Procedure Committee Reports
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Gray
I cannot understand how my right hon. Friend has interpreted my amendment to mean that there should be no searching for information. Of course, there should be. The point of the amendment is that the devices could be used for any purpose connected to the debate, but for no other purposes. Of course, under the wording of my amendment as I understand it, they could be used to search for information.
Mr Knight
My hon. Friend is now telling the House what he wished his amendment would do rather than what it does. I could not recommend anyone to vote for such an amendment. He drafted it, and it takes out all references to the use of electronic devices in Committee. In my view, Members should have certainty in what they can and cannot do in Committee. Imagine a Member attending a Committee with their notes on an electronic device and the Chairman saying, “Well, in my Committee we don’t use these devices.” That Member would be left high and dry.
Chris Bryant
If we were to presume, in the way the right hon. Gentleman does, that Chamber practice was consistent with Committee practice, the rule allowing hon. Gentlemen to remove their jackets in Committee, which does not apply in the Chamber, would presumably lapse.
Mr Knight
If I may, I will come back to that point in a moment. I want to deal completely with Select Committee amendments first, but I will return to the hon. Lady’s point and, if she is not satisfied, I invite her to intervene on me again.
The Procedure Committee was invited by the Liaison Committee to look at the possibility of a tabling system that would enable Select Committees to table their own amendments. The current practice is that amendments agreed by a Select Committee may be tabled only in the names of individual Members, which makes it difficult to distinguish Committee amendments from those tabled by the same members of the Committee acting as individuals. After consulting interested parties, the Procedure Committee published a report recommending that the practice be changed to allow Select Committees to table amendments to Bills and motions in the name of the Chair, with a tag line indicating the name of the appropriate Select Committee. The advantage of that practice would be that it would offer clarity to the House and to individual Members, and enable anyone reading an amendment paper to see that an amendment had originated in a Select Committee. It was also felt that it would contribute to the effectiveness of Select Committees.
We recognised, however, that there could be disadvantages, as individual members of a Select Committee might disagree with a proposed amendment, either at the time of its adoption by the Committee or afterwards. To counter that, the Procedure Committee recommended that stringent safeguards be built into the process whereby Committees agreed amendments that carried the special status of Select Committee amendments. We suggested that such amendments would have to be formally agreed, without Division, by a quorate meeting of the Committee. That is a more rigorous requirement than that for Select Committee reports, which can be agreed by a simple majority.
The Committee rejected the idea that Select Committee amendments should be guaranteed debate, because of the constraints of programming, but we supported the adoption of a convention that the Chair should grant a Division when one is sought. Unfortunately, as the Chairman of the Liaison Committee has said, the Government have indicated that they oppose this innovation, and I understand that they continue to oppose such a modest, sensible move today. Indeed, I have seen the Patronage Secretary buzzing round the House, rather like a wasp, discussing this matter. I therefore suspect that there could be a Government payroll Whip on this Liaison Committee suggestion.
The Government object to the proposal because they feel that it would be wrong for an amendment to be marked as having the support of a Select Committee if some of the Committee’s members might be in disagreement. We have tried to address that difficulty by recommending stringent conditions that would have to be met before a Select Committee amendment could be tabled as such. They include the condition that notice must be given before the Committee could agree the amendment. The Government say, however, that it would still be possible under the new arrangement for any two members of an 11-member Committee to approve an amendment on behalf of the whole Committee, as the quorum is only three and the Chair has a casting vote. That is technically correct, but I would suggest that the requirement for notice would make it most unlikely—or, in practice, impossible—that that could happen against the wishes of a majority of active members of a Committee.
Chris Bryant
With due respect, I do not think that either the right hon. Gentleman or the Government are correct in what they say. In this House, unlike the House of Lords, the Chair of a Committee has a vote only when there is an equality of voices.
Mr Knight
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. That makes my argument even stronger and the Government’s case even weaker, and I am grateful for his intervention.
