London Attack

Alan Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister is dealing with this outrage in a calm and assured way. Does she agree that an effective counter-terrorism strategy designed to prepare, protect and pursue would be inadequate without the strand of prevent? In that vein, will she assure the House that across all 43 constabularies there will be neighbourhood policing teams visible to, and contactable by, the public, which is a crucial strand in feeding information on terrorism to the counter-terrorism organisations?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman is right. As he knows from his experience, our counter-terrorism strategy does indeed embody those four pillars, including the pillar of prevent. The action that is taken to prevent terrorism, violent extremism and extremism will come in many forms, but it is important that individuals within communities feel that they are able to give information when they are concerned about somebody within their community, or perhaps within their family, and what is happening to them. It is important that there are those opportunities for them. There will be a variety of means—some through policing and some through other opportunities—where people can go and give such information, not just only for the protection of us all but often to the benefit of the individual concerned.

Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Alan Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. and learned Friend is right that the way legal advice is produced and considered today is very different to then. We have the National Security Council, on which the Attorney General sits, and before such decisions are made a well-thought-through piece of written legal advice is produced. The Attorney General is not suddenly called on to do this; he is in the room while these vital meetings take place. That is something he did brilliantly and his successor is doing brilliantly.

My right hon. and learned Friend’s point on the collation of evidence and whether we are getting it right is a more difficult question to answer. There is no doubt that, post-Butler, the Joint Intelligence Committee is incredibly rigorous about reaching judgments: testing them around the experts in Whitehall, confirming them often with the Americans and others, and not pretending to know things that it does not know. On how well we test that, there is a role for the Intelligence and Security Committee in thinking about whether we have got judgments right after they have been made, but perhaps more thinking can be done on that.

I would just emphasise that for all the intelligence, briefing and information in the world, at the end we still have to make a decision. We never have perfect information on which we make that decision: we are weighing up a balance of risks. That is often the case, whether we are going to take action against terrorists or to try to help secure a particular national interest. In the end, we have to decide and then defend in this House the decision we have made.

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

The epitaph on Robin Cook’s headstone in the Grange cemetery in Edinburgh reads as follows:

“I may not have succeeded in halting the war, but I did secure the right of Parliament to decide on war.”

The Prime Minister is right in saying that, in these circumstances, Parliament cannot be involved in the decision and then simply try to duck responsibility for the ramifications of that decision. Does he agree that the main element in the debate in which Parliament decided, on 13 March 2003, was not the 45-minute claim, which was not mentioned anywhere in those hours of debate, but the fact that Saddam Hussein and his murderous sons had spent 13 years running rings around the United Nations, ignoring 17 UN resolutions, including resolutions calling for all necessary means to stop him? Was that not the main issue in that debate? Has the Prime Minister found any evidence whatever of any lies told to Parliament on that day?

[The Prime Minister]

My memory of the debate is that it was about the balance of risks between action and inaction. The case made by the then Prime Minister was that there was a real risk of inaction against someone who had been defying the UN, had done terrible things to his people and threatened his neighbours. The danger was of that coming together with a potential programme of weapons of mass destruction and the other instabilities in the world post-9/11. We have to remember that it was post-9/11 when we were considering all this. That is what I think I felt, as a relatively young Back Bencher, we were voting on. Weapons of mass destruction were a part of the picture, not the whole picture.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s question about deliberate deceit, I think we have to read the report very carefully. I cannot see in here an accusation of deliberately deceiving people, but there is certainly information that was not properly presented. Different justifications were given before and subsequently for the action that was taken, and there are a number of other criticisms about processes, but deliberate deceit—I can find no reference to it.

European Council

Alan Johnson Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can answer very simply. He is a civil servant working in No. 10 and his authority comes from me. He is doing an excellent job. This is not a free-for-all. The Government have a clear view, which is that we should remain in a reformed European Union, and the civil service is able to support the Government in that role. Members of Parliament, Ministers and Cabinet Ministers are able to make their own decision, but the Government are not holding back or hanging back from this. We have a full-throated view that we should put forward in front of the British people so that they can make their choice.

