Sittings of the House

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point.

There is nothing to stop us working on into the evening if we have the hour of interruption at 7 o’clock on a Tuesday. If we want later sittings on a Tuesday, there is nothing to stop us deciding to have longer Adjournment debates, or more time for Back-bench business. This House can carry on functioning, but 7 o’clock is a perfectly reasonable time at which to set the hour of interruption when Government business should finish.

That is why I support the change in business on Tuesday. I will support the status quo on Monday, however, as I understand that many Members have to travel a significant distance or get things done in their constituencies on a Monday morning. Although I would be happier to start slightly earlier on Mondays, I would not wish to impose that on colleagues. We are all here in London on Monday night, however, so why not get started on Tuesday mornings?

In respect of Wednesdays, I have a point to make about Select Committees. I sit on the Work and Pensions Committee. We start at 9.15 on Wednesday morning, and we finish by 11.30 so we can come into the Chamber for Prayers. It is perfectly possible to have Select Committee business before 11.30—or for Committees to sit during House sitting hours on Monday afternoons, as we also sometimes do.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does she agree that bringing Wednesdays forward to 10.30 would impinge on the sitting times of Select Committees, such as the Education Committee, which I chair? She makes a strong case in respect of Tuesdays, however.

[Karen Bradley]

I will not support the Wednesday change; I will support the status quo for that very reason. Wednesday is one of the most effective days in the week in terms of my business, as I have my Select Committee and then we come into the Chamber for House business. It is a very easy day to get things done.

I support the change by one hour for Thursdays. That is not particularly relevant to me in terms of my getting back to my constituency, but I am fully aware that some Members have very long journeys, and being able to get a 6 pm rather than a 7 pm train can make the difference between getting home in the evening and having to get on the sleeper train. In the interests of all Members, it would be appropriate for this House to move to a 9.30 start on Thursdays.

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[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

I rise briefly to support the options not to change our arrangements. As my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) said, there is a good balance at the moment.

I will make two points. The first, and most important, is that nothing that we are debating today would change our work load. We can debate the order in which we deal with it, but our work load would not be diminished one iota by these proposals.

I have listened carefully to the argument that some hon. Members have made that an earlier point of interruption on Tuesday would give us greater flexibility in organising our business. I do not accept that. Tuesdays for me, and I suspect for many other Members, are the critical day in the week, when I have to cram in many competing requirements. My Select Committee sits on Tuesdays. This Tuesday, there was also a Westminster Hall debate that I wanted to fit in and there were various other meetings. Those bits and pieces could not be moved to the end of the day. If the main business in this Chamber was brought forward, the amount of time available for those other important matters would be restricted, to the detriment of our ability to do our jobs.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I am torn on the proposals for Tuesdays, but I am quite clear that moving the sitting time forward an hour on Wednesdays would disrupt the work of Select Committees, such as the Education Committee, with very little benefit. Wednesdays work. Whatever else the House votes for, I urge it not to vote to change Wednesdays.

[Iain Stewart]

I concur with my hon. Friend.

My second point has not been made in the debate thus far. It concerns our friends at the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. I fear that if the point of interruption gets earlier, IPSA will deem that it is not appropriate for many Members to stay in Westminster overnight and will require them to return to their constituencies. I faced that problem in my first few months in the House, and three to four hours a day were added on to my work load. I ended up having four and a half hours’ sleep a night, which is not sustainable. I fear that if we moved the moment of interruption forward, IPSA would conclude that more and more Members should be forced to commute. That would not be helpful to Members’ health or their ability to conduct their business.

Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation Bid for BSkyB

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

I am not going to give way.

We have to address all the issues that we face for the future. On the relationship between the press and politicians, let me be clear. There is nothing wrong with politicians engaging with the media, and Members across all parts of the House will continue to do so. What matters is not whether those relationships exist but whether they stifle either the ability of the press to speak out against political leaders or the ability of political leaders to speak up.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Edward Miliband]

I am not going to give way. [Interruption.] We have very little time for the debate and many hon. Members want to speak. I want to give them proper time to speak.