Our proposal is merely intended to enhance the visibility of Select Committee issues, without in any way diminishing the position of individual members in voting for or against amendments on the Floor. This matter was not initially on our agenda, but the Liaison Committee asked us to look at it. We have done so, and this is our conclusion. I therefore hope that, even at this late hour, the Government will reflect on their opposition to it, which I feel is misplaced. We have given our view, and whether the proposal now proceeds further is a matter for the whole House.
I see the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) in her place. She was one of the Members who supported the idea of explanatory statements, which is the subject of one of the other motions on the Order Paper today. The House has conducted a series of experiments with explanatory statements, and the Procedure Committee has assessed them. We decided that the overall effect was inconclusive, but it was put to us that carrying out a further experiment in a new Parliament—namely, this one—could be worth while, and that it would also be worth pursuing the experiment during the Report stage of a Bill. That is what we have decided to recommend to the House, and we are pleased to note that, in a debate Westminster Hall on 3 February this year, which the hon. Lady attended, there was complete consensus that it would benefit not only Members but those outside the House to have an accompanying explanation of what an amendment or new clause was designed to do.
I am rather more hopeful about this proposal, because the Deputy Leader of the House attended that debate and—it was a rare situation indeed—offered Government support for the measure. He said:
“Regarding explanations for amendments, we had the experiment in Committee and I am certainly happy, as far as the Government are concerned, for that experiment to proceed. Perhaps we ought to look at having such explanations on Report, too.”—[Official Report, 3 February 2011; Vol. 522, c. 384WH.]
I wholeheartedly agree with him, and I am glad that, on this issue, we are as one. I hope that he will confirm today that he now thinks it appropriate for us to trial the explanatory notes again in this Session and the next one. It would then be a matter for the House to decide in due course whether the facility was to be made permanent.
On the question of having a three-month trial quota for questions tabled electronically, the concern arose from evidence—mainly informal—from the Table Office. It found, when questioning the intended scope of some questions tabled electronically in Members’ names, that some Members appeared to know nothing about the questions and registered surprise that they had been tabled in their name. The Procedure Committee took the view that, in some cases, research assistants might be using the electronic procedure to table questions without the express authority of those for whom they work.
Questions are a proceeding in Parliament and should not be submitted without the express and explicit authority of a Member of Parliament. As the electronic submission method could be used without the Member’s knowledge, we decided, in this area only, to limit the number of questions to five in a three-month period to see what the effect would be. We are not recommending any restriction on the number of questions that a Member may take into the Table Office personally. This is a modest recommendation, and we hope that it will lead to Members being fully aware that a question is being submitted in their name.
Caroline Lucas
I completely agree. The hon. Lady’s comments underline the fact that the proposal is not as complicated as rocket science; rather, it is an extension of the common-sense measures that are already in place.
Chris Bryant
I must have been reading different explanatory notes than the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) as I have never known them to explain anything. I fear that explanatory notes on amendments would be even worse, and I note that the report states:
“An explanatory statement is not required where the amendment is self-explanatory”.
Caroline Lucas
The hon. Gentleman can try to make fun of this proposal if he wants, but in the European Parliament it is mandatory to have an explanatory statement and it is incredibly useful. If it is condensed down to about 50 or 100 words and explains what a measure is intended to achieve, an awful lot more people will have an awful lot more sense of what is going on. If the hon. Gentleman wants to stand up and say he thinks it is absolutely fine that so many Members do not know what they are voting for, that is up to him, but I am not happy about that.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
I understand that this proposal does not require the Government or anyone tabling an amendment to provide an explanation, but merely allows them to do so.
Zac Goldsmith
So it requires the Government to— I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention on my intervention.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak and to Mr Speaker for selecting the amendment that stands in my name and those of a goodly number of right hon. and hon. Members from across the Chamber. I thank you for allowing a goodly amount of time for this important and useful debate. I do not intend to take up much of the House’s time, because a number of useful speeches have addressed most of the important arguments on both sides of the debate.
I very much agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), who started the debate by saying that this is a matter of taste, discretion and delicacy. There are not passionate arguments on either side. One side is not definitely right and the other side definitely wrong. It is a matter of how we handle such machines, what we use them for, what their purpose is and how we ensure that debate in the Chamber is as good as possible.
