Harriet Harman
Main Page: Harriet Harman (Labour - Camberwell and Peckham)Department Debates - View all Harriet Harman's debates with the Home Office
(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Maria Miller
I pay tribute to all the work that my hon. Friend has done in this regard. As he will know, the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill is currently being debated in the other place. We are continuing to discuss the issue that he has raised with transgender groups, but I gently remind him that it is actually an issue for the Ministry of Justice. Perhaps he could raise it with my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor.
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)
May I take up the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark)?
I hope the Secretary of State agrees that, despite our political differences and the occasional blip, and despite the fact that we are by no means out of the woods yet, we worked well together on the basis of trust and good faith, and worked well with the Liberal Democrats, in trying to sort out the question of press complaints following the Leveson report. However, as she has just said, we have yet to deal with the important issue of monopoly media ownership, which prevents the market from operating by preventing new entrants to it, as well as being bad for democracy.
May I ask the Secretary of State to do what the Government did before, namely set up and lead cross-party talks on the question of media ownership? We—and, I am sure, the Liberal Democrats—would be very willing to work with the Government to deal with that aspect of the Leveson inquiry, which is important and has not yet been tackled.
Maria Miller
I observed no blips in our working together; I thought that it went very well indeed.
We have already agreed on how to deal with the issue raised by the right hon. and learned Lady. We will seek views on it in the summer. Lord Justice Leveson himself said that he was not able to devote enough time to considering media plurality matters in detail, and I think that we need to do so now. I think that if we are to provide the sort of broad policy framework that we need, we should seek views on those matters rather than engaging in further political discussion.