As I was saying, this is about whether those relationships are conducted in a transparent way. That is why all Members of the House—I hope that this answers hon. Members’ questions—should be available to appear before Lord Leveson’s inquiry. On cross-media ownership, the inquiry will need to think long and hard about the dangers of the excessive concentration of power in too few hands. Most importantly, we must protect people from the culture that allowed all those events to happen.

Lastly, there is a difficult issue for the House: the painful truth is that all of us have, for far too long, been in thrall to some sections of the media, including News International. For too long, when these things happened we just shrugged our shoulders and said, “That’s the way it is,”—but no longer. The events of the past seven days have opened all our eyes and given us the chance to say, “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

I want, before I finish, to pay tribute to the people who made this possible, and to Back Benchers across the House for their courage in speaking out. I pay tribute particularly to my hon. Friends the Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) for their tireless and brave work on these issues. I pay tribute to Members on the Government side, such as the hon. Members for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) and for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames), who spoke out about BSkyB in last week’s emergency debate, and to the Select Committees and their Chairs on both sides of the House. I also want to pay tribute to you, Mr Speaker, for the seriousness with which you have taken Parliament’s role on this issue.

This is a victory for Parliament. This House has been criticised in recent years for being timid, irrelevant and out of touch. Today Parliament has shown an ability to speak out without fear or favour, to speak to our great traditions, and to show that we can hold power to account and that nobody is above the law. To paraphrase the late Lord Denning, be ye ever so high, the people are above you. This House—all Members and all parties—have given voice to the people and have said to Rupert Murdoch, “Abandon your bid.” The country wanted this: it wanted its voice to be heard, and today it has been heard.

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[Mr Gordon Brown (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Lab)]

It is a bit like the old days for me, with the Government on the run, the Opposition in pursuit and a headline in The Sun saying, “Brown wrong”, another example of my very close relationship with News International. It is like the old days, but with one exception: if I had not come to the House when I was Prime Minister, in a debate in which the Prime Minister has been implicated, I hesitate to think what hon. Members would have said—[Interruption.]

Much has already happened today outside the House, with the announcements by BSkyB and the subsequent announcement by Ofcom only a few minutes ago that it is now examining whether News Corporation is a fit and proper person or organisation for the 38% of BSkyB that it still holds. When there have been great occasions and great questions of moral concern, it has been this House that has spoken for Britain, and over the next few months this House must show that it can rise to the challenge. With the exception of decisions on peace and war, there is no matter of greater importance than the basic liberties of our citizens. Each generation has to reconcile for its times the freedom of the individual with the freedom of the press and balance two great rights, the right of the public to information and the right of the individual to privacy.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Brown]

I want to set out the facts for the House and will be happy take any interventions after.

In nearly 30 years as a Member of this House, in opposition and in government, I have never sought to propose or impose any restrictions on the freedom of the press. At all times I have defended their right to expose any wrongdoing wherever it is found and to speak truth to power however uncomfortable it is, and indeed was at times for me. Although I will today make proposals for reform and comment on each point that the Prime Minister made earlier in the House, it is my judgment that we should reform but never undermine something so fundamental to our ordered liberty as our twin commitments to the freedom of the individual and to a free press.

I rise to speak not about myself, but for those who cannot defend themselves: the grieving families of our brave war dead; the courageous survivors of 7/7; the many other dignified, but now outraged, victims of crime and; most recently, and perhaps worst of all, the victims of the violation of the rights of a missing and murdered child. Many, many wholly innocent men, women and children who, at their darkest hour, at their most vulnerable moment in their lives, with no one and nowhere to turn to, found their properly private lives, their private losses, their private sorrows treated as the public property of News International—their private, innermost feelings and their private tears bought and sold by News International for commercial gain.

Amassed against these guiltless victims and against a succession of other victims of crime whose names I know about and have seen, and have yet to be made public, was the systematic use of base and unlawful methods—new crimes with new names: blagging, hacking, Trojans to break into computers and not just phones. It was not the misconduct of a few rogues or a few freelancers but, I have to say, lawbreaking often on an industrial scale, at its worst dependent on links with the British criminal underworld.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

rose—

[Mr Brown]

I will set out my case and then I will answer questions.

