Privileges

Debate between Damian Collins and Paul Farrelly

Thursday 27th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Damian Collins]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that Tom Crone’s role as legal manager would surely be to act on behalf of the company to gather whatever advice he needed to advise whoever within the company—senior executives at all levels—of impending issues and problems, and that it is therefore right to assume that he would have made his opinion and that of Michael Silverleaf available to anyone he felt he had to make them available to?

[Paul Farrelly]

I thank the new Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. There are disputes within the company about who told what to whom at what time. If he will bear with me, in a moment I will come on to something about which there has been no dispute.

We know, too, that back in 2006, when Rebekah Brooks was editor of The Sun, the police informed her that her own phone had been hacked. Courtesy of evidence submitted to the Leveson inquiry in February 2012, we know that she had a long conversation with a police source that was relayed to Tom Crone and then by him in an email to Andy Coulson on 15 September 2006. That email referred to more than 100 victims across all walks of life, not just the royal family, who would have been of interest to royal reporter Clive Goodman.

On reviewing all the lengthy correspondence the Culture, Media and Sport Committee received at the time, it is clear that Rebekah Brooks led us a merry dance for nine months before our 2010 report, saying that she would give evidence in person and then declining. In her final written reply to the right hon. Member for Maldon, on 8 February 2010, she had this to say about what had been known at News International from the police about the extent of hacking:

“I understand that, at some stage between the arrests of Mr Mulcaire and Mr Goodman on 8 August 2006, and their first appearance in court on 29 November 2006, it became known, from information provided by the police, that Mr Mulcaire had accessed the voicemails of people other than Royal Household employees. It was not known how many.”

Compare that to the email from 15 September 2006 that was cited at Leveson. She does not say that it was she herself who received the information from a police source, and the final sentence appears to be a complete untruth. The email cites 100 to 110 victims—a very precise number. Did Mr Crone simply make that number up for Mr Coulson after talking to Ms Brooks? It all certainly contradicts the central assertion that the Sienna Miller case was Ms Brooks’s moment of epiphany about the severity of the situation, four years later. Along with the other replies that Ms Brooks gave us—not least over the cost indemnity arrangements with Mr Mulcaire after he was sacked—this also merits closer analysis than was evident, I am afraid to say, in the Privileges Committee’s report. On all those grounds, I believe that the Privileges Committee is wrong in being “unable to draw” the conclusion that News International misled us, and is rather premature in not considering it

“to have committed a contempt.”

As far as parliamentary privilege is concerned, what is important now is what happens in the future. In chapter 8 of its report, the Privileges Committee is quite right to note that the work of the 2013 Joint Committee has not been taken forward. When we on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee were finalising our 2012 report, as the right hon. Member for Maldon mentioned, we summoned the Murdochs to appear in front of us, as we knew they were in the country to apologise to the family of the murdered teenager Milly Dowler over phone hacking. The uncertainty over our step was what to do if they declined to come. While we were finalising our report, we asked time and again for advice on what sanctions might apply in this day and age for misleading a Select Committee. Too often, I am afraid we found that in the reality behind the rhetoric, the parliamentary emperor apparently had no clothes. That situation needs to be readdressed urgently.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House—

(i) approves the First Report from the Committee of Privileges (HC 662);

(ii) having regard to the conclusions of the Committee in respect of Mr Colin Myler, considers that Mr Myler misled the Culture, Media and Sport Committee by answering questions falsely about his knowledge of evidence that other News of the World employees had been involved in phone-hacking and other wrongdoing, and therefore formally admonishes him for his conduct; and

(iii) having regard to the conclusions of the Committee in respect of Mr Tom Crone, considers that Mr Crone misled the Culture, Media and Sport Committee by giving a counter-impression of the significance of confidentiality in the Gordon Taylor settlement and by answering questions falsely about his knowledge of evidence that other News of the World employees had been involved in phone-hacking and other wrongdoing, and therefore formally admonishes him for his conduct.

That the matter of the exercise and enforcement of the powers of the House in relation to select committees and contempts be referred to the Committee of Privileges.

