Ben Bradshaw
Main Page: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)Department Debates - View all Ben Bradshaw's debates with the Northern Ireland Office
(13 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
As I said to the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce), it is important that we send a clear message about this. We are doing that with the new offence which carries a mandatory sentence. That is a signal to anyone who is contemplating carrying a knife, but we should be frank with ourselves in the House and in the country that purely looking at the issue from a criminal justice perspective is not the answer. We have to ask ourselves why so many young children are joining gangs, and why our families and communities are not doing more to keep them close and prevent the carrying of knives. That is something that runs right across Government and across our society as well.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
It is simply not the case, as the Prime Minister claimed earlier, that the Government have followed the normal process in relation to the News Corp takeover of BSkyB. Why does he believe that the assurances that News Corp executives have given are any more credible than the assurances they gave over phone hacking?
The Prime Minister
The point is that we have followed the correct legal processes. If you do not follow the correct legal processes, you will be judicially reviewed, and all the decisions that you would like to make from a political point of view will be struck down in the courts. You would look pretty for a day, but useless for a week. [Interruption.]