In fact, as is often the case when we discuss matters that affect ourselves, today’s debate on the issue has been among those of the highest quality that I have heard recently. My right hon. Friend’s Committee was split on the report; four of us have signed the amendment disagreeing with it. We go from his stance, which is that virtually any electronic device can be used for virtually any purpose either in the Chamber or in Committee, through to that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst), a former Deputy Speaker—he is by no means a dinosaur in this matter—whose broad view is that such devices should not be used for any purpose whatsoever.
I received a letter from a very senior Member with which I would not necessarily agree. He said that he felt that the rules applying in the House should be precisely the same as those applying at the opera—we should not use such devices at all—and there is some sense in that, although I do not necessarily agree with it.
Mr Gray
I shall not give the House a song; I fear that my voice does not rise to that.
I would not necessarily agree with the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), who focused on the use of electronic devices for Twitter. It is right that I suggested in the e-mail that I sent to all hon. Members that we should probably not use Twitter and blogging, although I will suggest how we might be able to use them. I am not necessarily totally opposed to the notion of twittering.
The main thrust of my amendment, and of my thoughts on the subject—and the thoughts of a great many hon. Members who have spoken to me—is that if we allow unfettered use of electronic devices, three things will happen. The first is that the quality of debate will decline. Let me give an example. Recently, I chaired a Public Bill Committee. Glancing round the room, I saw that some two thirds of the people on the Committee were using electronic devices for one purpose or another. That included the shadow Minister, the Minister, both Whips, and six or eight Back Benchers, one of whom, rather magically, was using two electronic devices simultaneously; how on earth he managed to do that I have simply no idea. It seemed to me that the fine technical point being made about the Pensions Bill—for that was the Bill—was not necessarily being considered carefully by the two thirds of the Committee who were using those machines at that time. Had I challenged members of the Committee to lay out precisely what the person speaking had just said, a very large percentage of them would have looked at me blankly, and would not have had the faintest idea what was going on.
I totally accept the point made by my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), that we can all multi-task. Of course we can; there is no question about that. MPs do it all the time. However, I simply do not believe that the finer points of argument in a debate will necessarily be picked up if one is focusing one’s mind on something else. The purpose of debate is not just for our own voices to be heard, or to get something on the record; we could do that by handing the speech in, as they do in the United States of America. The purpose of debate is to listen carefully to what the other person is saying, to pick up the other person on fine illogicalities in their speech, to make delicate points, and hopefully to come to some kind of useful conclusion. If a person is focusing on emptying their inbox, surfing the net, tweeting or who knows what else—famously, recently a member of the Italian Parliament was spotted surfing an escort site—while theoretically listening carefully to a debate, they are not taking part in it in the way that they should.
Mr Gray
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, I was a professional lobbyist for a number of years and so have no difficulty with that whatever. It is of course right that all sorts of interest groups around the world, from journalists to lobby groups, should be able to make their views known to us, but I am not certain about the propriety of a lobby group, the Whips or anyone else getting in touch with us during the course of a debate or a Select Committee evidence session to say, “Here’s an interesting point you ought to raise.” Would it really be right for outside interest groups to get in touch with us via electronic devices during Select Committee cross-examinations, for example of the Murdochs, and say, “Here’s something you ought to say”? I think that that would be an unreasonable intervention in our internal debates by outside influences.
Chris Bryant
Well, I was not a member of that Committee, but that is just one minor factual inaccuracy of several that we are passing by. The point I was going to make is that one of the oldest rights of members of the public and constituents is the right to come to the Lobby and demand that we come out of a debate to listen to their point of view, so I do not see the difference.
Mr Gray
The difference is extremely simple. Someone outside communicating via an electronic device during a debate is not equivalent to a member of the public coming to Central Lobby, filling in a green form and asking to speak to us; it is equivalent to a member of the public coming into the Chamber and saying, “Would the hon. Gentleman please ask this question?”, which I do not believe is right. We should be debating among ourselves and not excessively involving people outside.
