Privileges
Debate between Chris Bryant and Paul Farrelly(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
My initial reaction on the day of the report’s publication was that I was pleased that the Privileges Committee had agreed with our 2012 report saying that Colin Myler and Tom Crone had misled us and were in contempt. I made those comments, which are on my website, following a statement by Les Hinton, the former executive chairman of News International that led to claims that he had been exonerated. Clearly, this Privileges Committee report provides no substance for that statement, and nor does it provide any substance for Mr Hinton’s claims that the CMS Committee reached false findings in 2012. In my comments, I also said that I found the second half of the report more disappointing and I want to explain why. I also have questions about an aspect of the Privileges Committee’s methodology.
I join the right hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) in expressing my sympathy for the Committee. During its long, interrupted inquiry, it clearly received only grudging, and certainly not full, co-operation from three of the subjects: Colin Myler, Les Hinton and News International, and their solicitors. That was an all-too-familiar experience through all our reports into phone hacking.
I turn to chapter 6 of the report and Les Hinton. Mr Hinton, often described as Rupert Murdoch’s right-hand man, was the executive chairman of News International until December 2007. He resigned as chief executive of Dow Jones, another News Corp subsidiary in New York, in July 2011, within a week of the closure of the News of the World—that fact should speak for itself. We found that he was not full and frank in his evidence to our Committee about the payments made to the convicted royal reporter Clive Goodman; about their purpose, which was to buy silence; or about suspicions that were communicated to him about the extent of phone hacking beyond one rogue reporter and one hacker. One only has to look at the detailed memo from Harbottle & Lewis, the lawyers to the group, to see that he also misled us over claims that a full and rigorous investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World happened on his watch—it certainly did not.
On Mr Hinton, the Privileges Committee made three findings, each of no contempt. First, on payments to Clive Goodman, the report concludes that he failed to tell us, but would certainly have remembered, his role in authorising a £90,000 pay-off to a convicted criminal. The Committee says that it found its conclusion of no contempt “particularly difficult”. I, for one, find that a little confusing and surprising, because we certainly, and unanimously, did not find it difficult to reach our conclusion.
Secondly, on knowledge of the allegations about the extent of phone hacking at the News of the World, the report documents that Mr Hinton received a letter in 2007 from Clive Goodman appealing his dismissal, in which he implicated other senior members of staff. Mr Hinton subsequently told our Committee that he had never been provided with any suspicions of wider involvement, and he never sought to correct that comment. Paragraph 269 of the Privileges Committee report says:
“On that basis we agree that Les Hinton’s evidence was misleading because it did not reveal that Clive Goodman was the source of one of those allegations.”
Yet in paragraph 270—the following paragraph—the report goes on to conclude that the allegations that Mr Hinton misled us were not
“significantly more likely than not to be true”,
so it made no finding of contempt. I am not the only person to find that conclusion rather contradictory and confusing.
I will not delay the House in relation to the third finding in this chapter of the report, about the payment of Mr Goodman’s legal fees—the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) may want to ask questions about it—as I have said enough about Mr Hinton. I will say, however, that throughout our investigations we found a pattern of payments, settlements and confidentiality clauses that clearly had one aim in mind: to suppress the truth about phone hacking.
Chapter 7 of the report deals with News International, which has since been renamed News UK. It was the parent company of News Group Newspapers, which ran and published the News of the World and The Sun. I must say that, at the outset of the chapter, the Privileges Committee took a narrow approach to the question of whether News International itself was in contempt. It
“looked to identify the individual who could be said to be a controlling mind such that their written or oral evidence could fairly be said to be on behalf of and bind the company.”
That is tantamount to saying that statements by the company, individual senior employees or its lawyers, with plenty of chance to correct the record, are not binding. The report concludes that, by that test, only the executive chairman or the chief executive giving direct evidence at the relevant time—Les Hinton, James Murdoch or Rebekah Brooks—fits the bill. That is rather contestable.
