Local Audit and Accountability Bill [Lords]

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Williamson]

I rise to speak against this Orwellian clause and in favour of the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andy Sawford). He is absolutely right to say that the Government are seeking to put the Secretary of State in the position of censor-in-chief. We live in the United Kingdom. I thought that the Government believed in freedom of speech and the free press, but it turns out that that is not the case when it comes to publications produced by local authorities. It is clear that the Secretary of State is setting himself up as some sort of Orwellian big brother figure. If the clause goes through, the Department for Communities and Local Government should be renamed the ministry of truth. It is all right for the DCLG to issue draft press releases praising the Government. As my hon. Friend the Member for Corby said, as long as local government is praising the policies of central Government that is okay, but if it has the temerity to point out that in some way what the Government are doing might have a negative impact on the communities that they represent, then woe betide them; that is not acceptable. When the Secretary of State seeks to take that kind of power to himself, we have to ask what kind of country we want to live in. This is completely wrong. Just look at the document—it could be a Tory hand-out. It has even suggested the headline that the local authorities might like to put on their press releases. It reads, “Pickles praises troubled families programme”—so, big up the Secretary of State, but, whatever you do, do not say anything that could be interpreted as negative.

My hon. Friend the Member for Corby pointed out that there is absolutely no evidence suggesting widespread abuse of the voluntary code. Indeed, we would be hard-pressed to find any example, let alone widespread examples, so this provision is completely over the top. We have talked about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but it is more like using a pile-driver to crack a minuscule nut. There is no example of any abuse. It is clear, therefore, that the Secretary of State is seeking to set himself up as the censor-in-chief.

In Committee, I challenged Government Members to come up with some examples of the abuses that merit this heavy-handed legislative response. The first out of the traps was the hon. Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham), who came up with the ludicrous assertion that legislation is merited to stop a photograph of the Labour leader of his local borough council appearing in the council newspaper with a Labour party pen. A pen with the Labour logo on it was an abuse that merited legislation—talk about crackers, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) said. It is unbelievable. We are talking about legislation to stop local authorities publishing their council newspapers, giving information to the local community about matters affecting them, and it is suggested that the Secretary of State should be put in charge because a Labour leader appeared in a council newspaper holding a pen with a Labour logo on it.

The hon. Member for High Peak must have scrutinised that photograph with a magnifying glass to be able to see the logo, let alone to suggest that it would influence people. He dug himself an even bigger hole by comparing it with product placement, which is banned on the television. He said that we do not see packets of cornflakes on the table in “EastEnders”. Crackers really does not cover it.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making some cogent points. If that photograph had appeared on a Member of Parliament’s website paid for by IPSA, IPSA would have banned it. I am not sure whether that helps or hinders his argument, but someone else would want to ban that logo placement.