Public Disorder

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly look at what my hon. Friend says. Of course, the age of criminal responsibility is 10, and we do not have any proposals to change that, but she raises an important issue about whether the police at any moment needed to hang back because of the very young age of the looters—some of the people doing the looting were under the age of 10—and I will certainly get back to her about that.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

For the past two nights in my constituency, I have had a very heavy police presence, owing to right-wing extremist groups focusing on Eltham and trying to create unrest and bad feeling between different racial groups. Although we want to support people who are public-spirited and come out to defend their communities, as some of my constituents have done, will the Prime Minister join me in asking those people not to be diverted from their efforts by those extremists who seek to exploit the situation?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman speaks not only for his constituents, but, frankly, for the whole House in deprecating the English Defence League and all it stands for. On its attempt to say that it will somehow help to restore order, I have described some parts of our society as sick, and there is none sicker than the EDL.

Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Clive Efford Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I remind the House that when Members refer to other Members they should do so by referring to their constituencies, rather than by name?

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

When the Prime Minister was Leader of the Opposition, was phone hacking discussed in any of his meetings with John Yates or any other Metropolitan police officer?

[The Prime Minister]

I have had a range of meetings with John Yates over the past year, mostly about terrorism—[Interruption.] I do not recall every single conversation that I have had; you would be mad to pretend that you do. You would need to be superhuman to remember every conversation that you have. I do know that almost all the conversations that I have had with John Yates over the past year have been about terrorist issues. The key point about my chief of staff’s e-mail was that he was trying to ensure that the police did not do anything inappropriate.

Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Clive Efford Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes]

I absolutely agree. The speech that the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) made in the other day’s debate was not at all persuasive about that point. There were calls for a judicial inquiry from my right hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Mr Sanders) and others. That was on the previous Government’s agenda, so it could have been held, just as legislation could have been implemented following the Information Commissioner’s report and recommendations. However, we had neither an inquiry nor the implementation of higher penalties.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hughes]

I will not, because I want to make some progress, but if I have any spare time, of course I will.

We gave warnings from 2009 that the fit and proper person test needed to be applied more robustly and that we needed to be aware of the abuse of positions. I just record that right up to last year’s general election, and indeed to December 2010, my right hon. Friends the Deputy Prime Minister and for Twickenham (Vince Cable) assiduously made the case that there was something very rotten in the way in which we regulated the media industry.

The warnings from our party about Andy Coulson started in May 2009. They were made on record and off the record. We regret that they were not heeded, but the decision was not for us, but for the Prime Minister, and he explained it today. As a postscript, however, let me say that from all that I know, have read and have heard, Ed Llewellyn’s role has been entirely beyond reproach throughout. I do not think that anything that he did or did not do can be regarded as inappropriate in the context of the investigations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I believe that I am the first London Member from the Opposition Benches to speak in the debate. That is unfortunate, given the prominence of the Metropolitan police in our discussions, but I hope that my colleagues from London will catch your eye later, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I would like to say a lot, but we are constrained by time at the tail end of our discussion. Suffice it to say that I believe that the power of News International and many other media organisations, as many hon. Members have said, has distorted the way in which politicians and others in public life go about their daily business, but what is wrong is the fact that the ownership of our media is out of kilter. It should not just be an issue about BSkyB and whether News International increases its influence in it; it should be about whether News International is a fit and proper company and should be allowed to continue to hold sway over such a large part of our national media.

In what is left of my time allocation, I wish to speak about the influence of the Mayor of London on the Metropolitan police. I think it was wrong for him to say that the phone hacking issue was “codswallop”—that it was a plot

“cooked up by the Labour party”,

that it was

“a song and dance about nothing”,

and that he was not going to become involved in the issue, only as far back as September 2010. The Metropolitan police were under pressure from people outside the House and some hon. Members, as we all know, to reopen the investigation and look into the phone hacking scandal. It was bound to influence the views of those police that the Mayor of London, who is supposedly given influence over issues relating to policing matters on behalf of people in London, had already made public statements to say that he did not think such an inquiry worth while—that he thought it was a load of rubbish. It was bound to influence their thinking about whether to reopen that inquiry.