This is the only way—[Interruption.]

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[Mr Brown]

I think that for the benefit of the future debates on the matter and the inquiry, this information is relevant.

The memorandum stated that if an appeal was made against a judicial inquiry, such a challenge might succeed, and that there was not only no case for a judicial-led inquiry, but not a strong case for either a non-judicial inquiry or even a reference to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, or even for asking the police to reopen their inquiry.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I ask whether there is any time limit in this debate, and—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman will resume his seat. If there were a time limit it would be announced; when there is, it will be. That is the end of the matter. It is a totally bogus point of order, as the hon. Gentleman knows.

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[Mr Brown]

I find it strange that when I am giving to the House new evidence of criminal wrongdoing, the Conservative party, instead of listening, want to shout down the speaker. On reflection, when we are talking about people who have been abused as a result of the infringement of their liberties, the Conservative party will think it better to hear the evidence before jumping to conclusions.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Brown]

Of course I will give way.

[Mr Stuart]

I am so grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He said that he was not aware of systematic abuses of the law by News International. May I put it to him that from near the beginning of the previous Government, News International executives, in conjunction with Members of the then Government, conspired to smear Lord Ashcroft and they illegally—[Interruption.] Labour Members think that there is one law for them and another law for others. They illegally blagged bank accounts in order to try to undermine Her Majesty’s Opposition. He knew about it then. Why was nothing done?

[Mr Brown]

I am surprised that this debate, which started with our desire to protect the lives of innocent children, should end up with the Conservative party more interested in defending Lord Ashcroft. I would have thought that, if the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) knew that there were so many abuses at News International at the time, he would have advised the then Leader of the Opposition not to employ Mr Andy Coulson.

Business of the House

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend draws attention to the poll in today’s edition of The Independent. My own view is that until Opposition Members accept some responsibility for what went wrong, they will have no credibility with the general public.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman assures me that he was present at the start of the business statement. I am grateful for that confirmation and I wish to hear him.

[Mr Stuart]

I am grateful, Mr Speaker, although disappointed that you did not notice me from the beginning. After a collapse in manufacturing employment over the last 10 years or so, there are optimistic signs, not least in Hull, where Siemens is investing in a major renewable energy plant that may employ 10,000 people or more. Other companies are following. May we have a debate on the infrastructure to support that development? The Humber offers huge economic opportunity for this country and we need to ensure that we have the infrastructure in place to support it.

Business of the House

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

The last Administration used complex formulae for funding allocation to cheat rural areas of their fair share of support for education, health and other public services. They hid behind those formulae. May we have an urgent debate on the assessment of need in, and the allocation of funding to, rural areas, to ensure that they get a fair, not a skewed, share of national resources, having been so denuded by the Labour party?

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. He will have seen in our proposals on health funding that in future, health resources will be distributed not by Ministers, but by an independent body. I hope that he applauds the pupil premium initiative, which will address some of the deprivation issues in rural constituencies.

Business of the House

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

May I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s work in this and the previous Parliament on carrying forward the agenda for reform? I have seen the motions on the Order Paper that he has tabled. I hope that he will recognise that the commitment that we have given to introduce within three years a House committee goes further than we got in the previous Parliament. I want to get the Back-Bench committee up and running, and when that is firmly established, to move on to the next stage of merging it with a House committee. Therefore, I think that there is no difference between us on destination and I hope that there is no disagreement either on pace.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Could we have a debate as soon as possible on the allocation of health funding? Mindful, as I am, of the vote of the whole House shortly on the chairmanship of Select Committees, I must point out none the less that the Labour party put in place a gerrymandered allocation of health funding, which means that the good people of the East Riding, for instance, have only £1,200 per head spent on their health care, whereas the people of Hull, who are much younger and generally fitter, receive 50% more. It is simply wrong.

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and if he is quick he can table—I think—an oral question for 2 June, when the Health Secretary will be at the Dispatch Box and in a position to deal with the inequities to which my hon. Friend refers.