Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I will give way in a moment.

Paragraph 1.2.c of the ministerial code, to which the right hon. and learned Lady referred, is very clear. If Ministers make an inadvertent error, they should correct it at the earliest possible opportunity, which I did, not breaking the ministerial code, but acting in accordance with it. I have not very often had to correct things that I have said, but may I remind the right hon. and learned Lady that she had to correct the record in January 2010, May 2009, April 2009, July 2008, July 2007 and November 2003—one of many aspects of this job where she has much more experience than I do.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I have had to correct the record as well. There is no dishonour in correcting the record. However, what the Minister just referred to was his reply on 7 September, when he said that it was for reasons of cost that he was not able to provide anything more. How much would it have cost him to remember that he had sent a memo to the Prime Minister on the matter, or to have checked his own mobile phone for the text messages that he sent to James Murdoch? He has lied to Parliament. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. [Interruption.] Order. Let me say to the House that the substantive matter under consideration reflected in the terms of the motion is whether the House of Commons has been misled in any way. That is the thrust of the matter under debate and the Secretary of State is making a very clear defence of himself, so when Members cavil and inquire whether what we have heard is legitimate, I am guided by advice and I operate on the basis that there is a substantive motion, which is what the whole debate is about and in relation to which the Secretary of State is speaking.

In general terms, the normal principles of “Erskine May” about moderation and good humour apply, but I cannot preclude—[Interruption.] Order. I cannot preclude a Member operating in accordance with the terms of the motion. The Secretary of State—[Interruption.] Order. I require no assistance from the Immigration Minister. The Minister should sit, be calm and listen intently. If he does not want to do so, he can leave the Chamber.

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[Mr Hunt]

It is because I wish to make my case that I want to draw the House’s attention to the very important distinction between inadvertently misleading this House and lying. Lying implies that there is deliberate intent. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who has made great play in the press of how he has suffered when inaccurate allegations about him have been bandied about in the press, would, I am sure, not want to associate himself with the comment he has made unless he has any evidence. I am happy to give way to him now if he will show me evidence of any occasion when I have misled Parliament deliberately.

[Chris Bryant]

Mr Speaker, I very much hope that I will manage to catch your eye later in the debate. I hope that the Secretary of State will stay because I have a great deal of evidence to prove that he has lied to Parliament. That will be the subject not of a point of information now, but of a whole speech.

[Mr Hunt]

This point is very pertinent, because I am here to respond to any allegations that the hon. Gentleman might make. If he is not prepared to come forward with evidence that I deliberately misled the House, I will have to assume that he does not have such evidence.

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[Mr Foster]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I am sure that the Opposition will have an opportunity to respond to it. We are clear, however, that reforms are necessary.

[Chris Bryant]

rose—

[Mr Foster]

I shall of course give way to the hon. Gentleman, who has featured so prominently in this issue.

[Chris Bryant]

The right hon. Gentleman earlier praised the process that the Secretary of State adopted in taking forward the bid. Has he read the memo that the Culture Secretary sent to the Prime Minister before he was in charge of the bid which makes it absolutely clear that what he intended and hoped to achieve was, surprisingly, exactly the same as what he actually achieved—in other words, the best possible outcome, in law, for Sky?

[Mr Foster]

The hon. Gentleman has followed this issue assiduously, but on this occasion he has got his facts wrong. We must remember that there had been no discussion about mitigations in lieu or about reducing the BSkyB bid involvement of News Corporation—[Interruption.]

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[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State is a nice man. He is courteous; he is polite; that is not in doubt—but that is not the matter in hand today. It is also perfectly understandable that on certain occasions the House is misled. It is not uncommon for a Minister to say something in the honest belief that what he is saying is true, and for it to turn out not to be true—a distinction that he himself made. That is why there is a means of correcting the record. I did that myself quite recently. I believe that the House sees no dishonour in correcting the record—indeed, quite the reverse: it enhances somebody’s reputation.

