Queen’s Speech

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, I start by apologising to the whole House for the fact that I was not here at the beginning of yesterday’s debate. The consequences of that, I realise, fall upon Members who are here today, who have to listen to me giving the rant on transport that I was going to give yesterday. Such are the easy rules of protocol of your Lordships’ House that one is able to speak on any subject in the debate on the Loyal Address on any day of the week.

I thought that I would start with Heathrow. Heathrow is a national disgrace. It is not worthy of a third-world country, yet we brag to ourselves about what a splendid airport it is. I have friends in New York who come to London via Charles de Gaulle Airport in order to avoid Heathrow, and I am not in the least bit surprised. There are many such examples. If you arrive at a terminal at Heathrow—I have not counted the number of terminals but this applies to most of them—by private car or taxi and it happens to be raining, you get wet. It is as simple as that. To call that a modern airport is unbelievable. Sometimes with one or two of the terminals—the latest ones—you have to get on a bus to get from your gate to the plane. You would do better than that in Lagos. It really is a scandal, yet we go around shouting our heads off about what a brilliant airport it is.

Of course, this is not the direct responsibility of the Heathrow authorities, but when you leave Heathrow terminal 5 the only road sign you get—if noble Lords do not believe me, they can go and have a look—points to a place called Staines. How many people arriving at Heathrow want to go to Staines? They have never heard of Staines and they do not know where Staines is, but there is nothing else to tell them where to go. That is our prime international focus. It is unbelievable.

Then we have a bunch of idiots who want to put an airport in the middle of the Thames estuary. I have never heard anything more bonkers. It would be right in the middle of the shipping lanes and in the middle of the climate of the Thames estuary, with the catchment areas in northern France and Brussels, and with very doubtful access to emergency services. I cannot imagine a more ridiculous idea. It goes without saying that I think that Heathrow should have four runways, but I would say that, wouldn’t I?

I now want to say something about the railways. I know a little bit about this as—this is probably without the memory of your Lordships—some 40 years ago Harold Wilson made me Minister for Transport. I am so envious of the present Minister for Transport, who is told that he can concentrate on capital expenditure. With all the money that I had, there were a lot of lunatics on the Labour Back Benches telling me to cut bus fares. That is what I was supposed to do with the money I was given. It was not to improve the infrastructure that the country desperately needed, but that is how it was.

The idea of HS2 is absolutely idiotic—another idiotic waste of money. We do not need it. The money would be much better spent on electrifying parts of the network that are not yet electrified. In particular, a huge amount could be spent on modernising the current infrastructure in London and the south-east. A great deal has been spent on extending platforms and signalling, but further electrification would add greatly to the efficiency of the country and to the welfare of people living in this part of the world.

I want to say a word or two about motorways. We pride ourselves on our motorways, but hardly a single motorway reaches a port in this country. I challenge any of your Lordships to tell me which motorways get to ports. Freight and passengers come off a ship and, having gone through a lot of suburban roads, they will get to a motorway. Very few motorways are motorway from start to finish. The M25 has toll structures in the middle of it. That is not a motorway. Some go down to two lanes in each direction. Anyone who does not know that has never driven on the M40. It is an absolute disgrace and dangerous.

I am keen on two other things. One of my predecessors as Transport Minister was the great Fred Mulley. Denis Healey once said he thought that Fred was the most underrated Minister in Whitehall. He may well have been because he was a delightful fellow. Later, after I left transport, I served under him at defence. He loved roundabouts. I hate roundabouts. They are the biggest damned-fool contribution to road congestion in this country. If I had my way, we would replace every God-damn roundabout in sight with grade separation. It would cost a lot of money but this fellow, the Transport Minister, has lots of money for capital improvements. It would speed up the traffic, reduce pollution and add to road safety in this country.

There is one other thing that I did not get around to doing in the 15 months that I was at transport. We should have at least one overhead gantry sign before every turnoff on every motorway. If you do not have them and there is a line of lorries on the inside lane, you do not even see that your exit is coming and you can miss it very easily. There are lots of ways in which sensible money can be spent on the transport infrastructure of this country without wasting it on mad ideas such as airports in the middle of the North Sea or high speed rail and trains that we do not need. I am grateful to noble Lords.

Leveson Inquiry

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Friday 11th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, on this rather dismal day in your Lordships’ House, I would like to cheer us up a bit by reflecting on the admirable maiden speech given some time ago by the noble Lord, Lord Trees. It combined wit and lucidity to our great advantage and I hope very much that we will hear from him on many future occasions.