Most people agree that excessive use of electronic devices is not a good thing. Two or three objections have been raised with me. The first relates to the fact that we must all sit here for six or seven hours before finally being called to speak. That could be corrected in two ways: first, Members could take a greater interest in the debate; and secondly, we could perhaps move to the system enjoyed at the other end of the Palace, where peers have some indication of when they will speak. You, Mr Deputy Speaker, and your colleagues tend to indicate when Members will be called to speak, but the notion that we should sit here clearing our inboxes or writing articles on electronic devices for local newspapers because we are a little bored and cannot be bothered to listen to a debate seems a thin argument.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Much of the debate on the use of hand-held devices—I note, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you called them “held-hand devices” when introducing the debate, but I am not sure what such a device might look like—reminds me of the Russian Orthodox Church, which in November 1917, while the revolution was gathering around it, spent its time debating whether to wear black or purple vestments for funerals. The honest truth is that the horse has bolted.
We can see them all round the Chamber: @ZacGoldsmith, @CarolineLucas, @lucianaberger, @SteveBakerMP and, of course, the brilliantly named @claire4devizes. All tweet regularly—[Interruption.] There is also @stellacreasy and many other Members.
Steve Baker
Even though I was named in January as the most influential MP on Twitter—ahead, even, of the hon. Gentleman—I am most concerned that we should get on to the next business before I am flayed alive by my constituents.
Chris Bryant
I understand, because the hon. Gentleman is the Member for Wycombe, and I know how such issues affect people there, but if he had not intervened, we would get on to the next business faster.
I want to correct a couple of points made by the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray). He seemed to think that I was on the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport. I should point out that I am not @tom_watson. There are a few differences between us, although we are often seen together.
I should also say that although he has been much misquoted, John Bright, the Liberal Member of Parliament, did not say that we—the House of Commons—were the mother of Parliaments; he said that England is the mother of Parliaments. That is because he believed—this is an important point—that we had to be transformed as history is transformed. I would say that Parliament has always been bad at opening itself up to the public. Indeed, in 1376 we first decided that we would take an oath of secrecy to ensure that nobody outside this place knew what was going on here. It took many centuries to get rid of that oath of secrecy, which was why John Wilkes ended up being expelled from the House of Commons on four occasions and had to be re-elected before eventually being allowed to publish what went on this House.
It is not a question of being dinosaurs or anything else; it is about opening Parliament up to the wider world around us, so that people can understand everything that goes on here. It is not for our convenience, but for our constituents’ convenience. The world has changed. When I was first elected in 2001, the vast majority of my constituents got in touch with me by coming to a constituency surgery. Now the vast majority get in touch by Facebook, Twitter, e-mail and, sometimes, text messages. We should make that more possible for our constituents, not more difficult.
Incidentally, I wholeheartedly agree with @KevinBrennanMP, who said earlier that proper wi-fi should be available in the Chamber so that people can engage properly. I disagree with the hon. Member for North Wiltshire that only urgent messages should be dealt with. Who on earth will decide what an urgent message is? It is my constituents who should decide what an urgent message is.
Chris Bryant
If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will not give way, because others want to get on to the next debate.
I have this picture in my mind of the Speaker going over to an hon. Member and demanding to see their last tweet or this place setting up “Oftwit” to ensure that Members are behaving properly. The hon. Member for North Wiltshire has only to listen toour constituents to find out what they are moreinterested in.
Members have said how inappropriate it would be if facts were brought to bear in debate, but that is what the officials Box is there for. [Interruption.] I see them smiling. Perhaps we should abolish the officials Box, so that Ministers have to rely on their own wit and intelligence. Would it not also be good if “Erskine May” was available online so that people could refer to it in the Chamber instead of having to buy a copy for several hundred pounds?
I want to respond to a couple of points that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) made. She is absolutely sincere in wanting to make our business more intelligible to people. However, I would like to know how explanatory notes to amendments would stand legally if an amendment were carried. There is a danger in proceeding down that route. In addition, I would have thought that the whole point of a debate on an amendment was to decide what it meant and what it did; just accepting at face value what the hon. Member who tabled it had said would not assist.
Chris Bryant
I shall not give way, because I want to be circumspect.