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

I am tempted to ask whether the Prime Minister thinks blonds have more fun, but I will actually ask whether he remembers the analysis his Government did in 2014 of the European arrest warrant. It concluded that the European arrest warrant acts as a deterrent to offenders coming to this country. Will he point that out to his Work and Pensions Secretary, and will he ask the Home Secretary to brief the Work and Pensions Secretary on all the other reasons why Britain is safer and more secure in the European Union?

[The Prime Minister]

The European arrest warrant is a good case in point. All of us who have this concern about sovereignty and the rest of it had our concerns about the arrest warrant, but look at what has happened in practice. When, in 2005, terrorists tried to bomb our city for a second time, one of them escaped and was arrested and returned to Britain within weeks under a European arrest warrant. Before that, it could have taken years. So I think we can all see that the practical application of these changes definitely keeps us more safe.

When it comes to this question of fighting terrorism and cross-border crime, obviously people are going to have different opinions. I would urge people, though, to listen to the head of the Association of Chief Police Officers, to listen to the former director of MI5, to listen to the head of Europol. These are people who know what they speak of, and they are very, very clear: these measures help us to stay safe.

UK-EU Renegotiation

Alan Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have great respect for my hon. Friend, but I have to say that, on the issue of whether it is legally binding, I really do believe he is wrong. If this document is agreed, it would be an international law decision and, as an international law decision, the European Court of Justice has to take it into account. I would make the point to him, because he follows these things very closely, that Denmark negotiated the same sort of legal opt-outs and, 23 years on, they clearly stand and are legally binding. Those are the facts.

My hon. Friend asks whether we are meeting what we set out in the promises we made. We made very clear promises in our manifesto: get Britain out of ever closer union—that is a promise that we kept; make sure we restrict immigrants’ welfare benefits—that is a promise that we are keeping; real fairness between euro-ins and euro-outs—that is a promise that we are keeping. In every area—more competitiveness, making sure subsidiarity means something—we have met the promises that we have set out.

I understand that there will be those who say, “We didn’t ask for enough”, or, “We need more reform.” I believe these are the reforms that go to the heart of the concerns of the British people. People feel that this organisation is too much of a political union; it is too bureaucratic; it is not fair for non-euro countries; and we want more control of immigration. Those four things are largely delivered through this negotiation.

I would just say this to colleagues from all parts of the House. I have sat on the Benches on this side and that side and I have heard about the Maastricht treaty, about the Lisbon treaty, about the Nice treaty and about the Amsterdam treaty, but I have never seen a Prime Minister standing at this Dispatch Box with a unilaterally achieved declaration of bringing powers back to our country. That is what we have got. That is what is within our grasp.

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

Will the Prime Minister join me in welcoming the launch today of Environmentalists for Europe, which is co-chaired by Stanley Johnson, the father of the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson)? Will he also welcome the splendid article last week setting out the importance for science and technology of remaining in the European Union, which was penned by his Minister for Universities and Science, who is the brother of the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip? Will he have a word with his hon. Friend to tell him about the importance of family solidarity and of joining the swelling ranks of Johnsons for Europe?

[The Prime Minister]

Very good. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that we cannot have too many Johnsons agreeing with each other. There is also Rachel Johnson, the columnist: we will have to go after her and make sure of that. He makes a very important point about grants for universities and schools. We all complain, rightly, about the European budget. That is why it is so important that we have got it under control: it has to fall every year. In the budget negotiations, we did safeguard the money that British universities actually benefit from on a disproportionate basis. As for completing the happy family pack of the Johnsons, we may have to wait a bit longer.

ISIL in Syria

Alan Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). During my time in Parliament, it has become a convention that this House authorises military action, whereas previously it was for a Prime Minister to do so under the guise of royal prerogative. Sometimes they would involve the House of Commons; most often they did not. This new convention places a responsibility on Members of Parliament to weigh up the arguments and vote according to their conscience, rather than a parliamentary Whip.

I am not sure if other parties are whipped on this vote or not, but I am pretty sure that nobody in any part of this House would seek to justify their vote tonight by pleading that although they disagreed or agreed with the proposition, the Whip forced them to vote the way they did. On votes such as this, the Whip is irrelevant, except to Front Benchers, perhaps. Although I am grateful to the shadow Cabinet for the free vote my party has been afforded, I do not think it will make the slightest difference to the way we make our decision.