I sincerely hope that the Leveson inquiry will look into that fact, because it will be an important factor in whether we decide to go forward with elected police commissioners throughout the country, because when the Government advocate elected police commissioners, they always use the Mayor of London as an example. Well, actually, the Mayor of London is accountable to the Metropolitan Police Authority for what he does with the police. The members of the MPA have a great deal of influence in London, and it is a democratically based body, with other co-opted members to make it broadly representative of London. We are diluting the influence of the MPA and converting it into a panel. We are not giving it any teeth whatever to enable it to have oversight, and we are placing all the influence and power in the hands of a directly elected Mayor or his appointed deputy Mayor.

The problem that we have faced is the over-burgeoning power of the media and their ability to twist and manipulate individuals, particularly politicians at times. I would stand here and criticise the former leader of my party for going halfway around the world to pay court to Rupert Murdoch—I made that criticism openly at the time and I do so now—but that is because those individuals’ power has been too great. We have seen the tentacles go deep into the Metropolitan police and into our political life. We have officers who are now probably facing prison because they were corrupted by journalists throwing money around; we have politicians who have been too close and embarrassed themselves by their relationships with the media. It is extremely corrupting.

The Mayor of London said that this matter was “codswallop” only days after the article appeared in The New York Times which resulted in the reopening of the Metropolitan police inquiry. So we have to look at how the Mayor has been influenced by the media and the way he has used the media.

[John Mann]

Would my hon. Friend be astonished to learn that one of his constituents, as a police officer in 2005, received a suspended jail sentence for selling information to The Sun for a mere £200? Does that show how endemic the problem has become?

[Clive Efford]

I think it does, and it shows why Parliament was recalled so that we could have this debate. I am sure that that police officer, for that small sum of money, seriously regrets his judgment, but what underlies such transactions is the power of the media to suggest that their influence stretches so far that they are not accountable, and will never be accountable, because they are under the umbrella and shield of our protection because they think themselves so great and so mighty. The fact that Rebekah Brooks thought she could walk into Parliament and say, “Yes, we pay the police,” and walk out again without being held to account for it was an absolute disgrace. The Met must never return to that again.

The Mayor of London, however, used his influence to try to stall the inquiry. His reasons for that will have to come out as these matters are investigated, but without question his attitude to the investigation into phone hacking could only have had influence on the thoughts and decisions of the police, and that must be investigated.

[Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

My old friend the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) is right in one respect: there are faults in all parties in the House and successive Governments in not tackling this issue early enough. However, I completely reject his criticism of the Mayor of London, because the Mayor’s comments predate the most recent allegations.

[Clive Efford]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Oliver Heald]

No, I will not, because I have so little time. That is the way it is tonight.

I shall make three points. First, people in this country have a fundamental right to live under the rule of law, but Members on both sides of the House must look back on this period and ask themselves this: did we uphold the rule of law? As the hon. Gentleman said, journalists felt that they could break the law willy-nilly, and people felt that they could talk to Select Committees about breaking the law, and nothing would happen. That is a failure of this Parliament over a period of time to uphold one of the basic rights of our people.

That is why it is right that the Prime Minister has agreed to a full, judge-led, independent inquiry, and why it is right that we have a proper police investigation under Sue Akers to go after the evidence. Our Select Committees did a good job yesterday in showing that even the most powerful people in the land, and even the world, can be questioned before a Select Committee just like anyone else. That is how it should be in our country. People should not feel that they can get away with it.

Let us ask how we got into that position. Many hon. Members have said that after 1992, Labour politicians were desperate for the good opinion of the media. They went out to the Canary Islands and all sorts of places—[Interruption.] They went to the Cayman Islands and Australia too. They were out to curry favour with the media regardless. The combination of currying favour with the media and the sofa-style government that we had under Tony Blair meant that we ended up with the sort of situation that was described by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), who said that the Attorney-General was told in a letter from the police that a vast quantity of private information and criminality needed investigation, but nothing happened.

