Administration and Works Committee

Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I shall not detain the House for more than a moment. I have great respect for my noble friend and I listened to his remarks with considerable sympathy. However, I make it very clear that I support the refusal to hold press conferences in Room G. It is one of the consequences of the overpopulation of this House that the number of committee rooms available to noble Lords for general purposes is under great pressure. That being the case, it is right that unofficial press conferences, however worthy—I totally understand the point made by my noble friend Lord Avebury—should be held elsewhere.

I asked my noble friend whether he had considered going to Millbank House. I made inquiries about this. The Archbishops’ Room in Millbank House holds a large number of people, and other facilities are available. It was suggested that access arrangements at Millbank House are too difficult if one wants to have a number of people. I do not accept that for one moment. I was very glad to hear the Chairman of Committees say that Millbank House could be another location. I hope that my noble friend Lord Avebury might be prepared to recognise that that is a considerable step in that direction for which he is calling, and may not feel it necessary to divide the House.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, will the noble Lord inform us of the capacity of Millbank House? That would help the debate.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I have held a number of meetings in the Archbishops’ Room at Millbank House. You can get at least 30 or 40 people in there—I do not know the exact figure. It would certainly be big enough to contain any reasonable press conference. It is a very good room with a large table and a lot of chairs around it. You can have an extremely good meeting in that room.

[Baroness Thornton]

With tea?

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. I do so as the Member of your Lordships’ House who has held perhaps the two most controversial and packed press conferences in recent years—after the Dutch MP, Mr Geert Wilders, was banned by the then Home Secretary from entering this country, and, when he had won his appeal against that decision, after he had shown his film, “Fitna”, privately in Committee Room 4 to Peers and MPs.

The Home Secretary’s decision turned the whole saga into a world media event and both rooms at Abbey Gardens were not nearly big enough to hold even half the number of media outlets wanting to attend both events. For the second conference, I had applications to attend from 92 outlets worldwide, including two Japanese film crews, and spaces had to be severely rationed. From that experience, I fear I have to disagree with the key reasoning in this report, leading the committee to cease using Committee Room G for press conferences.

First, it states:

“Whilst it is right and proper that Members should be able to hold press conferences in Parliament as part of their Parliamentary work”—

as the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, has reminded us. What has happened to that? I say hear, hear to it, but it appears to have disappeared and been overridden by less worthy considerations. The quotation continues:

“the House as a whole may not wish to associate itself with the views given in such press conferences”.

At no time during or after the Wilders saga was there any suggestion from anyone that your Lordships’ House associated itself with Mr Wilders’s views. Indeed, my noble friend Lady Cox and I made clear that we ourselves disagreed with some of them, but our overall purpose was to secure his right to free speech as an elected Dutch politician. So that part of the report simply does not stand up. Nor does the next sentence:

“the setting of Committee Room G, right within the heart of the Palace of Westminster, means that it is not always clear from a public perspective that the press conference is not an official event being held on behalf of the House”.

Further down in the report, it states:

“Furthermore, press conferences can attract a large number of journalists and other guests, which can be difficult to manage from a security point of view”.

Committee Room G is not “right in the heart of the Palace of Westminster”. It is on its extreme fringe. It shares its public entrance with the Attlee and Cholmondeley Rooms, both of which regularly handle large numbers of strangers. There is a permanent police presence on duty.

On security grounds alone it would have been better to have held Mr Wilders’s conferences in Room G than in Abbey Gardens or Fielden House. I suggest that this may apply to other controversial guests whom your Lordships may wish to entertain in future. Mr Wilders would not have had to go by a circuitous route to Abbey Gardens with his bodyguard and all the rest of it. My noble friend Lady Cox and I would not have had to walk from the Palace of Westminster to Abbey Gardens under threat of what we were assured would be sniper fire. We would not have had to brave the blandishments of thousands from the English Defence League who were gathered—though I cannot quite remember on which side of the argument. Nor would we have had to fear the thousands of Muslims with whom we were threatened, but who did not in fact materialise.

Surely press conferences are usually confrontational events. Did the committee think of that point? If a press conference is controversial, which is what seems to be moving the committee, then you can bet your bottom dollar that the media will test the controversial viewpoint strongly. How does your Lordships’ House suffer from that? I fear that the conclusions of this report do nothing to support freedom of speech or the reputation of this House. Indeed, I fear they impede it.

Finally, there is the matter of capacity. Fielden House is limited to, I think, 30 people—the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, mentioned 24—but Room G is limited to 45. No doubt more journalists can be accommodated standing, but what about television crews? Fielden House is simply inadequate to hold any but a conference in which the media is not much interested. That cannot be in the interests of your Lordships’ House. Surely we can leave the decision about whether Room G or Fielden House should be used for any particular press conference to Black Rod and the Yeoman Usher. Why would they not get it right? What is wrong with that? I support the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chairman of Committees]

Yes. Not to launch the report in the House; if the noble Lord has a press conference, it would be perfectly possible for him to have it in Millbank House. That would be allowable if the House accepts my suggestion, and if the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, accepts my suggestion, that he does not persist with his amendment, and we take back this report purely on the grounds of enabling the committee to consider the Millbank House option.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, further to that point; if Black Rod can decide what is and what is not a press conference, why can he not be trusted to decide where it should be held, particularly from the point of view of security, which may be vital to the event in question? It may be clearly more in the interests of security that it should be held in Committee Room G than in either Millbank House or Fielden House.

[The Chairman of Committees]

The extent to which we actually move decision-making away from the Chamber and on to Black Rod is a matter of fine judgment. There are some areas where that is perfectly reasonable, and seeking his advice on whether the meeting that was being held was a press conference, if the Member himself or herself was in doubt, would be helpful because it would mean that the Member was able to ensure that they were not breaching the rules by at least seeking the advice of Black Rod and acting upon it.

Clearly, though, with regard to the business of where that press conference should be held, the rule that we are trying to establish is that it is right to make a distinction between parliamentary press conferences, held to discuss and debate a publication, a report, of Parliament, which will be held within the Palace itself, and what are called platform press conferences where Parliament, quite properly and rightly, is being used to provide a platform for views expressed by people from beyond Parliament. The latter, although held within Parliament, would not be held within the Palace; they would be held in Millbank House or Fielden House, and on the whole people will feel very comfortable with that distinction.

The second argument is about capacity.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chairman of Committees]

I am unaware of the precise rules that apply in the House of Commons, but as I understand it the House tends to deal with this matter by having a very strict rule about recording, photography and filming. That is the way in which it has dealt with the problem. There is a very strong ban, as I understand it, on filming in House of Commons Committee Rooms.

On capacity, I understand the concern that the rooms in Fielden House may not be large enough to accommodate a significantly populated press conference, though I have to say that in my experience that does not happen very often in this House. That is why I am very much attracted to the suggestion that we open up rooms in Millbank House, particularly the Archbishops’ Room, which is a large room that can accommodate events, and I would have thought that this would satisfy all the arguments on capacity. On that basis—

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

From what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has informed the House, which is why I put the question to him, the room in Millbank is no larger than the room in Fielden House. It is the same size, so what advantage can there be? We can have two press conferences, but a single large one still cannot be held.

[The Chairman of Committees]

I am reluctant to challenge the noble Lord on that issue. From my somewhat cursory examination of the rooms it looks quite a bit bigger to me, but never mind. As I say, I am more than happy to take the report back specifically on the use of Millbank House if the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, wishes to withdraw his amendment.