All-Party Groups” report by the Committee on Standards and Privileges, the eighth report of Session 2008-09, HC 920, states that in future such groups should have to

“register any commercial company with a direct interest in the work of the APG which contributes materially (say more than £5,000 or 5%, whichever is the lower) to meeting the central costs of the charity.”

According to the motion,

“The charity or not-for-profit organisation must agree to make available on request a list citing any commercial company which has donated either as a single sum or cumulatively more than £5,000”.

Perhaps the Minister who replies to the debate will tell us whether the movement from the requirement for a “direct interest” to no qualification was deliberate, and, if it was not, whether it could be considered when the resolutions are before the House.

Let us suppose that, for instance, the Army Benevolent Fund were to provide the secretariat for an issue-based all-party group. I am not saying that it should do so. Given that it has raised millions of pounds for our armed forces, I think that it would be going too far to have to list every commercial company that has given it money for that purpose, whether by gift aid or otherwise. At one stage I was chairman of the Church of England children’s society. A fair amount of money was donated to us by commercial companies for events and other purposes. I think that we might be putting a burden on some charities and not-for-profit causes if the resolution followed the motion—which will obviously be accepted—rather than the committee’s report.

Let me return briefly to the issue of earnings as opposed to gifts. For a number of years I have tried to avoid having any outside earnings. I failed in the current year, because I wrote an obituary for a friend and, rather to my surprise, received a cheque from the newspaper that kindly published it. I have given the money away, but it clearly constituted earnings, and I think that I am obliged to declare it. I believe that the sum was £300. A long time ago, between 1979 and 1984, I was personnel director of a fairly major commodities trading company. I should have been very prepared to declare the salary that I received for that.

On another occasion, I was an adviser to the International Fund for Animal Welfare. I gave it advice that it did not take and did not want, but its founder asked whether I would do more work for it, which I did, although it did not take any notice of what I said. That relationship came to an end in time.

What is clearly employment or something done for the purposes of an organisation for which one is paid should be declared, and what one is doing outside ought to be. However, I have a warning. Let us suppose that Peter Thurnham, who was a colleague at one stage in this House and who bought two machine tools when he was unemployed and set up an engineering business, entered the House of Commons when the business was on its feet. How would he calculate the time that he was putting into the business? That seems to be a very difficult thing to do. When James Callaghan was a farmer after being Prime Minister, how much time did he put into it? When Michael Foot was writing his biography of the founder of the health service, how much time did he put into it? If I, for example, had to put in the number of hours that I spent on the obituary, I would have to guess. It is obvious that we have to be prepared to put down rough and ready figures, which will not be easy.

The key point is to back a system where people will feel embarrassed if they know that they are doing something wrong, rather than having an enormous box-ticking exercise. I hope that when we ask the Committee on Standards and Privileges to review the matter and it conducts a consultation, more people will agree that 0.1% is too low and could be at least doubled or trebled without disadvantage to the House or to the interests of the public.

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[Mr Barron]

I will make sure that the hon. Gentleman gets that information.

The Committee also said:

“The trivial nature of some of these payments and the disproportionate effort involved in recording and then registering them has called into question the utility of the rule. The February 2010 edition of the Register contained over 100 more pages than the June 2008 edition.”

The figures were 264 pages as opposed to 157. If what we have heard is correct, it is clear that the many hon. Members who have not registered bouquets of flowers, pots of honey and so on could eventually find that they are outwith the register. Given those circumstances, we need to address this area.

[Chris Bryant]

The main change was that previously we had to register remuneration in our capacity as a Member of Parliament and we did not have to register things all the way down. We have introduced much greater transparency, which has meant that we now know about earnings of hon. Members that have nothing to do with their membership of the House.

[Mr Barron]

I accept that, although I believe that my hon. Friend said that he saw no real difference between gifts and remuneration. It seems to me that if I make a speech to a company and am given a £500 gift, it is more likely that that is remuneration, it is declarable and should be declared in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. As I said in my opening speech, this is a grey area and we are trying to make things as clear as we can. Both these motions will help the House and I hope that the House will support them.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That—

(1) this House agrees with the recommendations in the Tenth Report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, on Registration of income from employment (HC 749);

and

(2) accordingly the resolution of the House of 30 April 2009 relating to the Registration of Members’ Financial Interests be amended, by leaving out paragraph (2) and inserting:—

“(2) That such a payment shall be registered

(a) where its value exceeds one tenth of 1 per cent. of the current Parliamentary salary; or

(b) where the total value of payments from the same person, organisation or company in a calendar year exceeds 1 per cent. of the current Parliamentary salary.”