I should also like to cheer up your Lordships with what I thought was the huge joke in the central part of the Leveson report. I do not know whether Lord Justice Leveson intended it as such. He assured us all that he had found no evidence whatever of a conspiracy between Her Majesty’s Government and the Murdoch press to do anything that either of them wanted. Who on earth thought that there would need to be a conspiracy between them? Everyone knew what Murdoch wanted and everyone knew what the Prime Minister wanted. They did not have to get together to discuss it. The fact that Lord Justice Leveson assures us that he found no evidence of any such meeting must be hugely reassuring.

As usual, I shall turn to a certain unpopular theme—the Press Complaints Commission. I had a very short dealing with the Press Complaints Commission and found it hugely supportive and very effective. I had some dealings with a rather slippery individual who was then the editor of the Financial Times. He had published a report in his newspaper which was—I will not say fraudulent—totally inaccurate and totally contrary to the truth. I communicated with him in a gentle way, as I usually do, one December and I got no acknowledgement or reply. I communicated with him a second time, in January, and again I got no acknowledgment or any reply. I sent him a third note saying, “It is now February and I am today getting in touch with the Press Complaints Commission”. Within about 20 minutes my telephone apparently rang and my secretary said, “It is the editor of the Financial Times”. I am afraid that I would shock your Lordships if I told you the reply I told her to give him but I instructed her to tell him that if he was going to communicate with me to do it in writing and that I was not going to speak to the gentleman. I got a full correction and an apology because that individual—still the editor of the Financial Times—was so concerned about having his behaviour exposed to the Press Complaints Commission. So the Press Complaints Commission can work. We have had such a culture change and such a tidal wave of anger over what happened in the scandals of the past few months that I believe it has every possibility of being effective again in the future.

I turn now to the more serious matters. Lord Justice Leveson said when he started his inquiry that the whole report would come down to one question—Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? He did not answer that question and did not deal with it very much himself. The Prime Minister said that “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” is, God help us, Ofcom and the chairman of Ofcom. I could frighten your Lordships by telling you a fantasy tale about what a Prime Minister who had lost his marbles or one of his Secretaries of State who had equally lost his marbles might do by appointing a chairman of Ofcom. He might appoint a chairman who lied to the press; he might appoint a chairman who was in breach of the Official Secrets Act; he might appoint a chairman who, unbelievably, would disclose the facts of legal advice being given to a department; he might appoint a chairman who would intervene in a domestic political dispute between one government department and another and alter the press position in order to damage another Cabinet Minister. It is unthinkable, unbelievable, but that is what happened—and that is who we have got as chairman of Ofcom.

If anyone cares to challenge me, the behaviour of the head of the Department of Information in the DTI, going back 15 or more years, is in the fourth report from the Defence Committee, Session 1985-86. The behaviour of the current chairman of Ofcom was described in terms as tendentious, improper and disreputable. Before any of us look too smug about this, I regret to have to say that it was Labour appointment. I tackled the Minister concerned and asked him if he had gone mad when he made that appointment. He said, “Oh, that was many years ago”. It was like inviting Mr Dillinger to come on to your bank board because he has not robbed any banks over the past few years.

I pointed all this out to the Conservative Secretary of State, a man called Hunt. I said, “You did not make the appointment, but you are responsible for keeping her after it was disclosed to you what sort of individual you have here”. He relied on two flimsy bits of evidence, one from Select Committee hearings confirming this woman in her position. It was the most extraordinary set of Select Committee hearings you have ever heard. I read every single word of the oral hearings and I went through the written evidence as well. In all of that, not a single reference was made to the fact that Colette Bowe had been involved in the Westland scandal up to her neck. In fact, the chairman of that Select Committee, a rather weak young man called Whittingdale, who ought of course to have resiled from the hearings, held her hand, told her what a splendid lady she was and wished her good luck. That is what we are stuck with at the moment.

If anyone thinks this is irrelevant or unimportant, let me put this to your Lordships. Let us assume that Ofcom decides that Mr Murdoch is not a suitable person to be controlling a large chunk of our media and tries to disqualify him from so doing. What if Mr Murdoch then says, “Who the hell are you to speak to me like that? I have not been censured by a Select Committee of the House of Commons. My behaviour has not been called disreputable. I have not been behaving in a tendentious way. How dare you?”. That is where Ministers are likely to find themselves unless something is done quickly about this awful mess. I hope very much that we can have an assurance from the Minister, who has only just inherited this brief, that he will seek to take to the Prime Minister the request that all references to Ofcom are out and that Ofcom has no business whatever being involved in these matters. I personally support Leveson.