I intend to vote for the motion this evening for one basic reason: I believe that ISIL/Daesh poses a real and present danger to British citizens, and that its dedicated external operations unit is based not in Iraq, where the RAF is already fully engaged, but in Syria. This external operations unit is already responsible for killing 30 British holidaymakers on a beach in Sousse, and a British rock fan who perished along with 129 others in the Paris atrocity a few weeks ago.

It is true that this unit could have moved out of Raqqa, but that is not what the intelligence services believe. The fact is that just as al-Qaeda needed the safe haven it created for itself in Afghanistan to plan 9/11 and other atrocities, so ISIL/Daesh needs its self-declared caliphate to finance, train, organise and recruit to its wicked cause. Yes, there may be cells elsewhere, but there is little doubt that the nerve centre is in Raqqa. Just over 14 months ago, this House sanctioned military action in Iraq against ISIL/Daesh by 524 votes to 43. Nobody expected that action to bring about a swift end to the threat from ISIL; indeed, the Prime Minister, responding to an intervention, said that

“this mission will take not just months, but years”—[Official Report, 26 September 2014; Vol. 585, c. 1257.]

Many right hon. and hon. Members felt at that time that it was illogical to allow the effectiveness of our action to be diminished by a border that ISIL/Daesh did not recognise. We were inhibited by the absence of a specific UN resolution, so there was some justification for this House confining its response to one part of ISIL-held territory in September 2014. There can surely be no such justification in December 2015—no such justification after Paris, given the request for help from our nearest continental neighbour and close ally in response to the murderous attack that took place on 13 November; and no such justification after UN Security Council resolution 2249.

Paragraph 5 of the resolution, which was unanimously agreed,

“Calls upon Member States that have the capacity to do so to take all necessary measures…to eradicate the safe haven they”—

ISIL-Daesh—

“have established over significant parts of Iraq and Syria”.

[George Kerevan]

I put to the right hon. Gentleman the point that I would have put to the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett): a similar call from France was met by Germany, which sent reconnaissance aircraft but refused to bomb.

[Alan Johnson]

Germany is constrained by its history. The point I am making is that we in this Parliament, having authorised military action by the RAF in Iraq, can no longer justify not responding to recent events by extending our operations to Syria. If we ignore the part of resolution 2249 that I have just read out, we will be left supporting only the pieties contained in the other paragraphs; we will unequivocally condemn, express deepest sympathy, and reaffirm that those responsible must be held to account. In other words, this country will be expressing indignation while doing nothing to implement the action unanimously agreed in a motion that we, in our role as chair of the Security Council, helped formulate.

Furthermore, there is no argument against our involvement in attacking ISIL/Daesh in Syria that cannot be made against our action in Iraq, where we have helped to prevent ISIL’s expansion and to reclaim 30% of the territory it occupied. As the Prime Minister set out in his response to the Foreign Affairs Committee, that means that RAF Tornadoes, with the special pods that are so sophisticated that they gather 60% of the coalition’s tactical reconnaissance information in Iraq, can be used to similar effect in Syria, so long as another country then comes in to complete the strike. That is a ridiculous situation for this country to be in.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Is not the different between Iraq and Syria the fact that we have on the ground in Iraq a long-established ally, the Kurdish peshmerga, who want to work with us? We do not have that in Syria; we have there what the Prime Minister is now describing as a patchwork.

[Alan Johnson]

My hon. Friend, as always, makes an important point. I have just re-read the Hansard report of our debate in September 2014, and this point was not raised by anyone. The question of what comes next, which is a very important consideration—concerns have been expressed on both sides of the House—must not stop us responding to what happened in Paris and to the UN resolution’s request for all countries with the capability to act now. The resolution did not say to delay; it said to act now.

