Crime and Courts Bill [Lords] (Programme) ((No. 3)

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I rise to support the programme motion moved by the Leader of the House in this short debate. Clearly, the House is having to deal with an unusual situation, because the Bill has become a vehicle for implementing the Leveson proposals on press regulation. The fact that it has evolved in this way has certainly made for some unusual processes that would hardly be considered best practice for the routine passage of legislation through the House, but sometimes needs must.

We must all remember that it has been 20 months since MPs from all parties came together to set up the Leveson inquiry after the revelations about industrial-scale phone hacking and indefensible press intrusion into the lives of families such as the Dowlers and the McCanns. It is time the issue was gripped, and today’s programme motion will allow it to be resolved.

Over 100 days have passed since Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry reported and all parties promised that we would work together to find a lasting solution to prevent such scandals from ever happening again, while also protecting press freedom. As cross-party talks took place last Wednesday, the Opposition withdrew an amendment to the programme motion that would have allowed some new clauses relating to the Leveson report to be taken ahead of some other parts of the Bill. We withdrew the amendment following an assurance from the Minister of State, Home Department, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), that changes to the order of consideration would make it impossible to talk out any attempt to deal with the Leveson amendments in the Bill. The Government were as good as their word and produced a programme motion changing the order of consideration for the clauses in the Bill.

However, on Thursday the Prime Minister decided to pull the plug on the cross-party talks and table his own amendments to the Bill, which did not comply with the Leveson principles. Consequently, a raft of new amendments was tabled seeking to implement Leveson with statutory underpinning and other safeguards of independence. Today’s debate was looking as though it would offer a straight choice between a Leveson-compliant and a non-Leveson-compliant approach. However, as we have heard today, overnight a cross-party agreement was reached that will put in place an enduring solution, protected against pressure from the press, or indeed from Ministers in the Privy Council.

As part of that agreement, an amendment will be made—I understand that it has been tabled in the other place—to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill to ensure the statutory underpinning necessary to protect the royal charter vehicle from being arbitrarily changed in the Privy Council without reference to Parliament. Essentially, therefore, the programme motion before us ensures that the Leveson new clauses can be debated and added to the Crime and Courts Bill today. We therefore agree that the new clauses on press conduct should be taken ahead of the consideration of other parts of the Bill and that this debate should last for the requisite time.

[Mr Hollobone]

There is no disagreement between the Leader of the House’s programme motion and the amendment that will be moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone); all agree that the clauses relating to Leveson should be debated and decided upon today. However, the hon. Lady’s support for the Government’s programme motion means that all the other clauses will probably not be reached, including new clause 12, which relates to the provision on intermediaries for very vulnerable witnesses and has been signed by 57 colleagues on the Opposition side of the House.

[Ms Eagle]

There are important debates that need to take place on the clauses that come after those relating to Leveson. If everybody co-operates and speaks succinctly—I am about to demonstrate this by sitting down—we ought to have time to consider them all. I note, in passing, that some of the amendments to be considered are manuscript amendments and that the House will have had only a short time to examine them before they are debated. It is undesirable in principle to have manuscript amendments, but it is inevitable in the context of the fast-moving cross-party talks on Leveson, which continued into the early hours of this morning. The House has to be flexible and its procedures have to enable agreements to be enacted if the circumstances are exceptional, as I believe they are in this case.

I know that many Members are disappointed that debate on other parts of the Bill will be curtailed or truncated by the programme motion, but I am sure that if we work together we can ensure that we can debate all the parts of the Bill. I hope that Members on both sides will accept the programme motion, which will enable us to implement the findings of the Leveson report on regulation of the press, ensuring that any future victims can have redress, while maintaining press freedom. I also hope that we will be able to debate in an appropriate manner all the other parts of the Bill before finishing those stages at midnight.