On corporate liability, the report says that it was unclear why our Committee chose to focus on the parent company, News International, rather than News Group Newspapers. That, too, is a rather narrow point. The Privileges Committee did not ask us about that before it issued its report, but I hope to shed some light on why we chose that route. The issue was not raised before we reached our findings, when the Clerk of Committees was acting as our Committee Clerk and the recently retired Speaker’s Counsel was giving us advice. The title of our 2012 report was, indeed, “News International and Phone-hacking”.
I should mention some of my uncertainties about the Privileges Committee’s methodology. It reviewed, inter alia, oral and written evidence formally given to us, but that was clearly not the sum of our knowledge. It says that it reviewed “other publicly available documents”, but it is unclear from the report whether those included, in particular, court evidence in the myriad civil phone hacking claims and press releases from News International. We certainly considered those documents, as well as the whole behaviour of the organisation over a long period, when reaching our findings. They were not allegations; they were findings.
Throughout, we sought the truth beyond the initial “one rogue reporter” defence. We were clearly not alone in doing so. Along with media investigations, notably by The Guardian and The New York Times, a raft of hacking victims sued in the civil courts. In each case, the pattern of behaviour in the whole organisation was always the same—denials, misleading statements and evasion, until being forced, grudgingly, to make admissions. That extended to out-of-court settlements with strict confidentiality clauses to avoid cross-examination in the witness box and, in the case of the investigator Glen Mulcaire, to indemnities and costs being paid as long as he played ball. We know that, as we knew it then, from all the court documents.
In July 2011, but only after closing the News of the World, News Corporation and News International changed tack, setting up the so-called management and standards committee to handle the scandal. Any notion that afterwards a so-called “zero tolerance”, as the report describes it, equated to openness and full co-operation in reality is completely wrong. We had to probe, dig and cajole, as did lawyers in the civil cases. During our inquiries, News International issued misleading and false corporate statements, including press releases on 10 July 2009 denying a key story in The Guardian and, on 24 February 2010, savagely attacking our earlier report. At the time of that report, News International’s chief executive was Rebekah Brooks, to whom I will turn in a moment. As far as Les Hinton is concerned, I have said enough.
I will not dwell too much on James Murdoch, save to note his “lack of curiosity”, as we termed it, about the key items and events about which he was made aware during his tenure, including the damning opinion from Michael Silverleaf, QC, in June 2008, and the settlement with Gordon Taylor of the Professional Footballers Association to which that related. In evidence, the Murdochs rested on a letter from their lawyers, Harbottle & Lewis, claiming that there had been a proper investigation. In a key memo to us, the lawyers told us that the Murdochs were not entitled to do so. They said that the Murdochs were either mistaken or confused.
Those senior people were far from being the only News International executives from whom we took evidence. Tom Crone, for instance, who is found in the Privileges Committee’s report to be in contempt, was the legal manager for both News Group Newspapers and News International. In key ways, our 2012 report was unfinished business. Owing to the imminent criminal charges, we, on advice, made no findings about the former editor of the News of the World, Andy Coulson, or Rebekah Brooks. Whether the Committee will wish to do so now, raking back over old ground, is clearly a matter for the Chair and its members.
In June 2014, Andy Coulson was convicted of conspiracy over phone hacking, while Rebekah Brooks was acquitted. However, those charges were not related to the evidence given to us about whether she had misled our Committee. On page 112 of its report, the Privileges Committee mentions that her evidence in criminal cases and to the Leveson inquiry was “constrained”, as was her oral evidence to us on 19 July 2011. That was four days after she had resigned as chief executive, and the report says that
“as such her answers cannot be said to be on behalf of News International.”
She was sitting alongside the Murdochs at the time. The report concludes:
“There are therefore no particular matters arising from her oral evidence in 2011.”
I am afraid to say that I am not the only one who would beg to differ with that narrow, premature conclusion. Ms Brooks is now, of course, the chief executive of News UK—so much for Rupert Murdoch’s penitence when he said:
“This is the most humble day of my life.”
