Phone Hacking

Debate between Frank Dobson and Alan Johnson

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

I will not detain the House for long. I put my name down to speak because I believe that we need to persuade those on the Treasury Bench to have a public inquiry, and I wanted to give my perspective. The Attorney-General was his usual assured and eloquent self on that issue. He got into trouble on the two issues on which the Government have been wrong today. The Prime Minister was right to say that we would have public inquiries. He was right to put that in the plural, because we may need several inquiries. He was wrong to say that Rebekah Brooks should not resign—[Hon. Members: “He didn’t say that.”] No, he did not say that, but when Hansard is published tomorrow, people will be able to read between the lines. The Prime Minister is also wrong to go ahead with the takeover of BSkyB.

I am conscious of the points that the Attorney-General made. I was a Home Secretary in the previous Administration. In looking for a public inquiry, we have to explain to the House a little about the atmospherics when the previous Administration took decisions, and did not take decisions, relating to this case. I am conscious that of the four Home Secretaries between 2005 and 2010, I am the only one still in this House. I wish I could give an eloquent explanation of how brilliant I was as a Home Secretary that would give people an insight into why I did not act, but I cannot.

What I can say is that in July 2009, when the revelation was made about Gordon Taylor on the front page of The Guardian, we looked at the matter carefully. Like all good Secretaries of State, I got another Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), to answer the urgent question, while I did other things. There was not much that we could do beyond asking the Metropolitan Police Commissioner John Yates and others whether there was anything behind the story. The atmospherics—the public mood and the mood in Parliament—said that this was an obsession of one newspaper. While we are criticising the press, let us praise The Guardian for doggedly staying on this case, despite all the attempts to stop it. We might also mention The New York Times in dispatches. We were told that this was the obsession of one newspaper and a few Back-Benchers. I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) for continuing to be irritants on this issue.

What was the view in the Home Office at the time? We looked seriously at whether to have an independent review of the Metropolitan police investigation. The hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) is right that although lots of things have happened since 2006, everything takes us back to the original inquiry led by Andy Hayman in 2005-06. All the information that is emerging was there at that time. We thought about getting Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary to do an independent investigation. Incidentally, I was told at the time that this matter was outside the IPCC’s remit. That might not be the case now. My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) is right to ask if it has a role to play. There was a view that we should wait for the Director of Public Prosecutions to report. It was Keir Starmer by that point, I believe, not Ken Macdonald. The DPP said that, on the information given to him by the police—those were the precise words used—there was no cause for any further investigation. We were all swimming around wondering whether we were receiving the correct information.

I shall quote something that my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn said in his written to statement to Parliament when he was Police Minister, after the fracas around the July 2009 incident. He stated:

“As mentioned in his statement on 9 July, Assistant Commissioner John Yates is ensuring that the Metropolitan Police Service has been diligent, reasonable and sensible, and taken all proper steps to ensure that where it has evidence that people have been the subject of any form of phone tapping (by Mr. Clive Goodman or Mr. Glen Mulcaire) or that there is any suspicion that they might have been; that they have been informed. The decision to inform individuals that they have been targeted for illegal interception of their phone communications is an operational matter for the police.”—[Official Report, 14 July 2009; Vol. 496, c. 11WS.]

Clear statements were being made to us. Ministers will know that if the Home Office called in an independent investigator—HMIC or the IPCC—it would cause serious concern, because politicians would be interfering in an operational matter. For all those reasons, even though I and my good friend the former Police Minister may find some of the questions awkward, I believe that a public inquiry is the right way to go.

I have huge regard for the work of the Metropolitan police, but was it being evasive, dishonest or lethargic? I think it is one of those three.

[Frank Dobson]

Or all three.

[Alan Johnson]

Or was it being all three? The hon. Member for Maldon used a vivid phrase about rolling away a huge stone and looking under it. I believe that there was a certain lethargy with so much else going on, and an attitude of “We’ve got two people banged up. Do we need to go any further into this?” Because of the diligence of Members of Parliament—Back Benchers, not Front Benchers—and of some parts of the press in refusing to give up, we can now roll away the stone. Although what we find underneath will be uncomfortable, it will be good for this House and for our society to do so.