Finally, I look forward to the day when we have on Twitter @RogerGaleMP—and, for that matter, @15thcenturyMP, or perhaps he would be called @JacobReesMoggMP. I should also point out to the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who is not in his place, that one of his constituents has begged me on Twitter this afternoon to ask him to reinstate his Twitter account so that his constituents can get in touch with him better.
Business of the House
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Sir George Young
Yet again the right hon. Gentleman has made no substantive criticism of the business the Government have laid before the House for the next two weeks. He will have noted that we have allocated two days for the Report stage of a Bill, which was virtually unheard of in the Government of whom he was a member.
On statistics, may I say to the right hon. Gentleman that he should look carefully at the dates to which the statistics that he read out apply. He might well find that the Prime Minister’s statistics were perfectly accurate, and that the ones that he used were also accurate. The period over which one takes statistics is crucial, and ‘twas ever thus.
On the Boundary Commission, it is indefensible that a constituency such as Arfon currently has some 40,000 voters, whereas East Ham has more than 90,000. That is the position that the boundaries Bill, which is now on the statute book, was set to address. We are also reducing the numbers of Members of Parliament. This House is the largest directly elected Chamber in the whole of Europe, and we believe that Members can perfectly adequately represent 77,000 people, and many already do. I am sorry if the right hon. Gentleman has been inconvenienced by the proposals. I understand that there might be an interesting discussion between him and the shadow Chancellor, and my sympathies are entirely with him. He knows better than anybody that the place to make such representations about boundaries is not in the House, but to the Boundary Commission.
Sir George Young
This is my fifth boundary review. I have been expanded, reduced and abolished. These reforms have no surprises.
The right hon. Gentleman raised a serious issue about the fees that are payable on the registration of a death. The issue may arise from the coroners legislation, and I will ask the Lord Chancellor to write to him with a response.
The right hon. Gentleman ended with a reference to Mr Hilton. Last week, the right hon. Gentleman bombarded me with seven requests for debates, and I assumed that the Opposition would choose at least one of them for the Opposition day on Tuesday, but not one of the subjects that he felt were so important last Thursday appeared on the agenda. I think we have rumbled him. For him, these sessions are just as much opportunities to display his great sense of humour as to make serious bids for debates.
Sir George Young
Indeed, for four years. He therefore has some insight into the planning process. I indicated earlier that I would welcome a broader debate on planning policy so that the myths can be laid to rest.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House set aside time every week for “PMT”? As I understand it, his defence of the Prime Minister is that when the Prime Minister says something, for us to understand the statistic we just need to know the timeline he is applying to it. If the Prime Minister had a “Prime Minister’s Timeline” session every week, we would be able to understand that when he says, “Growth in the UK is bigger than in the United States of America”, he means that that was so under a Labour Government.
Points of Order
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
The hon. Lady will understand immediately when I say that I do not regard myself as an authority on fashion. In response to points of order, I think an appropriate humility and self-denying ordinance on the part of this Chair would be prudent and seemly.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his sedentary intervention on the subject of ties, about which I do not intend to expatiate now or at any time from the Chair.
The hon. Lady kindly gave me notice of her point of order. What I would say to her, very seriously, is that the content of answers to parliamentary questions is a matter for the Government and not the Chair, and there are very good reasons, which will be immediately apparent to Members, why that should be so. The Chair cannot get into the business of acting as umpire or arbiter of the merit or demerit of a particular answer—only on the question of whether it is orderly. However, if the hon. Lady is dissatisfied with the answer, she should contact the Table Office to find other and perhaps further ways of pursuing the matter to obtain the satisfaction she seeks.
Police reform and social responsibility Bill (programme) (No. 3)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Orders of 13 December 2010 and 30 March 2011 (Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill (Programme) and Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill (Programme) (No. 2)):
Consideration of Lords Amendments
1. Proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments shall be taken at this day’s sitting in the order shown in the first column of the following Table.
2. The proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the times specified in the second column of the Table.
TABLE
Lords Amendments | Time for conclusion of proceedings |
Nos. 1 to 4 and 6 | 8.00 pm |
Nos. 5, 7 to 52, 54, 55, 58, 60 to 168, 53, 56, 57, 59, 169 and 170 | 10.00 pm |
Subsequent stages
3. Any further Message from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.
4. The proceedings on any further Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement.—(Stephen Crabb.)
Question agreed to.
