Phone Hacking and the Media

Denis MacShane Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Any character assessment should be done by someone independent—as we have been discovering, independence is important.

May I take this moment to correct what I said earlier to the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson)? I believe that what the Prime Minister said was that he has not spoken to Andy Coulson recently.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I do not think that the Secretary of State or the Leader of the Opposition were in the House about a decade ago, when there were quite a lot of references to, and discussions about, the occult financing of the Tory party by the then Mr Michael Ashcroft in Belize. That was quite properly investigated by The Times newspaper. Since then, the now Lord Ashcroft has had his second chance—we should leave it at that. In the second inquiry, will the Secretary of State focus a bit on how we can have an ethics of journalism that protects not us, but the little person? Those are the ones who are destroyed by The Sun, The Mail on Sunday, the News of the World and all those foul practices.

[Mr Hunt]

I am not quite sure that I understand the first and second halves of the right hon. Gentleman’s question, but let me just say that the second inquiry will absolutely concentrate on the ethics of the press. The lesson from last week is that what changed the public mood was the fact that phone hacking moved from being something that affected celebrities and politicians to something that tragically affected members of the public.