The issue, therefore, is the deliberate misleading of Parliament and the requirement, in the words of the code,

“that Ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity.”

Evidence of not complying with the code can be drawn from the fact that the misinformation provided was emphatic rather than tentative, was repeated, was not corrected when fuller information was available or was calculated to deceive for political advantage. I believe that there is prima facie evidence that all these things apply to the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport.

Some facts are not in dispute. First, the Secretary of State was a strong supporter of Sky in general and the bid in particular. Indeed, he wrote to tell the Prime Minister so, he texted James Murdoch so on the very day he was given control of the bid, and he told me so in September 2010. Secondly, James Murdoch knew what the Secretary of State was going to say before Parliament did. Thirdly, Fred Michel is not a clairvoyant; he was given privileged information directly by Adam Smith, the special adviser to the Secretary of State, quite possibly breaking the law. This was not just on one occasion; it was repeated time and again—hundreds of texts, dozens of e-mails and who knows how many phone calls of which we have not yet been informed.

Fourthly, the Secretary of State doubts that

“there’s a minister who worked more closely with a special adviser than I worked with Adam Smith”—

closer than DEFRA special adviser Osborne worked with Douglas Hogg and closer than Treasury special adviser Cameron worked with Norman Lamont. Yet the Secretary of State expects us to believe that he had no idea what his special adviser was up to; no idea that he was colluding with Sky in a way that would have led to an expensive judicial review, which the taxpayer would have had to pay for if the bid had not been scuppered by the phone-hacking revelations. He has been hanging out with News International so much that he even expects us to accept the “one rogue reporter” defence that News International deployed, long after it knew that it was a lie in relation to hacking.

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

Let me just correct the hon. Gentleman. It is standard practice for my Department, and indeed other Departments, to let companies know if there is a statement being made in Parliament about them in advance of that statement being made, and that is exactly what Adam Smith was doing, and it was proper that he should do so—I believe in every situation, but we are still looking through the evidence very carefully. Secondly, if, as the hon. Gentleman says, I had a plan—some grand scheme—that was going to deliver BSkyB to News Corp, why would I say that I was going to ask for the opinion of independent regulators, whose advice I have absolutely no control over, and that I was going to publish it at the same time as I published my decision? The reason I did that was because I was setting aside the views I had prior to the bid taking place, and that has been vindicated by every single page of the evidence.

[Chris Bryant]

I am sorry, but I simply do not believe the Secretary of State, because I believe that he secured precisely the outcome that he wanted to achieve—or that he wanted the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills to achieve—and that is exactly what he put in the memo to the Prime Minister before he took over the bid. Secondly, in relation to providing information, what is key about—

[Mr Hunt]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

If the right hon. Gentleman will wait a moment and just let me finish—[Interruption.] If the Whip could just calm down—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Let us get back to a sensible debate and let us have a little more courtesy from the Front Benches on both sides.

[Chris Bryant]

I will give way again to the Secretary of State in a moment, but I just want to answer the point about providing information to Sky before it was available to this House. Yes, there are certain circumstances where that option is available to a Secretary of State, but not normally before the markets have opened, not when it can be used for commercial advantage for that organisation and not when people on the other side of the bid have been treated in a completely different way. That is why I think the Financial Services Authority may still want to investigate.

[Mr Hunt]

I just want to understand: is the hon. Gentleman actually saying that the independent advice that I received from Ofcom and the OFT was not, in fact, independent? If I ask for independent advice, what that means is that I do not know what it is going to say. Unless I have very good reason, I am likely to follow that advice. That could not possibly be the actions of someone who was trying to achieve a specific outcome.

[Chris Bryant]

I am afraid that the issue is the way in which the back channel was organised through the Secretary of State’s special adviser, Adam Smith, of whom the right hon. Gentleman has said there has never been a closer working relationship between a Minister and a special adviser—and we are meant to believe that the information this person was providing to Sky was not material—and the process whereby all the e-mails that were provided made it absolutely clear what was in the Secretary of State’s mind and how he was trying to secure that outcome.