Business of the House
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Sir George Young
If a Select Committee feels that there has been a contempt, the procedure is that it makes a report to the House and then the Speaker decides whether to give it priority, and if he does it is put on the Order Paper and referred to the Standards and Privileges Committee. If that Committee finds that there has been a contempt, it has at its disposal a wide range of penalties, including fines.
Sir George Young
It is entirely a matter for the Standards and Privileges Committee, and ultimately the House, what sanctions should then be applied to anyone who has committed a contempt.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker; you are very cheeky.
As I understand it, the Deputy Serjeant at Arms has already served the summons on the lawyers of the two Murdochs, and as I understand it, there is no bar on foreign nationals being summoned. Let me make a suggestion to the Leader of the House. There is a degree of urgency about this. Parliament is going into recess next Tuesday, and the Select Committee is only going to meet on Tuesday. If the Murdochs still refuse to come next Tuesday, an alternative route would be for him to table an emergency motion on Monday to require the Serjeant at Arms to bring the Murdochs either to the Bar of the House or to the Committee. I think that he would have the support of the whole House in doing so.
Sir George Young
I think I would like to take some advice before I go down that particular route. The position is that if a witness fails to attend when summoned, the Committee reports the matter to the House and it is then for the House to decide what further action to take. As I said, there has not been a case of that kind for some considerable time. The House can order a witness to attend a Committee; apparently this has not happened since 1920. I would like to take some advice on the rather dramatic course of action that the hon. Gentleman has recommended to me, whatever the consequences might be with regard to News International.
Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation Bid for BSkyB
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Some chilling words: “This one is my priority,” spoken by Rupert Murdoch about Rebekah Brooks; “There is far worse to come,” spoken by Rebekah Brooks about the revelations; “News International was deliberately thwarting a police investigation,” spoken by Commander Peter Clarke, who was in charge in the investigation and who has never said that in public until now; “I am 99% certain that my phone was hacked,” spoken by Assistant Commissioner Yates, who is in charge of counter-terrorism in this country; and “Have you ever paid police officers?” “Yes,” spoken by not just Rebekah Brooks but Andy Coulson.
Some disturbing facts: News International bullied those who opposed or were critics of the BSkyB empire; the policeman investigating News International went on to work for the company not years but weeks after he had stopped working for the Metropolitan police; Parliament has been lied to time and time again by a series of different people; material was deleted at News International and sometimes squirreled away and kept against a rainy day when a police officer might come knocking on the door to try to incriminate somebody else lower down the chain in the organisation; some people were ditched and thrown overboard, as we have seen throughout this year; and, as the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster) said earlier, one of the most disgusting things that has happened in the past two weeks is that the people slaving away in the boiler room had to carry the can for those who were at the helm. That does not show that that is a decent company with which to do business.
Executive and non-executive directors at News Corporation completely failed in their fiduciary duties to ensure that criminality was not going on at their company and that the organisation was co-operating completely with the police. That involves Mr Aznar, Peter Barnes, Kenneth Cowley, Lachlan Murdoch, Thomas Perkins, John Thornton and Stanley Shuman, who should all be considering their position, too. I believe that this is proof that News Corporation is not a fit and proper body to hold its present holding in BSkyB, let alone any increased holding.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), who has been tenacious over the years on this matter. He said that BSkyB has done much that is good and I am sure all our constituents would agree. They watch lots of Sky television and enjoy their Sky Plus. The company has lots of technological innovation that only a robust entrepreneur could bring to British society, but it has also often been profoundly anti-competitive. I believe that the bundling of channels so as to increase the profit and make it impossible for others to participate in the market is anti-competitive. I believe that the way in which the application programming interface—the operating system—has been used has been anti-competitive and that Sky has deliberately set about selling set-top boxes elsewhere, outside areas where they have proper rights. If one visits a flat in Spain where a British person lives, one finds that they mysteriously manage to have a Sky box there even though it is registered to a house in the United Kingdom.
