Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Whittingdale]

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will elaborate, because he is right to say that the measure is on the statute book, but it would have required a statutory instrument, I think, to implement, and that SI was going to be introduced, but was then dropped following meetings that took place in Downing street between members of the media and the Prime Minister.

The two issues that we are debating this afternoon—freedom of the media and the honesty of the police—are both absolutely fundamental to a free society. Therefore, I welcome the inquiries and the judicial review. I urge a slight note of caution on my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister when he says that he is contemplating whether politicians should be entirely removed from the process of assessing whether newspaper, press or media acquisitions or mergers should take place. There is a public interest test, and it is elected and accountable politicians who, ultimately, should determine the public interest. If politicians are entirely removed from the process, you have people who are unelected and unaccountable, and I am not sure that that is wholly desirable. However, I am sure that that is something that the review will wish to examine in due course.

I would also like to say a brief word in defence of the Press Complaints Commission, which does good work for many individuals who have specific complaints against single reports that have appeared in newspapers. It is a good complaint-handling organisation, but it was never intended to deal with the regular systemic breaches of the code, indeed breaches of the law, that are now being exposed. However, the fact that it did the job that it was asked to do well does not mean that we do not now need a stronger and more independent regulator, and I do believe that we have reached that time.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend think that it would be helpful, when a newspaper makes an apology, if the apology were on the same page and took up the same amount of space as the original offending article?

[Mr Whittingdale]

There is a requirement in the Press Complaints Commission code that an adjudication of the PCC should be given due prominence. Three years ago the Select Committee recommended that that meant that it should at the very least be on the same page as the original article, or even earlier in the paper, but certainly not later. So yes, I agree with my hon. Friend.

It is right that we examine these matters, but we need to bear in mind that the media in this country are changing beyond recognition. The power of online distribution of news, which is where the advertising is going and where people wishing to find out the news are going, is changing the media landscape. The truth is that we may not have newspapers for very much longer in this country. Certainly there will be a number of closures because of the dramatic shift, the structural change, taking place in the media. Therefore we need to be careful to ensure that when we set up a regulatory structure, it takes account of the new landscape, not the old.

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[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

I declare to the House that I was in Oxford university Labour club with Rupert Murdoch, that when I was chairman of the club he was unseated as secretary for breaking the campaigning rules, but that our relationship was sufficiently repaired that, by the time I worked for Harold Wilson at No. 10 Downing street and was his host at lunch, he had by then purchased the News of the World and The Sun, and both of those supported the Labour party in the 1970 election—for all the good that did!

The title of the debate demonstrates the Government’s shifty efforts to evade any sort of accountability for the events that have disgusted the nation over recent weeks. It is of course undeniable that there has been corrupt, possibly criminal, behaviour by senior figures at New Scotland Yard, and it is essential that these wrongdoings, both institutionally and by individuals, should be dealt with in the sternest way, particularly for the sake of the thousands of police officers doing a challenging job on behalf of the community.

It is undeniable too that there has been criminality in the News of the World, and that that criminality should be investigated and, where appropriate, prosecuted. Senior figures in News International and News Corp have, however belatedly, expressed their contrition and, convincingly or otherwise, claimed ignorance of the worst excesses that have been revealed. I have to say that that reveals their inadequacy in holding the jobs that they did. When I worked at the Daily Mirror, which I did for nine years, and Hugh Cudlipp, that great journalist, was editorial director, he would have known what was going on—except that he would have stopped it going on before it happened. The standards have deteriorated in newspaper proprietorship.

It is difficult to reconcile what Rebekah Brooks told the Culture, Media and Sport Committee yesterday about payments to the police with what she told the Committee under my chairmanship on 11 March 2003:

“We have paid the police for information in the past.”

That was pretty categorical. She argued yesterday that it was not inappropriate for her to have the Prime Minister as a friend, and that is acceptable. On the other hand, it was entirely inappropriate for the Prime Minister to have Rebekah Brooks as a friend. The list of his meetings with journalists, dragged out of him in recent days, demonstrates an extraordinary cosiness with executives of News International newspapers, with nearly twice as many meetings with them as with all other media groups combined, including three stays at Chequers for Rebekah Brooks.

[Andrew Selous]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who is a distinguished Member of the House, for giving way to me. If he is saying that it was wrong for the Prime Minister to have that close a relationship with Rebekah Brooks, by the same token would he say that it was wrong for the last Prime Minister to have had such a close relationship with Rupert Murdoch, to the extent that their children played together?