That brings me to the central charges: first, that the Secretary of State deliberately misled Parliament. He told Parliament in March 2011 that he had published

“all the documents relating to all the meetings—all the consultation documents, all the submissions we received, all the exchanges between my Department and News Corporation.”—[Official Report, 3 March 2011; Vol. 524, c. 526.]

That was a very, very emphatic statement, which clearly had not been verified, because then, on 7 September, he tried to backtrack a bit—or cover his tracks. In a written answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), the Secretary of State said:

“A search for correspondence from officials, press officers and special advisers to and from all the individuals listed would incur disproportionate cost to collect.”—[Official Report, 7 September 2011; Vol. 532, c. 616.]

He did not choose to correct the previous statement. He chose not to reveal that he had texted James Murdoch himself and had sent a memo to the Prime Minister. Far from exonerating the Secretary of State, the answer he provided on 7 September proves beyond doubt that he deliberately failed to tell the whole truth to this House. It was only the legal powers vested in Leveson that forced the truth out into the open.

[Kevin Brennan]

On that point, is it not a further requirement of the ministerial code that the Secretary of State should be as open as possible with Parliament? His conduct in this matter, and in the instance that my hon. Friend has mentioned, is clearly an example of his not being as open as possible with Parliament.

[Chris Bryant]

This House has regularly excoriated Ministers when they have resorted too swiftly to the argument that it is too expensive to provide the full information, but to be honest, I cannot see how it could have been too expensive to have found the memo that the Secretary of State wrote to the Prime Minister—or, for that matter, the text messages that the Secretary of State sent to the people concerned.

There are some other facts to be dealt with. The deliberate nature of the misinformation is also evidenced by the Secretary of State’s response, following his statement in April this year, to questions from two Back Benchers—both doubtless inspired directly by the Whips, as was the question posed earlier by the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns). When one Back Bencher—helped, I am sure—asked him how many conversations he had had, meaning how many with News International and News Corporation, the Secretary of State said, quite categorically and emphatically, “zero”. When another Back Bencher—a Conservative Member; this did not come out of the blue—asked whether the Secretary of State recognised the conversations attributed to him by Fred Michel, he said:

“I do not. Throughout the bid process, when I got responsibility for it, the contact that I had with Fred Michel was only at official meetings that were minuted with other people present. The fact is that there is a whole pile of e-mails—54 in total—in which he talks about having contact with me, but that simply did not happen.”—[Official Report, 25 April 2012; Vol. 961, c. 543.]

Neither response was unpremeditated; they were deliberately placed on the record. Both are deliberate obfuscations and lies.

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not wish to mislead the House, so let me just tell him that in both cases the question I was asked—one was from my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) and the other was from my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham)—referred to the 54 e-mails that Fred Michel wrote in which he talked about conversations with “JH”. In both cases I confirmed that no such conversations with me had happened.

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[Chris Bryant]

No, I am afraid that that is not the precise nature of the conversation, but I am short for time now. I am quite happy to correspond with the Secretary of State, but I believe that he misled and that he deliberately did so on those occasions.

[Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I am not going to give way further, because I have already given way on four occasions to the Secretary of State.

The proof that those claims were untrue is that there was un-minuted contact when the Secretary of State had control of the bid—twice on 20 January 2011, once on 21 January, three times on 3 March, three times on 13 March and once on 3 July. He could have corrected the record, but without Rupert Murdoch, we would never have known about it. That is the honest truth of this matter.

The Secretary of State has always protested that, once in charge of the bid, he operated impartially. Yet despite being directly advised on 10 November 2010 not to have any external discussions on the BSkyB media merger, he texted the Chancellor on the day that he acquired responsibility for the bid to say:

“Just been called by James M. His lawyers are meeting now and saying it calls into question legitimacy of whole process from beginning.”