How did that happen? It should not have been possible, and there should have been a report to the Cabinet. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said that no such report ever occurred. That reminds us of what the Butler inquiry said about sofa-style government, when there are no formalities. We ended up going off to war in Iraq without members of the Cabinet seeing all the papers. That same, sloppy approach is not the way to run a country. It is right that we have the inquiries, but the House must get together to ensure the proper rule of law.

My second point is that the separation of the criminal justice system from politicians is very important. I was surprised to hear the Leader of the Opposition say that he expected the Prime Minister to be briefed by an assistant commissioner about an ongoing police inquiry. The assistant commissioner actually offered that service to No. 10, but Edward Llewellyn was absolutely right to say no, because we want that separation. The cosiness of the police and the media, and sofa-style government, blurs the formalities that protect our constitution.

Finally, I want to mention the presumption of innocence. When in opposition, it is easy to cast stones and to rely on bits of gossip and speculation as if they are evidence, but in this country, thank goodness, we have a fair system of trial with the presumption of innocence at its core. I would not want that to change. All those who throw stones and pretend that someone is guilty just because a newspaper says so ought to think about where that leads. Let us stick up for the constitutional principles of the rule of law and the separation of powers, and let us ensure that we continue to have fair trials.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973

Clive Efford Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

Not for the moment.

I say to the Government—and the Prime Minister will know this—it is incredibly important that the international community observes the terms of the resolution in its actions and in what it says. I shall not rehearse the arguments about past conflicts, but we all know that ambiguity about the case for intervention is often one of the biggest problems that a mission faces. The House should be clear about the degree of difficulty of what we are attempting in securing a coalition from beyond western powers to support intervention in another, north African, state, so we cannot afford mission creep, and that includes in our public pronouncements.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The point that my right hon. Friend is making is important. Gaddafi could prove to be very difficult indeed to remove, so we cannot impose limitations on the length of time that the action and the enforcement of the resolution will take. Civilians in Tripoli are as valuable as civilians in Benghazi, so the actions that we take will be measured by the people who support them, which will be a judgment on whether what we are doing is in line with the international agreement. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is an important point we must always bear in mind?

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is very important in all our public pronouncements to be careful about what we say. As the Prime Minister said, in principle it must be for the Libyan people to determine the shape of their future.

Military action by the coalition can be accompanied by a wide range of non-military measures to continue the pressure on the Libyan regime. Security Council resolution 1973, as well as resolution 1970, sets out all the measures that can be taken, including cutting off access to money, trade, weapons and international legitimacy for Colonel Gaddafi. And we need to remind Libyan leaders and commanders that they will be brought to justice for any crimes they commit against their people.

Japan and the Middle East

Clive Efford Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend speaks with great expertise about these matters. There is an Arab face on this already because of what the Arab League and the Gulf Co-operation Council have said, and that makes a big difference. When we speak to Arab leaders in the Gulf, they are very clear—unanimous, even—that Gaddafi has to go, the regime cannot continue, it is not legitimate and the situation is bad for the region. I think there would be support were a no-fly zone to happen—not only verbal support but, I hope, military support as well.

I cannot be specific about the two countries that my hon. Friend mentions. Obviously Egypt has all sorts of challenges in front of it at the moment, but I have had personal strong support from other Gulf leaders on this issue.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The fact that arms that could have been sold by this country and many other western countries are being used against the people fighting for freedom in Libya highlights the unacceptable nature of the arms trade. Were there any discussions at the European Union about the possibility of international agreement about who we should deal with regarding arms in the future, to prevent such circumstances from coming about?

[The Prime Minister]

There was not that discussion at the European Council on Friday, because we were really talking about the two issues of the immediate situation in Libya and the neighbourhood policy that Europe should have towards north Africa and countries that are yearning for democracy.

