Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)

Damian Collins Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

I would very much like that. This is not a difficult recommendation for the Government to accept. No legislation is required. The Prime Minister could simply accept it and implement it.

We are still waiting for the Government’s response to our report. The previous Government declined to take up the recommendation, explaining that

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

So the Opposition have no one but themselves to blame for the fact that they have had to table this motion today.

Why would it be desirable for the independent adviser to decide what to investigate without waiting for a referral from the Prime Minister? The expectation that that should be the case is generated by the official job title. It is hard to see how any adviser on Ministers’ interests can be deemed to be independent if he is unable to investigate prima facie breaches of the ministerial code without the permission of the Prime Minister. It is only his independence from Government that can provide the necessary assurance that Ministers, including the Prime Minister, will be held objectively and impartially to the standards of the ministerial code. If we deprive him of his independence by depriving him of his initiative, we remove the assurance that we want the public to have.

Above all, it is surely beneficial for Prime Ministers to be absolved of the invidious duty of deciding whether or not to refer potential breaches to the independent adviser. With that responsibility comes a great deal of controversy and public opprobrium. A Prime Minister is damned if he does and damned if he does not. Either he condemns his colleague by referring him, placing him under immediate pressure to resign, or he condemns himself, because it looks as though he is protecting someone from proper scrutiny. I wonder whether, if the Prime Minister had referred this matter to the independent adviser immediately, the Secretary of State would already have been investigated for any breach of the ministerial code by now, and exonerated. This situation places the Secretary of State in an invidious position.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

I am following my hon. Friend’s argument carefully. Does he agree that the Opposition cannot have it both ways? They cannot spend weeks running around saying that Sir Alex Allan should investigate this matter, and then, when he says that he cannot add any more, say that he is not really independent and should not investigate the matter anyway.

[Mr Jenkin]

I will come to that point. It is ironic that the hon. Member for Newport West describes Sir Alex Allan as a poodle. That is not what we said in our report, incidentally. We were concerned about the manner of his appointment, and about whether it was appropriate for a recently retired civil servant to take that role, because he would not be seen as independent. We did not say that he was not fit to fulfil the role.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Denham]

I need to make some progress.

What do we now know about the conduct of the Secretary of State? On 12 November 2010, he was advised not to have any external discussions on the merger and not to write to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills about it. He was told that if he did so, it carried risks to the robustness of the decisions.

As other Members have said, there were two key parts to the memo sent to the Prime Minister. The first lets us know in no unambiguous terms of the Secretary of State’s support for the merger proceeding and his belief that if it were blocked, our media sector would suffer for years. Secondly, however, and of equal significance, it proposed a meeting between the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Business Secretary and the Culture Secretary himself

“to discuss the policy issues that are thrown up as a result.”

In the light of the legal advice given to the Secretary of State on 12 November, he must have known not only that sending that memo was inappropriate, but that the course of action he was proposing—a cabal of Ministers at the top of Government involving the one person who was meant to be acting in a quasi-judicial manner and who should have had no discussions and no connections with anyone else—flew in the face of the advice he had been given and was clearly acting in an entirely inappropriate manner.

[Damian Collins]

The right hon. Gentleman has read out the last sentence of the memo. Will he read out the preceding sentence?

[Mr Denham]

The previous sentence referred to the procedural processes. [Interruption.] Let me acknowledge that the memo refers to the proper procedures, but I will make this point to the House. The Secretary of State seems to be under the impression that if only he litters his memos and letters with the occasional reference to proper procedure, he can behave in a way that is entirely improper and outside the procedure. The sentence about proper procedure to which the hon. Gentleman wants me to refer is totally invalidated by the following sentence, which effectively says, “Let’s do something completely improper”—have a meeting involving the Business Secretary. The Secretary of State, of all people, should have had no discussions with any Minister, the Prime Minister or the Deputy Prime Minister, because he was meant to be acting in a quasi-judicial manner.

My final point is about the relevance of the motion. I believe that the Secretary of State’s and, indeed, the Prime Minister’s actions in concealing this memo are an absolute disgrace, placing the advice that the Cabinet Secretary was able to give us in a very bad light. They failed to correct that; they failed to go to the Cabinet Secretary to say, “You should know about his memo.” What is more, and it is directly relevant to the motion, when the Culture Secretary had the opportunity to put the record straight on 25 April in response to my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell), he failed to do so. He has concealed the existence of the memo, concealed the fact that he was proposing to act in an entirely inappropriate manner and failed to disclose it to the House when he had the opportunity to so. At the very least, shall we say, might that not suggest in the mind of a reasonable person that there is a question or two for Sir Alex Allan to consider? It is the refusal even to look into these matters that makes this matter such a disgrace. That is why this motion should be carried.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

I agree with the hon. Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) that this is an important issue that should be debated, and the Opposition should have an opportunity to raise it on the Floor of the House, but we have heard nothing new today—nothing that has not been covered many times before. With respect, I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr Foster) that I did not hear what the pertinent extra questions that the Secretary of State must answer were; I did not learn what outstanding issues have not yet been covered. We have gone around in circles on all the old issues. That is why it was right for Sir Alex Allan to say there was nothing more he could add because what more was there to say after the six hours of evidence at the Leveson inquiry and all the previous opportunities for questioning on the Floor of the House?