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

He did not have that kind of relationship with Murdoch. He did pursue Murdoch too much, I grant the hon. Gentleman that, but he did not have that kind of close personal relationship that the present Prime Minister has had with Rebekah Brooks. No Prime Minister, almost certainly ever, has had such disproportionate contacts with one newspaper group and in such a short time. Heath, Thatcher and Major never had such chummy relationships with the media. Stanley Baldwin, referring in the 1930s to press excesses, spoke—the words were supplied to him by Rudyard Kipling—of

“Power without responsibility—the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”

This Prime Minister has proved both incorrigible and suspect in his relationships with News International executives. The most notorious, of course, was his hiring of Andy Coulson as his head of communications. He played round that this afternoon when he answered questions, but the fact is that he should have been aware before appointing Coulson of Coulson’s 2003 admission to the Select Committee of payments to the police, followed by his claim that such payments to the police were within the law—which is impossible, since bribing the police is a criminal offence. To take on someone who has confessed to criminal activity and then lied about it is utterly culpable, especially since numerous warnings were sent to the Prime Minister not to take him on. I repeat what was said earlier: Rebekah Brooks made it very clear that Coulson was appointed by the Prime Minister on the recommendation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Odd things have gone on under the Prime Minister’s leadership of the Conservative party. He was imprecise and evasive when asked about the employment of Coulson’s former deputy Neil Wallis, who has been arrested by the police as part of the hacking investigation, and who did work for the Tories in the run-up to the general election. The warnings to the Prime Minister about Coulson seem not to have been passed on by Ed Llewellyn, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff. That was a grave dereliction of duty. No previous Prime Minister would have accepted such conduct, but as we know, Wallis’s conduct was even more bizarre.

When John Yates, then assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, in advance of an arranged meeting with the Prime Minister, offered to brief him on phone hacking, Llewellyn rejected it, saying:

“We will want to be able to be entirely clear, for your sake and ours, that we have not been in contact with you about this subject.”

People go on about the inappropriateness of briefing the Prime Minister about operational police matters, but the offer was not to brief him about operational police matters, and if anyone tells me that the police do not brief the Prime Minister about operational matters relating to action against terrorism, which Yates was also in charge of, I say, “Pull the other one.”

Llewellyn was seeking to claim deniability on the issue, but no Prime Minister ought to need to claim deniability on any subject. The Prime Minister’s attitude to this entire imbroglio has been unacceptable. He has made statements about it outside the House and then had to be dragged to the House. This debate is the latest example. He held meetings with Rebekah Brooks right in the middle of the process of Government consideration of the News International bid for BSkyB, which was until recently regarded as a wave-through, and it would have been waved through if this scandal had not broken.

Today the Prime Minister was questioned again and again, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner), about whether he had discussed the BSkyB takeover with Rebekah Brooks or anyone else from News International. He did not answer. He dodged the question. It is perfectly clear from his failure to respond that he discussed the BSkyB bid with News International, and if he wants to intervene now to deny it in categorical terms, I shall be delighted to give way. But he has not, and he will not.

The Government have behaved to Parliament and the country as no Government have behaved since the Profumo scandal. Their priority has been appeasing one brand of press baron. That has to come to an end; the Government cannot get out of it.

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[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

A number of Members have said that we all bear some responsibility for our relations with the press, which are sometimes uneasy. That is also true of our relations with the police. At times, Members are anxious about criticising the police lest they appear to be expressing a lack of support. At other times, we are fulsome in our praise when there is a need for criticism.

I think of myself as someone who supports the police, but there are lessons to be learned from what happened at the Met in this unhappy episode. There are serious questions about managerial control at the Met, and that will be a consideration when the next commissioner is appointed. I was struck by the way in which Lord Blair, the former commissioner, wanted immediately to distance himself from the original inquiry, and did not want to have anything to do with it. I accept that he did not have operational control, but he was the guy in charge. I was struck by the way in which Andy Hayman seemed to be in charge of the inquiry, but not remotely in control of what was happening. John Yates did not seem to be at all clear about what Sir Paul Stephenson had asked him to do when he conducted an eight-hour mini-review. Mr Fedorcio seemed to run the public affairs directorate as an odd-job man might recruit customers—it was almost unbelievable.

We need better managerial control at the Met. It is astonishing that no one thought to ask a question about the fact that 10 of the 45 employees in the public affairs directorate were ex-News International. Anywhere else, that would be a question worth asking. The way in which Mr Wallis was awarded a contract worth £1,000 a day is open to question, too. The fact that in the midst of investigations senior officers could have dinners with people who might be directly relevant to their inquiries seems astonishing.