It is absolutely clear that the Secretary of State had a conversation that he had been advised he should not have, precisely and in terms. He was colluding with News Corporation, and to deny it again today is yet another way of misleading the House.

It has often been said by the Prime Minister that all these issues have been dealt with by Leveson, but the Leveson inquiry, because of article IX of the Bill of Rights, has absolutely no power; indeed, it is legally barred from questioning or impeaching any proceeding in Parliament. That is why not a single question was posed about any of these matters to the Secretary of State and why there has to be a reference to the independent adviser.

I end with these few words:

“this is a shabby, shabby business”.

Not my words: the words of a full-time Murdoch employee and former Tory Member of Parliament, Matthew Parris.

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[Alun Cairns]

I could not have described it better myself, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alun Cairns]

I will in a moment.

I remind the House that it took 23 minutes for the shadow Secretary of State to come to the judgment that the Secretary of State should resign and, then, that he should be referred to Sir Alex Allan. That judgment—

[Chris Bryant]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alun Cairns]

I will in a moment.

That judgment came directly from testimony by James Murdoch and Frédéric Michel, the quality of whose evidence on other occasions the right hon. and learned Lady had herself questioned. So it took her 23 minutes to make that judgment—on someone whom she had doubted in the first place.

[Chris Bryant]

Well, it took the Prime Minister 15 minutes to decide that the Secretary of State was innocent. Let me turn to the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns), however, because he read out the Whips’ question earlier about Sir Alex Allan, but he is a member of the very Committee that stated:

“We felt, however, that he”—

Sir Alex Allan—

“was unsuited to this role because he did not convince us that he would be able to demonstrate the independence the post requires.”

Now, I know that the hon. Gentleman hardly ever turns up to the Committee, but that was his Committee’s conclusion.

[Alun Cairns]

We have already heard from the hon. Gentleman and from his hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham selective misquotations of the Public Administration Committee’s report, but, whatever Opposition Members say, time and again we can point to Sir Alex Allan’s letter, in which he states that

“I do not believe that I could usefully add to the facts in this case”.

Sir Alex is fully aware of what has been said at the Leveson inquiry, what has been said here in the Chamber and what has been said at the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, so Opposition Members are calling for—

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[Sir George Young]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State dealt with that point substantially in his contribution.

My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) contrasted the actions of the previous Government with Labour Members’ criticism of the coalition Government, implying that they expect higher standards of us than they expected of themselves.

The hon. Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) said that today’s debate was the only opportunity for the House to deal with the matter, ignoring the role of Select Committees, the statement that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made and the urgent question answered by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) made a robust defence of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and rightly made the point that the ultimate decision rests with the Prime Minister. My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) said that the Opposition’s fox had been shot by the exchange of letters published today.

On the matter at hand, the controversy surrounding the Culture Secretary’s handling of the BSkyB bid first arose on 24 April. The next day, the Prime Minister responded to questions at Prime Minister’s Question Time and the Culture Secretary came to the House to give a full account of himself for just over an hour. The following week, the Prime Minister answered questions for 52 minutes, and two weeks ago my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State appeared in front of Lord Justice Leveson for almost eight hours. And yet when did the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) first call for his resignation? At 4.30 pm on 24 April, before a single question had been raised in Parliament and before he had had an opportunity to respond to any of the allegations.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the Leader of the House give way?

[Sir George Young]

No. This is what the right hon. and learned Lady said on the BBC—

[Chris Bryant]

rose—

[Hon. Members]

Sit down!

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[Sir George Young]

When the right hon. and learned Lady was questioned on the BBC on whether she had read the evidence before calling for the resignation of the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, she said:

“I already had formed the view that Jeremy Hunt had acted totally inappropriately even before those emails were published because when I saw James Murdoch’s evidence to Leveson, it was quite clear the Culture Secretary had given James Murdoch to understand that he was not impartial in the bid, that he was on his side”.

