Andy Slaughter
Main Page: Andy Slaughter (Labour - Hammersmith)
Mr Hunt
I do wish that Labour would allow these issues to be considered in a calm manner, because they are very, very difficult issues. We need to get the right solution. We are not saying that we got everything right in our party over the years; we are saying that there is a process of reform that needs to happen—very importantly, a process of reform that protects freedom of expression, which is the foundation of our democracy, and we want to work with all parties to sort this out. That is the way to deal with this issue—not the rank opportunism that I am afraid we have seen this morning.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
On the key issue of reference to the Competition Commission, the Secretary of State did not take independent advice, so his protestations that he did not always act in Mr Murdoch’s interests sound rather lame. Is he not in fact following his own office’s advice to Murdoch, which is to find some political cover for a decision that he had already taken?
Mr Hunt
I did take the independent advice. The independent advice was that this should be referred to the Competition Commission, and I immediately did as I am required to do in the legal process: I wrote to News Corporation and said, “I am minded to refer this to the Competition Commission.” It then has the right to offer undertakings in lieu, and I have a duty to consider those undertakings. I then wrote to the independent regulators again, to get their opinion before I took any further decisions. We have been scrupulously fair in this entire process. The proof of the pudding is that we took decisions that News Corporation did not like.