Sky has a virtual monopoly over many areas of our lives, with 67% of residential pay-TV subscriptions and 80% of pay-TV revenues—with an average spend of £492 a year.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s tenacity and courage over the course of this matter. He has been a credit to Parliament in the way he has pursued this. He is quite right that News International must be brought to justice, but does he agree that we must address the concentration of ownership of the media? If we do not do that, the idea that we have a free press and free media is simply false.
Chris Bryant
I completely agree that we failed to address the fact that we have allowed one man to have far too much power in his hands, including four newspapers and all the rights I have been talking about.
It is not just newspapers and broadcasting that have been subject to anti-competitive practices; it is also advertising. Sky spends £127 million on advertising—double what Virgin is able to—in any one year. The fact that it has such a big presence in the market makes it difficult for others to enter. It is anti-entrepreneurial to allow one person to have so much power, which is why no other country would allow it.
I suspect that the people of the country have been way ahead of we politicians on all of this. In the 10 years that I have been an MP, many have come to my constituency surgeries and demanded changes to the system. We have all failed in our duty for far too long, perhaps because we were frightened. If the Murdochs fail to attend the Select Committee next week, I believe that the people of this country will conclude that the Murdochs are waving goodbye to Britain—and maybe that would not be a bad thing.
Business of the House
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Sir George Young
Ministers have made a commitment to publish a water White Paper, and it will be published by December 2011. It will cover England only, but it will be developed in close conjunction with the Welsh Assembly Government.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Of course I welcome the Government’s change of mind on a public inquiry into phone hacking, but may I urge the Leader of the House to ensure that that inquiry is led by a judge, that it is a statutory inquiry with full powers to subpoena evidence and witnesses, that witnesses will be able to give evidence on oath, that it will look not only at the broad issues but specifically at what happened at the News of the World, and that it can start as soon as is possible and practicable to gather the evidence before it is destroyed at the News of the World?
Sir George Young
I commend the hon. Gentleman for his initiative in generating the debate on this matter, and indeed for what he said yesterday. The inquiries will be independent and they will be in public. I note what he has said about the specific format of the inquiries, and that will form part of the consultation process in which we are now engaged.
Business of the House
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
May we have a debate on the solving of conundrums? Or perhaps the Leader of the House could solve one for me. The latest figures show that, at the moment, for every job available in the Rhondda there are 84 people seeking that job, whereas in his constituency of North West Hampshire there are only two people seeking each available job. So far as I can understand the Department for Work and Pensions’ view on all this, the way to resolve the situation is for everybody from my constituency to move to his constituency. The vast majority of my constituents own their own home, but their homes are not worth the kind of money they would need to buy a home in his constituency, so what are my constituents to do to try to get into work?
Sir George Young
The hon. Gentleman’s constituents would always be very welcome in North West Hampshire, but I understand the issue he raises. I think that the answer to his question is the Work programme, which is the biggest and most ambitious work programme ever to get people back into work. In addition, the Government are taking steps to build long-term, sustainable recovery, which I am sure will reach south Wales as fast it reaches anywhere else.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
We in Wales know that digital switchover is a great thing, but it is not quite a utopia. The Freeview package that is available in my constituency and many other valleys communities is greatly diminished compared with the rest of the country. This means that Rupert Murdoch has a virtual monopoly not just on first-view American movies and many sports matches but on the actual provision of television services. What is the Minister going to do to ensure that my constituents get a fair deal?
Mr Vaizey
I would certainly be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss coverage in south Wales. I have learned from many years’ experience that there is no such thing as utopia, but we can strive towards it. As far as Mr Murdoch’s monopoly is concerned, I know that he will have taken note of Ofcom’s investigation into pay TV, sports rights and other such competition issues.
Business of the House
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Sir George Young
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that response. The House will note that his performances at business questions are attracting the attention of powerful friends. Last Friday, he was praised by the Daily Mail, which announced:
“Hilary Benn for Labour leader. The campaign starts here”.
After that intoxicating but unlikely endorsement, I looked up the odds on the right hon. Gentleman becoming the next Labour leader. I was disappointed to see him some way behind the pack at 33:1, but if I were a betting man, I would say it was worth a pony on the shadow Leader of the House.