I do not think that anybody in this House believes that defeating the motion tonight will somehow remove us from the line of fire—that ISIL/Daesh and its allies will consider us no longer a legitimate target for its barbaric activities. The 102 people murdered in Ankara were attending a peace rally. The seven plots foiled by our security services so far this year were all planned before this motion was even conceived. Our decision tonight will not alter ISIL/Daesh’s contempt for this country and our way of life by one iota, but it could affect its ability to plan and execute attacks. If our decision does not destroy ISIL/Daesh’s capability in Syria, it will force its external operations unit to move and, in so doing, make it more exposed and less effective.

The motion presents a package of measures that will be taken forward by the international community to bring about the transformation in Syria that we all want to see, and it promised regular updates on that aspect. Furthermore, I believe that the motion meets the criteria that many Members will have set for endorsing military action now that the convention applies: is it a just cause? Is the proposed action a last resort? Is it proportionate? Does it have a reasonable prospect of success? Does it have broad regional support? Does it have a clear legal base? I think that it meets all those criteria.

I find this decision as difficult to make as anyone. Frankly, I wish I had the self-righteous certitude of the finger-jabbing representatives of our new and kinder type of politics, who will no doubt soon be contacting those of us who support the motion tonight. I believe that ISIL/Daesh must be confronted and destroyed if we are properly to defend our country and our way of life, and I believe that this motion provides the best way to achieve that objective.

EU Council and Woolwich

Alan Johnson Excerpts

Monday 3rd June 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I very much respect my right hon. and learned Friend and his views. The direct answer to his question is that Assad is most likely to change his view and accept a transition if he believes that he cannot win militarily. If we help to tip the balance in that way, there is a greater chance of political transition succeeding. If we don’t, we won’t.

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

Exactly a year ago, the Home Secretary said in her introduction to the draft Communications Data Bill:

“Without action there is a serious and growing risk that crimes enabled by email and the internet will go undetected and unpunished, that the vulnerable will not be protected and that terrorists and criminals will not be caught and prosecuted. No responsible Government could allow such a situation to develop unaddressed.”

Does not the absence of any reference to this in the Queen’s Speech suggest that that is exactly what the Government are doing?

[The Prime Minister]

I have great respect for the former Home Secretary, and I know that he knows how important the issue of comms data is. I hope that, when we bring forward proposals, we will have support from across the House of Commons for them. Comms data were mentioned in the Queen’s Speech, and we have specifically said that we want to look at how we can match IP addresses, because that is such an important part of what needs to be done. We should look at all the options, including non-legislative approaches, so that we can make some progress on this important issue. I look forward to having the right hon. Gentleman’s support, and to hearing his explanation to others in the House of how important this is.

Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust (Inquiry)

Alan Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his remarks. When he has a chance to look at the report in more detail, I think he will be pleased to see that Robert Francis suggests something along those lines: he suggests some form of leadership college. We think that has merit and will look at it carefully. I am nervous about committing instantly to creating more NHS organisations and institutions as there are a lot already, but the point my right hon. Friend makes is a good one.

The other point my right hon. Friend makes is vitally important in terms of the accountability issue: all too often when something has gone wrong in one of our hospitals, managers or overseers are recycled and reappear, as if by magic, in another part of the NHS. We need all those responsible for accountability—the CQC, Monitor, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, the General Medical Council—to take a clearer view about whether someone is up to the job or not.

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement and the manner in which he made it. Does he agree that our biggest challenge is to make quality of care the central organising principle of the NHS? That was recognised by Lord Ara Darzi, although I am not sure whether we were particularly successful at pursuing it. We can all say that that is the challenge, but addressing it creates a series of problems, including—as I was saying to my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson)—the problem of productivity. If nurses and GPs and other doctors are to spend more time with patients and focus on care, there will be ramifications for other ways in which we measure how the health service is working. Does the Prime Minister therefore agree that the challenge that Ara Darzi sets is about how to make care truly the central organising principle of the NHS?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman speaks with great knowledge of, and affection for, the NHS, and I, too, am a fan of Ara Darzi and think he has a huge amount to offer. He had a big hand in giving priority to quality at the end of the last Government’s term. Francis is saying that there needs to be a culture change in respect of quality, but we must also look at what we are currently measuring. If hospital managers are measured on financial metrics and target metrics, rather than on quality of care—that is what we see flowing through the report—all the words we say and laws we pass on quality of care will not have sufficient impact. We need to look at that.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Alan Johnson Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), who has some experience of these things.

