Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming). Let me make two points. First, some terrible things have happened and I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement and his resolve to sort these things out. I am also grateful for his assurance about protecting investigative journalism and the free press. Our free press has unearthed, over time, miscarriages of justice, the misappropriation of public money, and abuse and lawbreaking on a grand scale. I remind hon. Members that a few weeks ago we were in here debating the tragic Winterbourne View case. The BBC Panorama team’s work on that had to involve false documentation, misrepresenting one of their journalists as someone else, and going in to film secretly. How else would we have known about that terrible situation? I am delighted about that.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Margot James]

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will not—the wind-ups start in one minute.

My second point concerns the Culture, Media and Sport Committee session yesterday. There are lessons to learn from the Enron case about wilful blindness and when a company’s leadership could have known, should have known and sometimes chose not to know. I have worked in such environments at times in my career: there was an awful business of senior leadership turning a blind eye and the management thinking they could get away with things. Instead of that, we should have a culture in the media in which organisations’ boards and leaders really look to their journalists to abide by the regulations.