Chris Bryant
Is it not a curious irony that, because of the Bill of Rights, neither Lord Justice Leveson nor the courts could, when interrogating Rebekah Brooks, ask her why, in an answer to a question from me on 11 March 2003 about whether she had ever paid a police officer for information, she said yes?
Paul Farrelly
I agree with my hon. Friend. That highlights the long record of Ms Brooks coming—or declining to come—to give evidence in this House. We have taken issue with such evidence.
In evidence to our Committee in July 2011, Ms Brooks repeated one central assertion:
“the fact is that since the Sienna Miller…documents came into our possession at the end of December 2010, that was the first time that we, the senior management of the company at the time, had actually seen some documentary evidence actually relating to a current employee.”
The Sienna Miller civil case was seminal in terms of disclosure. Ms Brooks went on to say:
“It was only when we saw the Sienna Miller documentation that we realised the severity of the situation.”
Yet we know that, by then, News International had plenty in its possession to suggest that hacking was widespread, including the Silverleaf opinion. We know that Rebekah Brooks personally negotiated the big out-of-court settlement with Max Clifford, which was all wrapped up in confidentiality, just days after our 2010 report. As the Privileges Committee report records, we know that she was present with other people from News International at the meeting of its lawyers Farrer and Co. on 20 January 2010 that was held to discuss Mr Clifford’s civil claim.
Affordable Homes Bill
Debate between Chris Bryant and Paul Farrelly(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on bringing forward the Bill and on managing to get the Government to disband their collective responsibility. I agree with virtually everything he said in his speech, and, indeed, in the e-mail he sent all of us last week, which I shall refer to later. I also agree with everything the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) said, not least about access to the housing market and there being a generation of young people for whom it is almost impossible to conceive of buying a house or having access to private rented properties, which are considerably more expensive than those in the social housing sector. Incidentally, I also agree with what he said about the right to buy. Many people forget that the first council to introduce that was a Labour council in Newport in south Wales, but the key difference was that Newport was determined to match every house that was sold with a new one that was built. To my mind the great destruction of social housing over the last 35 years, introduced by Mrs Thatcher, was that when she introduced the right to buy, she refused to allow local authorities to rebuild, and that is one of the central problems that, in the end, this generation of politicians is having to deal with and the generation of politicians a decade ago had to deal with, too.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
This Bill is supported across the parties, including by the very honourable Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), a near constituency neighbour of mine. Does that not show that this is not a partisan debate, and that feeling runs across the political spectrum against this unfair and discriminatory tax?
Chris Bryant
I think that most of my speech is going to be fairly partisan, so I am not sure I can entirely agree with my hon. Friend on that.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Debate between Chris Bryant and Paul Farrelly(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
It is a great shame that the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) is no longer in the Chamber, because I think that not only did he let his voters and the House down, but—worst of all—he let himself down. He is the arch- patriot, but lobbying is one of the things that Britain gave the world. The only reason it is called lobbying is because of the lobby outside St Stephen’s chapel, where the House of Commons used to sit. That is why when Paris lost the bid to host the 2012 Olympic games, Bertrand Delanoë complained passionately in French that the British had engaged outrageously in lobbying—“doing the lobby,” as he put it.
A fundamental part of our history, and of the way we have grown up as a democracy, has been the right to turn up at the door of Parliament, or a little further away since this ghastly building was built in the 1850s, and ensure that one’s voice is heard. The age of consent in this country is now 16, but it had been 13 until the late 19th century, because the only thing Josephine Butler could do was come and stand at the door of the House of Commons to lobby, grabbing hold of MPs as they came in to try to persuade them of her point of view, and eventually she won the argument.
