Phone Hacking

Debate between Lord Soames of Fletching and Yvette Cooper

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on securing today’s very serious debate and on his forensic analysis of the problems and the work that he and others in Parliament have done to pursue this issue with vigour. The whole House will want to pay tribute to their work and determination.

The events of the past few days have sent shockwaves across the nation. With every hour that passes we hear more deeply disturbing allegations such as the claims that private investigators paid by the News of the World hacked into the phone of the missing 13-year-old Milly Dowler and erased some of her messages in the search for a story, thereby giving her parents false hope. There are also claims that other bereaved parents, including the Chapman family, Sara Payne and Graham Foulkes, were similarly targeted. We will not know the truth behind each of those allegations until the criminal investigation is complete, and of course we in this House must not prejudice the investigations or any potential trials that must take place, but we can say, very loudly and clearly, that the very idea of targeting victims and their families in their darkest hour is shameful, sickening and cruel.

This is not just about invasion of privacy: it is about the violation of victims and their families at a time when we know that there are doubts about the way in which our society and our justice system more widely treat victims and their families. That is why people across the country are rightly angry and want answers. For a start, this means that the current Met criminal investigation needs to be forensic and furious in the pursuit of truth. People want to know the truth about what happened. They want to know how it could have been allowed to happen in modern newspapers and stay hidden for so long. They want to know how this could have been tolerated and how people could have turned a blind eye. They want to know whether journalists interfered with or put at risk criminal investigations, how victims and their families could ever have been so appallingly treated and, of course, why these allegations were not sufficiently investigated at an earlier stage.

[Nicholas Soames]

May I make to the right hon. Lady the same point as I made to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)? The 2006 report of the Information Commissioner was quite clearly a harbinger of what was going on, but no one in the Government—or, indeed, in the House—appeared to pay any attention to it. Surely, the lesson is that this rot has been in the system for a very long time, and it is terrible that the House did nothing about it.

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say those words to all Members of the House, and to all members of this and former Governments, too. I have talked to Opposition Members, who have made it clear that the inquiry for which we are calling must look at all historical issues. He is right that there were warning signs. As I did at the beginning of my speech, I pay tribute to the fact that some parliamentarians picked this up, but we all need to look at what is happening and why too many people turned a blind eye to the problem, or did not focus on the sheer horror of what was happening for too long.

Let us be clear about the current criminal investigation. We have seen some vigour and rigour in recent months, which must continue, as the investigation needs to look into the heart of the darkness. Where criminal activity has been committed, it must pursue robust prosecutions and deliver justice too. We must not jeopardise those investigations with what we say in this debate or with the details of any inquiry. It is for the police and the courts to determine the veracity of the allegations, but it is for Parliament to make sure that they can do so, that they are doing so, and to address the wider issues.