The right hon. and learned Lady is a former Leader of the House and I have respect for her, but is that not an extraordinarily ill-judged intervention for a qualified solicitor, a former Solicitor-General and an honorary Queen’s counsel? In what kind of banana republic would a lawyer convict somebody without a shred of evidence and before having had the opportunity to cross-examine a witness? If she is so quick to trust the word of a Murdoch at face value, will she today back Rupert Murdoch’s version of his telephone conversation with the former Prime Minister?

The truth is that the only people who made up their minds before looking at any of the facts were the right hon. and learned Lady and the Leader of the Opposition, not the Prime Minister. She has at least climbed down from the initial demand for resignation. She is now asking for a referral to the independent adviser—[Interruption.] That is the motion on the Order Paper. She has engaged in a humiliating climbdown.

Let us look at the case for referral. The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport has already been referred to, and attended, a forum that is, in a sense, far more rigorous than any process that Sir Alex Allan could follow. What could be more rigorous than eight hours of questioning by an experienced barrister, in public, on TV, under oath, in front of a judge-led inquiry?

[Chris Bryant]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir George Young]

No.

[Chris Bryant]

rose—

[Hon. Members]

Sit down!

[Sir George Young]

Nothing could be designed by the civil service that could come close to that level of scrutiny.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir George Young]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, but I hope he enhances his reputation by withdrawing the remark he made about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

[Chris Bryant]

I am not going to withdraw anything; I will repeat the accusation. The Secretary of State deliberately misled this House. Why, when the Prime Minister spoke to the House and the Secretary of State answered a written question on 7 September, and on all the occasions to which the Leader of the House has referred, did they choose not to correct the record? The Secretary of State never chose to point out that he had written to the Prime Minister and been in correspondence with him, or that everything he said in the Chamber had been a lie?

[Sir George Young]

Not only has the hon. Gentleman made an accusation, he did not substantiate it. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State answered in his initial remarks all the hon. Gentleman’s points.

A number of Opposition Members referred to the Public Administration Committee report on the role of the independent adviser on Ministers’ interests. The Prime Minister has simply followed the precedent established by the previous Prime Minister. When the Committee recommended in the previous Parliament that the independent adviser be allowed to initiate his own inquiries—precisely the recommendation made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex—the outgoing Labour Government responded:

“it must ultimately be for the Prime Minister to account to Parliament for his decisions and actions in relation to the appointment of his Ministers.”

The Opposition’s charges against my right hon. Friend the Culture Secretary have been answered at length by my right hon. Friend and by the Prime Minister. On the question of misleading Parliament, the Culture Secretary has today responded in detail to each and every one of the Opposition’s allegations and he has swatted them away with relish. On the matter of special advisers, which is specifically referred to in the motion, it is unfortunate for Labour that that subject has been brought up in the same week as the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), sat before the Leveson inquiry and denied, as only he could, any knowledge that his political team briefed against his fellow Ministers and unleashed hell on his Chancellor. Indeed, it was lucky that we could see the former Prime Minister on our TV screens at all given that the air was thick with the smell of cordite from the smoking guns pointing in his direction.

Let me remind the House what the former Prime Minister said on Monday when asked whether his special advisers briefed against ministerial colleagues:

“I would hope not. I have no evidence of that.”

Let us see what the Leader of the Opposition said yesterday to the same inquiry:

“On Damian McBride, when I was a Cabinet Minister, I did raise a specific concern that I had with Mr Brown, I believe in…2008, about some of Mr McBride’s activities.”

As the shadow Justice Secretary said this morning on the BBC, they cannot both be right. It ill behoves the Opposition to lecture this Government on Ministers taking responsibility for their special advisers when the former Prime Minister took no responsibility for what his advisers got up to.

The issues we have been debating today will not divert the coalition from its core task of dealing with the huge deficit we inherited and rebalancing the economy. The Opposition are one party united in their opportunism; we are two parties coming together to sort out the mess they left behind. I urge the House to reject the motion.

Question put.