It has been that way for centuries. In 1432 the Brewers’ Company wanted a new licence and a new company charter, so they tried to persuade Parliament. They failed, but then they paid the Lord Chancellor £40 and miraculously got their piece of legislation. In 1455 John Whittocksmead was paid a noble to be a friend for another honourable company in parliament. In 1485 the longstanding battle between the canons and the Poor Knights of Windsor was resolved when the Clerk of the House was given a very sumptuous breakfast to persuade him to get a Bill through. The Doorkeeper was given tuppence, the Serjeant at Arms was given a noble, the Speaker was given six pounds, six shillings and eightpence, and the King was given £100.
Quite rightly, as the Chair of the Standards and Privileges Committee said earlier, we have outlawed receiving money in return for putting forward a case in this House, but that is not the case in the other House. I suggest that many of the problems relating to lobbying and to corruption in our parliamentary system stem from the other end of the Corridor, because many people pursue their commercial interests through how they vote in that Chamber, which I think is inappropriate.
My personal experience is twofold. First, I was the BBC’s lobbyist in Brussels. That must make me the Daily Mail’s arch-hateperson—the BBC, Brussels and lobbying all in one—but I was proud of the fact that, by persuading MEPs and Commission members, we managed to see off Rupert Murdoch’s attempt, ironically enough, to make Brussels determine that the BBC’s licence fee was unfair state aid. Murdoch using Brussels to try to make that case was slightly odd. I am delighted that we won that battle by convincing people through legitimate lobbying.
Paul Farrelly
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill would tilt even further an already unlevel playing field? At the next election the vast majority of the press, including the Daily Mail, will support the Conservative party, yet the Bill will seek to restrain, for example, the National Union of Students and the education unions from reminding the Government of their record on university tuition fees.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Chris Bryant and Paul Farrelly(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
As I said yesterday—I know that I do not carry the whole House with this first sentence, but perhaps I will carry more of it later—I support the alternative vote and will be voting yes in the referendum. However, the way in which the Deputy Prime Minister has conducted this piece of legislation, or rather the way in which he has not conducted it, is steadily putting me off the idea. It is an enormous shame that he does not have the courage to be in the Chamber this evening even to represent his own view. I say to Liberal Democrat friends who would like this legislation to pass, that it would be a good idea to progress in a slightly different way.
There have been many misunderstandings about the nature of the threshold that Lord Rooker suggests should be introduced, which their lordships agreed to by a significant majority earlier today. Some think that the threshold would act in a way that other thresholds have acted elsewhere—in other words, that it would make it impossible for the Government then to bring forward the alternative vote. That is expressly not what it does and I am afraid that the Minister rather elided his interpretation of the Rooker amendment yesterday evening. It is absolutely clear. As Lord Rooker said in this afternoon’s debate in the other place, “I have said all along that if the turnout was less than 40%, the House could decide to implement AV and I would not argue with that.”
The simple point that we are making is that because this is not a fatal, kill-all threshold, but would mean that Parliament would have to think again, it puts the decision in the right and proper place. Everyone who supports the alternative vote has some version of a threshold in their mind, whether it is 1%, 5% or 10%.
Chris Bryant
I will give way in a moment. Of course we do not expect there to be only 10% or 15% voting in elections and we do not expect that to be the threshold in elections later this year, but there will be a significant difference between the turnout in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I say to Government Members who are concerned about how English people view the way in which the House transacts its business that if the votes of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland end up effectively rigging the vote across the whole United Kingdom because they are having other, substantial, national elections on the same day, I think that will bring the decision into disrepute, and that is a problem.
Paul Farrelly
Just before the Minister summarily sat down, he said that if there were a clear decision, it would be wrong to thwart it in this way, but he did not define what he meant by a clear decision. Will my hon. Friend ask the Minister to give the House a definition?
Chris Bryant
I am afraid that I have been asking the Minister to provide clear definitions and clarity for some time but we certainly did not get much of that yesterday. My point is fairly simple. The amendment that has come from their lordships would not kill off the decision that might come through if fewer than 40% of voters voted in the referendum in May, it simply means that Parliament would have to take cognisance of the decision, so it would be an advisory referendum rather than an implementing referendum.