All-party groups

Resolved,

That—

(1) this House agrees with the recommendations in the Eighth Report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges of Session 2008-09, on All-Party Groups (HC 920); and

(2) accordingly the resolution of the House of 17 December 1985, as amended on 10 March 1989 and 29 July 1998, be further amended by leaving out paragraph 3 and inserting:—

“3. Groups whose membership:

• is open to all Members of the House of Commons and House of Lords, and

• includes at least 20 Members (each of whom must be a Member of the House of Commons or House of Lords), comprising: at least 10 Members who are from the same political party as the Government, and at least 10 who are not from the Government’s party (of whom at least six must be from the main opposition party), and

• includes at least one officer who is a Member of the House of Commons be required to register the following information on the Register of All-Party Groups:

(a) The full title of the group. If persons other than Members of the Commons or Lords are allowed full membership (i.e. voting rights) the term ‘Associate Parliamentary Group’ must be included in the group’s title. If such persons are not allowed full membership the term ‘All-Party Parliamentary Group’ must be included instead. The rest of the group’s title should simply reflect the group’s subject so that the latter is obvious from its title alone.

(b) A brief summary of the group’s main purpose.

(c) The names of the group’s officers. At least one officer must be an MP; each of the other officers must be a Member of the House of Commons or House of Lords.

(d) The names of exactly 20 qualifying Members (each of whom must be a Member of the House of Commons or Lords), comprising: 10 Members who are from the same political party as the Government, and 10 who are not from the Government’s party (of which at least six must be from the main opposition party).

(e) The contact details of the group’s registered contact, who must be both an officer of the group and a Member of the House of Commons, and is the person ultimately responsible for the group’s compliance with the rules of the House.

(f) Any relevant gainful occupation of staff to the group who hold a parliamentary pass (relevant gainful occupation means any occupation that is advantaged by the privileged access afforded by the pass).

(g) The source and extent of any financial benefit (e.g. donations) and the source and nature of any non-financial material benefit (e.g. provision of goods or services) received by the group from a single source outside Parliament, if the value of the benefit equals or exceeds the financial threshold for registration (currently £1,500) in a calendar year. Once the group has made that initial registration, any further donation received from the same source in the same calendar year should be registered if its value exceeds £500.

(h) The website address of any organisation registered as the group’s secretariat.

(i) If a consultancy is registered as the group’s secretariat, the names and website of the consultancy plus the name of any client of theirs who is specifically paying the consultancy to act as the secretariat must also be registered. The consultancy must either publish on its website its full client list or agree to provide such a list on request, otherwise it is not allowed to act as the group’s secretariat.

(ii) If a charity or not-for-profit organisation is registered as the group’s secretariat, the former’s name and website must also be registered. The charity or not-for-profit organisation must agree to make available on request a list citing any commercial company which has donated either as a single sum or cumulatively more than £5,000 in the course of the 12 months prior to the month in which the request is made, otherwise it is not allowed to act as the group’s secretariat.

(i) The address of the group’s website, if it has its own website.

(j) The date of the group’s inaugural election of officers and of any Annual General Meeting held thereafter.

(k) Affiliation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union and Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, if the group is affiliated to either or both.”—(Mr Barron.)

Business of the House

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend is right—there are 75,000 more apprenticeships and we have protected the science budget. This is, indeed, laying the foundations for future growth.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The Leader of the House did not make any reference to Bills coming back from the House of Lords in his statement. I presume that is because he knows that Report in the House of Lords can take up to eight or nine days and that Third Reading cannot be on the same day as Report, so there is currently no prospect of the Government getting their Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill in time for a referendum on the alternative vote on 5 May unless they make consensual concessions. Will he urge his colleagues to do that?

I think it was a slip of the tongue when he said earlier that the cut in the number of MPs would apply during this Parliament. I know the Government have been threatening guillotines in the House of Lords, but culls in the House of Commons might be a step too far.