Supporting the Creative Economy

Debate between Damian Collins and Paul Farrelly

Thursday 13th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Damian Collins]

The Minister gives an excellent example of the sort of investment that the film industry and production industry are bringing to this country. Of course, as he will be aware, we anticipate success in the film awards this year for “12 Years A Slave”, which of course is a film that Britain can be proud of. It is based on a book published many years ago by Penguin. Writers involved in the film industry are an important part of the talent mix. Whether the writers of original scripts or writers who adapt books that have previously been published, they are all part of the same ecosystem.

When I worked in the adverting industry, I was always impressed that Soho could draw on the talents of such a broad base of people, which is why people from around the world come to be here. A film company seeking to make a big feature film can come to the UK and know that we have the facilities to make it and the talents to complete the job at every level. That is what makes working in the creative industry in the UK so exciting.

The development of creative centres of excellence, not only in London but around the country, is an important part of the ecology of the creative economy and its future success. We do not want our creative industries purely to be centred and located in the traditional centres of excellence in London and the south-east; we want to have a strong network of them right across the country. We can see that happening now. Particularly with the investment in Media City at Salford Quays and projects such as the Sharp Project, Manchester city council has come together with members of the business community to create a hub for creativity in that city. Such developments are helping to make Manchester the fastest growing media city, or creative city, in Europe. In Birmingham, there is an important and growing creative hub and community in Digbeth, and in Belfast, around the Titanic centre and the Titanic quarter, near the old Harland and Wolff shipyards, there is another important centre of the creative economy.

Yesterday, I attended an event focused on the creative industries in my constituency and the rest of east Kent, where we looked at the development of creative and digital clusters around the east Kent coast, particularly in Folkestone, Ramsgate and Canterbury. In my constituency of Folkestone and Hythe, we now have more than 200 businesses that can be considered as part of the creative technology economy, according to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s definition of that economy. It is a rapidly growing sector employing a large number of people, and that growth is only accelerating in the scope and range of the tasks that the sector is undertaking, as well as in the number of opportunities for work that exist within the sector.

One of the challenges is how we link together these different centres of excellence—these different hubs and clusters—and how we ensure that we have good links, both through broadband infrastructure and transport infrastructure, that connect the hubs in places such as east Kent to the centres of excellence in Tech City in London and elsewhere.

Sleeping Giant Media is a search engine optimisation and social media marketing campaign company based in Folkestone. A few years ago, it was started from nothing and it now employs more than 20 people. There are many reasons why such a company chooses to locate in Folkestone. The quality of life in Folkestone and the low cost of doing business there will be among them, but Folkestone is less than an hour by high-speed rail from one of the world centres of excellence in the creative economy—Tech City in London—and that is a key reason why those businesses are in Folkestone.

Businesses in Digbeth in Birmingham, working in places such as the Fazeley Studios and the Custard Factory, have a great place to do business and a great community of people to work alongside, but it is their proximity to a major global centre of excellence in London that makes it so attractive to be there.

We can have the physical infrastructure and facilities to support an expanding creative economy. The Select Committee underlines the importance of these hubs and clusters. It was right that the Committee visited silicon valley as part of its study tour, because that is a great example of a successful cluster that has given birth to a number of great companies.

It is interesting that companies such as Facebook and Google have been born out of research laboratories and facilities, not only of universities such as Stanford, but out of precursor companies in that industry, such as Hewlett-Packard and Xerox, the success of which spawned further companies. We hope that in London new businesses will come out of our creative and digital economy as it develops, in turn spawning the creation of further businesses down the line and employing yet more people.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer set out his ambition that London should be the tech hub and creative hub for Europe. We are well on the way to achieving that, if it has not already been achieved. One key aspect of making that possible is attracting businesses, investment and talent. We want to see as many people as possible born in Britain taking advantage of the opportunities to work in such a centre of excellence. We also need to ensure that we can bring in the best talent from around the world. At the moment, the industry is growing apace, but we do not currently have enough people to satisfy all the demand. Therefore, having the right policy on visas that allows the most talented people to work in the UK is a crucial issue facing development.