This morning, Mr Speaker, I heard on the radio one of your most distinguished predecessors suggesting that this Bill was the end of civilisation as we know it. To me, it is a very small step on the road to a better civilisation that we might arrive at if we could get through some of the very tribal differences that we are expressing today. There are three questions to ask in this debate: first, should we reform the Lords; secondly, if we should reform the Lords, what should be the nature of the reform; and thirdly, should that reform be subject to a referendum of the British people?

I came into this House in 1997 on the back of a very important Labour manifesto. We had been out of power for 18 years, and so important was that manifesto that we took the unprecedented step of putting it to every individual member of our party in a programme called “The Road to the Manifesto”. I think that my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) was in charge of that process. As well as saying that we would get rid of hereditary peers, we said that that would be the beginning of

“a process of reform to make the House of Lords more democratic and representative.”

Ever since I have been in this place we have, very slowly but very surely, inched towards a consensus on this. That has happened because the quality of our parliamentary democracy must be diminished by a second Chamber that is wholly dependent on privilege or patronage for its membership. Only two countries in the world have a bigger second chamber than first chamber—Burkina Faso and Kazakhstan. Incidentally, I doubt whether they can match the fact that in our House of Lords 54% of Members come from London and the south-east, only a fifth are women, and there are more Members aged over 90 than under 40, which is why my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) once said that it is a model of how to care for the elderly.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman think that the House of Lords as it currently stands is representative given that two thirds of its Members come from public schools?

[Alan Johnson]

It is a shame that that was said by a Government Member, but the hon. Gentleman makes a fundamental point about why Labour Members have sought reform—originally abolition, but then reform—of the other place. To me, I am afraid, it represents institutionalised snobbery.

I do not agree with Walter Bagehot’s comment that the cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it, but neither do I agree with the constant stream of self-regard that comes from those on the other side of Central Lobby about how it is the greatest, most expert revising chamber ever to be devised in the world. They have certainly been very expert at preserving the status quo. I am quite prepared to listen to and debate the very strong arguments for the status quo made by Members who, despite manifesto commitments, are perfectly entitled to come here and make that case. Incidentally, that is not the view of my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett), who believes in a unicameral system. However, the consensus that we have been inching towards says that the status quo is indefensible in a modern, 21st century democracy, and that view is reflected in the proposals in the Bill.

[Mr MacNeil]

Does the right hon. Gentleman ever feel that some of those voices arguing for the status quo are perhaps looking to their own jobs at some time in the future?

[Alan Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman tried to intervene on the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), and now he has got his intervention on the record.

The first question is, “Do we need to reform the House of Lords?”, and the answer is, “Of course we do.” The second question is, “Are these the right reforms?” I think that they broadly are. I say that not because they are Clegg’s reforms, but because they are Cook’s reforms. One of my great heroes is the late, great Robin Cook. There was no greater parliamentarian and no greater defender of this place. As Leader of the House, he sent us through the voting Lobbies seven times. We voted against every option, from a fully elected to a fully appointed House of Lords. The option that nearly got through—it failed by only three votes—was an 80-20 split. Incidentally, the other place voted almost unanimously for a wholly appointed second Chamber.

After that, Robin Cook worked with the current Foreign Secretary, the current Leader of the House, the current Lord Chancellor and another great Labour parliamentarian, Tony Wright, the former Member for Cannock Chase, to develop the argument with the “Breaking the Deadlock” proposals of 2005. Those proposals are very similar to this Bill, and to various other attempts, such as that of the Public Accounts Committee and the White Paper published by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) in 2008. The Labour Cabinet agreed to that paper, which incidentally involved a 50-50 split between elected and appointed Members.

In the end, Labour proposed a 100% elected House in the 2010 manifesto. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) knows, because he was a member of the Cabinet at the time, we knew that we might have to concede an 80-20 split because anyone who is serious about pursuing House of Lords reform does not want to take on the disestablishment of the Church of England at the same time, because that is a recipe for permanent procrastination.