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we have to consider such issues closely. I do not believe that the arms trade is always and everywhere a bad thing, because small countries have a right to defend themselves. A responsible trade, properly regulated, is acceptable, but although we have some of the toughest rules, we have to ask ourselves, “Are they working, and how can we improve on them?”

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can give my hon. Friend a positive answer. The Localism Bill addresses that issue. As well as doing that, it is important that where local communities are affected by things such as onshore wind, they should make sure that they benefit from those developments. The Localism Bill brings a whole new approach that will much better settle this difficult debate than what has been done until now.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Q15. Today, there is an order before Parliament to proscribe the TTP—Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan—the Pakistan Taliban. Just one week into the term of office of the Prime Minister’s predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), the right hon. Gentleman demanded to know why my right hon. Friend had not proscribed Hizb ut-Tahrir. Just eight months into the Prime Minister’s term of office, can he explain to the House why he has not fulfilled his manifesto commitment?

[The Prime Minister]

We could put it another way round: why did the last Government have 13 years, yet the Pakistani Taliban were never banned? It has taken us eight months to do what they failed to do in 12 years.

Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I should like to associate myself with all the compliments that have been passed to the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie), who has done us all a great service in initiating this debate.

I thought, tantalisingly, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you were going to call me after the hon. Member for Worthing West (Peter Bottomley). Since I was first selected to stand against him in 1989, we have seldom seen eye to eye on anything, but today I agreed with every word he said. The fact that IPSA has managed to bridge that chasm should be a serious warning to it indeed.

One of the ironies of the debate is that what initiated this process was a desire to deal with MPs who were in some way feathering their nests at public expense, but what we finished up with is the taxpayer paying out more money to solve the problem of people saying, “Woe betide these profligate and self-serving MPs.” We even had the involvement of Sir Thomas Legg, who barely washed his face in the amount of money that he brought back compared with what his investigation cost the House.

What we really want from today’s debate, as everyone has stressed, is for IPSA to listen. When my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd), the Chair of the parliamentary Labour party, and I met Sir Ian Kennedy, we felt that everything we put to him was not sticking, and that he was not listening to anything we said about what is necessary for MPs and how MPs conduct their business. He just dismissed everything—he felt that he had all the answers and that he knew what MPs were about. I wonder whether some of the more Eurosceptic Members recognise that the system is akin to the EU. I am neither Eurosceptic nor Europhile, but there is a complete lack of public accountability and civil servants have been let rip, and we have ended up with a huge edifice. Every solution requires more expenditure and yet another department—someone mentioned that there is a new department for dealing with the media and press. Each problem that IPSA comes across seems to mean that it needs to spend more money, so we have now ended up with a very expensive edifice.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) was absolutely right to warn us about losing the principle of the independence of IPSA and said that we would do so at our peril. We would be wrong to dismiss that as an attempt by him to create headlines and to be obstructive. We have suffered in the past from fiddling and interference from the Government and Opposition Front Benches—over the years, that created the mess that we got into. We should remember that, under the previous system, somebody felt it appropriate to apply for payment for a duck house. The fact that that claim was not paid is often overlooked, but that someone felt it appropriate to apply in the first place shows how far gone and how wrong that system was.

[Mr Gale]

I know of no Member of the House who wants to overturn IPSA’s independence, in which respect the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) was quite wrong. Our problem is that the people conducting the review of IPSA are the people who were responsible for creating the problem in the first place. Would it not be a good idea to have an independent review?

[Clive Efford]

I would not dismiss that suggestion. I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw, because no one is suggesting that we lose that principle, but my hon. Friend was none the less right to warn us.

IPSA must set the framework within which MPs operate, but it must be sympathetic to what MPs confront in their daily business, which it has not been, even in respect of its computer system. IPSA told us that we must pay for surgery rents under the office rent heading, but there is no heading for surgery rents, so everything comes out of office rents. I suspect that my constituents who examine the system will wonder just how many offices I have. IPSA did not listen to MPs when it set up that system, but it must listen to this debate and the reasonable arguments that MPs have made, and change fundamentally.