I do not see that the Mayor has played a particularly useful role, with his reference to codswallop and his attempt to roll back. I mention this because the Mayor is the model for police commissioners that the Home Secretary wants to impose on the rest of the country, and the Mayor seems to have played no useful part in terms of accountability during this process. What looks like one of the least accountable forces in the country is set to become the model for the rest of the country. There is an argument that, even at this late stage, the Government should think again about the problem.

[Andrew Selous]

Will the hon. Gentleman explain to the House how he thinks a police force is more accountable to an unelected official than to an elected one?

[Steve McCabe]

That is not really the point. The point that I am making is that in the face of this enormous scandal, the man who was supposed to make the police more accountable did nothing about it.

If Lord Macdonald is right about what he saw in the file, sadly some officers will have to go to jail to restore public confidence. There is no way in which that can be swept under the carpet now.

I echo the points made by the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), and by my colleague on the Committee, the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison), about victims. At the core of the problem is the way people were treated. Unless additional resources are devoted to identifying the victims and something is done about that, the stench associated with these events will never go away. While there is doubt about whether all the people who have been mistreated have been accounted for, the problem will not go away. There will be no closure until we identify all the victims and they are properly and fairly treated. I urge the Government to think about that aspect.

In criticising the police, we should not forget the pressures they were under at the time, with the incredible terrorist threat that was sweeping the country. We should not underestimate the pressures that ordinary rank and file officers feel they are under because of the cuts and the relentless pace of change that the Government are imposing on them. We need to recognise that wrongdoers must be punished and failure in all its forms in the police must be addressed, but ordinary officers need a break from the relentless attack on honourable policing traditions, which is the problem now afflicting police forces throughout the country.

In the light of what we have experienced in this horrible affair, there is a chance to pause and think again about some of the things that are happening to other forces at this time. It would be a tragedy if we did not learn anything from the experience and went on to create conditions in other forces that mean that the same problems are repeated elsewhere at some point in the future.

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[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

All of us should approach this debate with a degree of humility before we stand in judgment over the press and the police, given the collective black mark that we MPs received in the last Parliament because of the expenses scandal. We are right to comment on these matters, and to draw and learn lessons, but we should remember and put on record that our collective performance in the previous Parliament was not terribly good on certain scores.

It is wholly unacceptable that Rupert Murdoch was attacked in the Committee yesterday. If we want witnesses to come before Select Committees of this House—it is important that they do—they must have the assurance that there will be no repetition of such incidents. I am pleased to learn of the Speaker’s inquiry into the matter.

I have to raise a few points put to me by my constituents, who are urging us collectively to learn the lessons, move on, and deal with the serious bread-and-butter issues that face them day in, day out—jobs, public services, the economy, and what is happening in Europe. We are right to focus on the issue and learn lessons, but I think that they are collectively saying to us, “Remember what’s happening in our lives, day in, day out.” I just want to put that firmly on the record.

We need to accept that it is not a crime for politicians and journalists to talk to each other, and it will not be in future. Politics matters; it is about the conveyance of important ideas. We want politics to be in the newspapers, and the media and journalists enable our message to get out to our constituents. We want a healthy, open, and transparent relationship in future. No more entering Downing street through the back door. It is not a crime for a journalist to go into No. 10 Downing street; it just needs to be transparent and open, and I hope that we are moving into an era in which it is.

I remain extremely concerned about payments to the police from journalists, about which we have heard a certain amount today. I want briefly to illustrate that with three true stories that have been brought to my attention recently. A former Member of the House who went on to have an important position in public service was accused of fraud. At the time of his arrest at 6 o’clock in the morning at his family home there were television crews around his house. He was later found to be innocent and there were no charges to answer. It became obvious that an officer involved in the investigation had tipped off the press and camera crews to record what was obviously a traumatic event for him and his family. That is absolutely wrong.

Another person known to me over the last few years did fantastic service by fostering difficult teenage children in his home. One night there was an incident and one of the teenage children whom he had fostered made an accusation that he had been molested by my friend, who was then arrested by the police. Next day that matter was on the front page of the Daily Star in very lurid terms. There was no charge against my friend; he was wholly innocent. No action was taken, but considerable damage was done. Again, a quick backhander from a journalist to the police to get that story. That is absolutely not right. I am focused on ensuring that we have complete transparency and ensure that payments from journalists to the police do not continue. We need real systems to ensure that such payments cannot be made in future. That is something that the police and the press need to concentrate on.

We have heard about apologies made by newspapers. When the press do admit that they have something wrong or have maligned someone, there is a tiny reference to that on page 2 or 3—a small column on the side of the page—when the original story was on the front page—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order.