“Breaking the Deadlock” said that there should be single terms covering three election periods, as did the royal commission under Wakeham in the late ’90s and as have various other documents. It said that Members would be elected by proportional representation, as did our election manifesto in 2010. The reason for that is to keep the primacy of the Commons. When a large proportion of the second Chamber is elected, we need to ensure that they do not seek ministerial office, that they are not after a career and that they will not be difficult with elected local MPs and seek to replace them. That is why everybody who has looked at this matter in any depth has come to the conclusion that there should be long, single terms with no further right to stand again.

All of the current proposals are right. I should probably say that they are nearly right before I get into trouble with the Whips—there are obviously some improvements that can be made in Committee. However, to get a consensus and to take advantage of what is an unprecedented opportunity to do something about this issue, as the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross said, I believe that a referendum of the British people is needed. I ask those on the Treasury Bench to consider that. To have legitimacy, the proposals have to be approved by the public. We can then ensure that they are implemented in full.

Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Alan Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. I think when we read the exchange of e-mails and see what Edward Llewellyn said, we see that it was cleared in advance by Jeremy Heywood and it was absolutely right. We do not live in a country, thank God, where the Prime Minister starts ordering who should be arrested and who should not be.

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary made a statement on Monday of more than 1,000 words, but the two words “Neil” and “Wallis” were not mentioned. She, like me, was unaware of his appointment, but we were not in a situation where Neil Wallis’s best buddy was working for us. The Prime Minister was. Did he know that Neil Wallis was giving advice to the Metropolitan police?

[The Prime Minister]

No, I did not know that, and as I have said in relation to the work he did for Andy Coulson, I was unaware of that. I think this is an important point, because one of the issues is, frankly, the transparency and information that there was about Neil Wallis and the Metropolitan police. The one thing everyone has to say about No. 10 Downing street is that there was no hiding the fact that we had employed Andy Coulson.

Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Alan Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Of course everything that is published should be brought to my attention and to the police’s attention. The point I am making is that if I had been given evidence that Andy Coulson knew about hacking, I would not have hired him, and if I had had evidence that he knew about hacking, I would have fired him. I cannot put it any simpler than that.

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[The Prime Minister]

I will give way in a moment; I want to make some progress.

The fourth and final challenge is how we address the vexed issue of media power. We need competition policy to be properly enforced. We need a sensible look at the relevance of plurality and cross-media ownership. Above all, we need to ensure that no one voice—not News Corporation, not the BBC—becomes too powerful. We should be frank: sometimes in this country, the left overestimates the power of Murdoch, and the right overdoes the left leanings of the BBC. But both have got a point, and never again should we let a media group get too powerful.

[Alan Johnson]

John Yates wrote to me, as previous Home Secretary, last week. He wrote me a private and confidential letter, in which he said—[Laughter.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I want to learn about this private and confidential letter.

[Alan Johnson]

I accept that there is a certain paradox involved here.

The letter says:

“The reason that a new investigation has been commenced and the situation has subsequently changed so markedly”—

that is, since the advice given to me as Home Secretary—

“is that in January 2011 News International began to co-operate properly with the police. It is now evident that this was not the case beforehand.”

January 2011 was when Andy Coulson resigned. Does the Prime Minister think that that is just a coincidence?

[The Prime Minister]

The point I was going to make, which is important, is that in my understanding, the reopening of the investigation was in response to new information from News International, and that it was not in response to the April article. The point about Andy Coulson’s resignation, which had been under discussion for some weeks, was that he recognised that he could not go on doing his job. It was not, to the best of my memory, connected with any single event. It was literally: “I can’t go on being an effective communications spokesman. I have to resign. Let’s just make sure we get on with it and do it in an orderly way.” [Interruption.] I know that that does not fit the many conspiracy theories that hon. Members have tried to produce, but that is actually what happened.

Let me make three suggestions on media plurality and power. One: it is right that there are good and proper legal processes for considering media mergers, but we should ask whether politicians should be abstracted from them altogether. Two: it is right that there is a plurality test, but we should ask whether that test should be ongoing, rather than just considered at the time of takeover. Three: plurality is difficult to measure, especially in the modern internet age, but we should not rule out the idea of limits, and it is right that the inquiry should look at this issue.