I am a London MP and my staff are all based in my constituency. I have had the same staff since I was first elected. The inflationary increase in the staffing allowance was not a living increase, so if I had followed that, those staff would effectively have taken a real-terms pay cut. Instead, I vired money from my incidental expenses account into my staffing account to pay them a bonus at the end of the year, which meant that they got a decent salary increase. There is no viring any more, no spinal column, no incremental increase, and no recognition of the length of service of our staff. I really hope that IPSA takes that on board and rewards our staff.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), the shadow Leader of the House, talked about direct payments and we must move to such a system. I know of Members of Parliament who have not spoken in the debate—we should remember that some Members do not wish to pour their hearts out in the Chamber and have the media raking over their personal affairs—who have had to sell their assets to pay their office rent and other costs, and to set up a basic bursary so that they have an account from which they can pay out money before claiming it back. Some Members of Parliament to whom I have spoken have been in tears because of the financial situation in which IPSA has put them. They are not here to speak in this debate, but that fact should not be lost on IPSA.

If IPSA has not been listening to the debate, I hope that it will read it and take on board all the points that hon. Members have made. IPSA should change the system so that Members can serve the public in the way in which we hoped we would when we were elected.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Until now, local government boundaries have formed the building blocks on which constituencies are made up. It is important that local communities are understood so that electoral boundaries are easily and clearly understood by people who live within them. May I stress to the hon. Gentleman the need to make the case that local communities must take precedence in all decision making on future and current boundary reviews, which will affect parliamentary boundaries in future?

[Mr Streeter]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very powerful point, and the LGBCE does indeed take into account the wishes and interests of local communities in settling where ward boundaries should lie.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Tuesday 27th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

In considering how to reduce the cost of politics and the size of the House, which is far larger than the vast majority of equivalent Chambers in mature democracies around the world, we had to balance two things. As I said, we had to balance reducing the cost—50 fewer MPs means a saving of about £12 million per year—against the ability of hon. Members on both sides of the House to serve their constituencies and constituents. That is why we arrived at the cut of around 7.6% in the total number, to 600 MPs.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

In his statement on 5 July, the Deputy Prime Minister said he wanted to empower local people, but the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill specifically excludes the right of the Boundary Commission to hold local public inquiries. How is that empowering local people to have understandable, local boundaries that respect acknowledged local communities?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), said earlier, we are extending the period of consultation on proposals for the independent boundary commissions from one month to three—[Interruption.] I hear a lot of chuntering from Opposition Members, but I ask them again to consider this question: what is wrong with trying to create greater fairness and equality in the conduct of our democracy? They seem to think that the measure is somehow targeted at them, but I remind them that the problem of gaps in the electoral register occurs not just in inner-city areas, but in coastal constituencies, where there is a pattern of under-registration, and in constituencies—

G8 and G20 Summits

Clive Efford Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right. There were discussions about what could be done, such as having international bodies at the various crossing points to try to examine what is being brought in. The change that has taken place is encouraging on one level because instead of effectively banning everything, Israel has listed those things that it will not allow in, which should lead to increased humanitarian capacity in Gaza. That has a very long way to go, and everybody knows that we are not going to sort out the problem of the middle east peace process while there is, effectively, a giant open prison in Gaza.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Were there any discussions about the possibility of one of our European neighbours falling into further recession? In that eventuality, what contingencies would be considered?

[The Prime Minister]

There are great concerns, particularly in the eurozone, about the sovereign debt and other problems that countries face. We should be constructive. As I have said before, I do not think that we should join the euro. In my view, we should never join the euro. However, the eurozone is important to us, and those countries sorting out their problems is important to us. We should not stand in their way if they want to take steps to do that. The key point for us is not putting more money in and not passing powers from London to Brussels. Inasmuch as those countries find ways of sorting out their problems, we should back them.