Another element of that development is ensuring that young people have the skills that they need and the understanding to take part in this growing sector of the economy. The importance of young people’s having the opportunity to develop their creative talents at a young age, when at school, through music and the arts has been discussed in this debate. I do not believe that the Secretary of State for Education’s focus on some core academic subjects in any way undermines that. People need good skills and qualifications in those core subjects to do almost anything that they would seek to do; that is an important part of a good education. There is no reason why creativity and artistic talent and flair cannot form part of the curriculum. Schools can do that. A longer school day will give schools many more options in pursuing that.

There are also uses for such talents in other sectors in the creative industry, particularly for young people who might want to work in the video game sector. We want a nation of young people who not only play video games, which are increasingly made in this country and exported around the world, but know how to build them. That is why bringing computer science into the science curriculum, as an equal science alongside chemistry, physics and biology, is an important step. We need more young people learning computer coding at school, so they know the building blocks of computer programming and the creativity needed to build websites, computer games and animation programmes. That should be an important part of the curriculum.

[Paul Farrelly]

I recently went through GCSE choices with my son and saw first hand how the school is being measured and how it felt that it would be measured in future. Once the subjects of that measurement are prescribed, there is a great limit on choice that drives subjects such as computing out of being an effective choice.

[Damian Collins]

I note the hon. Gentleman’s point, but that is why I said that it is important that computer science is given equal standing and equal weight, alongside other areas of the science curriculum, as part of the core science subjects that young people can study. However, we must also consider what people do a long time before they get to GCSE choices. That is why code clubs in primary schools are important.

I saw Google run one of its code club projects at the Folkestone primary academy school in my constituency, getting primary schoolchildren to learn basic programming techniques, which is something that those of us who are old enough to remember did on BBC Microcomputers and Spectrum computers back in the 1980s, although advances in software render that sort of programming redundant. Teaching coding is being brought back to young children of primary school age. Code clubs can be part of extra-curricular activities, as part of a longer school day, as well as being something that young people can do in evenings out of school.

[Sandra Osborne in the Chair]

In Hackney, with the support of Tech City and businesses in that area, a concerted effort is being made to take coding in particular into the schools that surround the Tech City area, so that young people do not grow up just seeing the new glass buildings and office blocks and understanding that people are working there but never acquiring the skills to take advantage of the jobs that are being created. It is very important that we focus on the educational element of developing talent to work not only on the artistic and creative side of the creative industries, but on the technical side, through coding and programme writing and making.

Another important development that the Government are supporting through the Department for Education is studio schools. In Folkestone, we are about to embark on a project to create a new studio school with a focus on the creative industries, where young people will not only learn subjects linked to the examinations that they will take and the qualifications that they will gain, but do so in conjunction with direct work experience as part of the ordinary school day. Studio schools linked to creative businesses in the towns and cities that they serve are an excellent way to provide that and are an important innovation, alongside having more of an emphasis on creativity and creative skills as part of the school curriculum.

The final point that I want to add to the debate about IP is this. I followed very closely the argument made by the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) in the speech before mine. With regard to private copying, we can look at Nick Hornby’s book “High Fidelity” and the film made of it. In some ways, that book and that film celebrate private copying. That is an important part of the story in the book. It is something that everyone has done or certainly people who grew up with records and cassettes have done. Probably everyone in this room has breached copyright law by copying a record on to a cassette or by loading a CD into a computer and copying the contents on to the hard drive. Each time, they are infringing copyright. Some people may consider that once they have purchased an item of music—once they have paid the fee for it—it is theirs to enjoy personally. A change in the law that reflects something that is already commonplace—that people already do—is not necessarily something that we should be frightened of.

I agree with the hon. Lady, though, that when we get to a position where people can share music, in particular, or film or another form of content through the cloud and potentially with a wider audience, they are getting into a remit where they are no longer privately copying but, either intentionally or unintentionally, distributing content. That is a very different matter and something that we must be very careful of. The hon. Lady is right to raise that important point.