A lot has been made of the memo that the Secretary of State sent to the Prime Minister. It was sent at a time when the Secretary of State had no idea that he would be asked to be involved in this process. The memo rightly deals with media policy and a recommendation about that any decision not to allow the bid to go forward should be taken on grounds of media plurality and not as a result of lobbying from outside organisations which may be open to judicial review. That was a perfectly proper point of view, and perfectly reasonable advice of the sort that a Culture Secretary might give to a Prime Minister.

Earlier, I asked the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) to read out the sentence in which the Secretary of State says:

“It would be totally wrong for the Government to get involved in a competition issue which has to be decided at arm’s length.”

Could the Secretary of State have been any clearer about his views on the process and how it should be followed by members of the Government? We should see his final sentence—his request for a meeting—in the context of that remark. There may well be some broader issues about media policy that it would be perfectly appropriate for the Culture Secretary and the Business Secretary to discuss with the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister—issues that were not at all specific to the merger deal that was on the table. The significance of this memo has been blown out of all proportion.

Let us turn to the guidance that the Secretary of State received. I have not heard any Member question the method by which he sought outside independent advice during the course of his deliberations on this matter, or challenge whether he asked for more information than he needed or ask questions about publishing all the advice on the record so everyone could see it—something no Secretary of State had done before in a similar situation. No one has questioned that, so I challenge the notion that the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) touched on at the beginning of the debate: that this process was always flawed and the Secretary of State was always prejudiced in his view, because there is absolutely no evidence of that at all. There is no evidence that the Secretary of State did anything other than follow the independent advice and undertake his legal obligations as Secretary of State through the process. No Member today has challenged him on the substance of what he did.

Let us consider what the Leader of the Opposition said at the Leveson inquiry yesterday. He was asked what his view was on how this process may be changed for the future—about what we can learn from what has happened. He said he thought politicians should remain involved. When this matter was debated last summer, that was not the view of the shadow Secretary of State, who said politicians should be taken out of the process entirely. The Labour party now believe politicians should be involved in taking these decisions. Where the Secretary of State moves away from independent advice, that should be published, and it can be reviewed and appealed. Under the Leader of the Opposition’s view of how things should work in future, the result would have been exactly the same. Nothing would have been different, because the Secretary of State followed all the advice, so there would have been no need for a referral or appeal. There can be no proper questions about whether something wrong was done.

Opposition Members claim there was some massive conspiracy to favour News Corporation, but they have absolutely no evidence of that. It is a bit like someone complaining that an assailant has picked their pocket even though they remain in possession of the wallet they claim has been stolen. The Secretary of State did not abuse his power. He was not open to influence and external lobbying from News Corporation that in any way could have affected his judgment, because there is no evidence of any such action by him.

[Angie Bray]

Is that not the disgraceful thing about today’s debate? We have had no new evidence, but just a lot of smears and highly partisan accusations. Such behaviour is what demeans the reputation of the House of Commons.

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. I believe there are no grounds for further inquiries; we have covered all these points. This is still an important issue, however, and it is perfectly valid for the House to debate it. The Secretary of State has now had a chance to come to the House and set the record straight on many of the important outstanding questions, but some Opposition Members will never be satisfied. The genesis of this debate came a few weeks ago when the shadow Secretary of State called for the resignation of the Secretary of State without having read the evidence submitted to the Leveson inquiry. The call came only 23 minutes after a great volume of paper had been produced. I cannot presume that the shadow Secretary of State read all of that in the 23 minutes it took to make the decision. She has dug a hole and kept on digging, and not been able to produce any new evidence—nothing of significance at all.

Why are we even in this position, why are we even having this debate and why do we know so much about what the Secretary of State said? At Prime Minister’s questions, the Prime Minister said the only reason why the News Corporation bid could have come in was that the last Government changed the rules on allowing foreign companies to own UK broadcasters. We would all be fascinated to see the chain of e-mails, text messages and correspondence between Ministers in the last Government on that matter, but we will never do so. We only know about this issue because the Prime Minister decided there should be a full public inquiry and all the information has been made public. Ministers have been questioned on the record about it.

We also know from the Leveson inquiry the reasons why Tony Blair did not feel the last Government should have had an inquiry in 2006-07, after the Information Commissioner’s report looking at illegal use of information in news stories had been published and after concerns had been raised. He did not do it because he did not want the fight with the press. The last Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), ducked that issue as well, despite the revelations in The Guardian about phone hacking and despite the work of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee in the last Parliament producing more concerns and more evidence. He did not dare take on the media and have this row.

This Government have done that. In the handling of the News Corporation-BSkyB merger, there can never have been a more transparent process in respect of understanding the thinking and working of a Secretary of State in making his decision. It is clear that the Secretary of State always followed independent advice, and no Member today has advanced any argument that questions that in any way.