I welcome what the right hon. Gentleman said about the conference on Monday. He will have noted the extra £800 million that the Government have invested in vaccination, and he will have heard the Secretary of State’s statement on Wednesday about our overall policy on aid.
The right hon. Gentleman should not believe everything that he reads in the press. The end of the Session will depend on the progress that we make with legislation. I remind him that the then Government were not telling us 10 months before March last year—in 2009—when that Session would end. According to my recollection, we did not know when it would end until March, when the Government hit the buffers.
The motion to recommit the Health and Social Care Bill would normally have been taken forthwith under the Standing Orders. We propose to make time available for the Bill to be debated, and to recommit the parts that were amended by the Government in their recent statement.
Sir George Young
I mean the parts that we propose to amend. The recommittal motion will be tabled in good time for the House to debate it on Tuesday.
As for the right hon. Gentleman’s comments on the Bill, I hope that he read what Lord Darzi said about our policy. He said:
“I certainly don’t see it as a U-turn. I see it as a continuum of reform that the health service has witnessed for the last decade under Labour and it’s moving on into the next decade very much based on the changes in the demand on the health service.”
I hope that that view will be reiterated by Opposition spokesmen as the Bill proceeds through its remaining stages.
The Prime Minister dealt with the First Sea Lord’s comments yesterday when he referred to the statement by the Chief of the Defence Staff that we had the resources to continue the exercise in Libya for as long as it took. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that his party in government deferred the conducting of a strategic defence and security review for a long time. We have conducted one, and we have no plans to revisit it.
I announced that there would be a debate on circus animals next Thursday, in Government time, and the Government will make their position clear during that debate. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that that is yet another issue on which his party in government failed to take any action, leaving us to sort it out.
I was slightly surprised when the right hon. Gentleman raised the subject of bin collection. I remember his rather humiliating U-turn on waste only two years ago when, as Environment Secretary, he had to back down on his own proposals. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, we are backing local authorities that want to increase the frequency and improve the quality of their bin collections, and we have abandoned Labour’s guidance to the Audit Commission which penalised local authorities that carried out weekly collections.
Sir George Young
Or, indeed, next year.
I endorse my hon. Friend’s general proposition: that there is no monopoly on 2012, and we are at liberty to refer to it. However, I would hesitate before engaging in what appears to be a legal dispute between two companies, as I believe that would be better sorted out by the courts than by Ministers.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
May we have a debate on the fiduciary responsibility of members of boards of directors? Both UK and United States law makes it clear that directors are bound to
“exercise reasonable care, skill and diligence”
in ensuring companies act lawfully, yet this clearly has not happened in relation to News Corporation, the owner of the News of the World, where criminality has gone on extensively. That now leaves people such as José Maria Aznar, Andrew Knight, Kenneth Cowley, Rod Eddington, Thomas Perkins and Stanley Shuman in real legal peril.
Sir George Young
I believe that the hon. Gentleman has just asserted that somebody had acted unlawfully. If that is the case, it is a matter for the police.
Business of the House
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Sir George Young
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. There will be time for a debate on the NHS when the Health and Social Care Bill returns to the Floor of the House. He reminds the House that an extra £3 billion is being invested in the NHS this year—an investment that Labour would have denied it.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
A constituent of mine is particularly worried about the Government’s plans for the NHS in England because her daughter has a rare condition that can be treated only in hospital in London. She will therefore be interested to know that the Government are talking about recommitting the Health and Social Care Bill to Committee. However, will there not be a real problem for members of that Committee, who may have to vote for exactly the opposite of what they voted for only a few months ago? Will the Leader of the House make sure that if there is to be a recommittal, the Committee has a new set of Government Back Benchers so that the original members do not have to lose any integrity or credibility?
Sir George Young
A nice try! If the Bill is recommitted, there will have to be a fresh Committee of Selection to appoint a new Committee. I have every confidence that Back-Bench Members of my party and of the Liberal Democrat party will use their best judgment on that Committee and continue to work with the Government to drive up standards in the NHS so that we have a world-beating health service in this country.