House of Lords Reform Bill

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman’s description of the psephological effects in his neck of the woods is the closest anyone has come to possibly changing my mind on the boundary issue, but I will not, and I have made our position very clear. There are conventions, and in time-honoured fashion they mutate and develop over time. Coalition government is clearly a novel thing, and I think that the conventions that govern government will need to adapt to the fact that in this instance the coalition parties will go their separate ways, and I am sure that we will be able to manage that.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The Deputy Prime Minister has just said, in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), that he could not persuade the Prime Minister to have a referendum on the package. Will he share with Members the reasons the Prime Minister gave?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

No, I will not go into the conversation, but it was clearly felt that the approach of having a referendum on election day with a deferral for both the first elections to a reformed House of Lords and the entry into effect of the boundary changes was not sufficient to persuade those who had made it clear that they would not under pretty much any circumstances back a timetable motion for House of Lords reform legislation.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys). I agree that reform and an elected House of Lords are essential. It is a basic principle of democracy that those who legislate for everybody else are voted for by the other citizens of the country.

Whatever their positions on the Bill, hon. Members on both sides of the House agree that the House of Lords should complement and not duplicate the House of Commons in both its function and its make-up. Unfortunately, the Bill is weak on both counts. Clause 2 is inadequate in setting out the functions of the reformed House. I agree with the letter written by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) to the Deputy Prime Minister. We must see a new draft of clause 2 early in the passage of the Bill. We cannot be expected to agree to a measure if we do not know what the functions will be until some distant time in future, after the Bill has been to the Lords.

Furthermore, the Bill reveals one of the weaknesses of our unwritten constitution. It would be helpful if Ministers considered not only how to preserve the primacy of the Commons but what special responsibilities the other House should have. At one point, giving the other House special responsibility for human rights was considered.

On the make-up of the second House, many noble Lords are going around saying that the Lords is more reflective of the population than the Commons. That is not true. Only a fifth of Members of both Houses are women and 5% or fewer are from ethnic minorities. However, more than 96% of Members of the other House are over 50. The Government’s proposals in the Bill are extremely weak on that. The proposed 15-year terms are weak not just on accountability; they will add to that age bias.

The objective is surely to widen involvement in our political institutions—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady. You have made your speech, Ms Sandys. Turning round and having a private conversation, along with many other Members, is not fair and does not show due respect to the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman). Given the importance that hon. Members have attached to this Bill, perhaps they can ensure they listen to the debate on it.

[Helen Goodman]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am obviously so boring that other hon. Members cannot be bothered to listen—[Hon. Members: “No!”]

Our politics and our democracy are not exactly in a crisis, but confidence in them is beginning to look rather tattered round the edges. If we are to restore that confidence, we need both institutional reform and higher levels of participation. Today is an opportunity to discuss the institutional reform—we can talk about participation on another occasion.

For many, the heyday of our popular democracy was the early 1950s, when voting participation under universal suffrage was at its highest, and when the two-party system seemed to provide a reasonable reflection of the choices for the country. However, in 1997, at the end of 20 years of Tory rule, the overwhelming sense one had was of anachronistic institutions that were completely unrepresentative of who we are and what we expect from our democracy. Institutional reforms redressed the balance between citizens and the state. They were significant and welcome, but they did not address some of the key failings. Why are so few Members of Parliament in either House women? Why is it right that the second Chamber should reserve places for Anglican bishops but none for other denominations and religions? Those are failings of the institutional arrangements, but they reflect a deeper failure: a failure to make sense of our new British identity.

To tackle that malaise, we need institutions that provide equal rights within their arrangements. This is an extremely unusual country, because it is both a multinational state built over more than 500 years from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and a multi-ethnic country, which in the past 50 years has had a huge change in its constitution. Such significant cultural diversity can make the task of building inclusive citizenship seem huge, and we do it against a background of growing globalisation, which seems to be reducing the importance of the nation state. It is vital, however, if we are to get the levels of participation that we need.

[Andrew Griffiths]

The hon. Lady makes some important statements about the need to ensure that the Chambers are representative, but does she not accept that the other place has the same representation of women, and a higher representation of disabled people and ethnic minorities?

[Helen Goodman]

The differences between the numbers of ethnic minorities and people with disabilities are tiny compared with the great distortion of age.

This Chamber represents people according to the communities in which they live. Once upon a time, the differences between living in Sheffield, which was a steel town, and Nottingham, where there were lots of lace factories, were significant, but increasingly the idea of communities based on economic differences defines only a part of people’s lives. With House of Lords reform, we have the opportunity to consider the other aspects of identity and the issues arising from them, which are often just as important—for some people, more important—as the communities in which they live. I propose that we look at House of Lords reform in an attempt to redress that imbalance. It is obviously a deep and complex problem requiring a lot of consideration. Tomorrow evening I will vote for Second Reading, so that we have a democratic second Chamber, but against the programme motion, so that we can unpick some of these very significant matters.

EU Council

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can see that it must have been a particularly satisfying and heart-warming taxi ride for my hon. Friend. As I have said, I do not think that an immediate in/out referendum is the answer, but ruling out a referendum is not the answer either. There are opportunities to build the sort of settlement we want in Europe and the Government believe that we should take advantage of them.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Will the Prime Minister tell the House what indications he has had from European colleagues that they would be likely to agree the repatriation to this country of the social chapter and other powers?

[The Prime Minister]

We were able to renegotiate the bail-out power and get out of that part of the treaty, so we have had some small success on that agenda already. There is a big change coming in Europe. I cannot say how fast it is going to go and whether it will be a number of small treaties or a bigger treaty, but there will be opportunities. The eurozone countries will have to do more to integrate, which will give others opportunities to pursue their own agendas.

Party Funding

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

It is completely impossible for any policy to be changed in that way. Policy in the coalition Government has to be agreed not just by Conservative Ministers but collectively with Conservative and Lib Dem Ministers, so the idea that there is a direct route from Conservative party donors to policy change is absolutely absurd.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

In the Budget, the Chancellor announced a number of tax changes to the regimes for gambling and financial services. Can the Minister tell the House whether Peter Cruddas, in his role of treasurer—he is also the market leader in internet spread betting—had any influence at all?

[Mr Maude]

I very much doubt it, but I suspect—[Interruption.] As I have said repeatedly, anyone who has been in government knows that in the run-up to a Budget, we get representations from all sorts of people, in favour of everything and against everything. I have no doubt that the Chancellor received lots of representations from all directions on this and other subjects.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Wednesday 21st March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

We are strongly in favour of using open source software wherever possible. We have established that that can cut the cost of providing digital services massively, while producing better results. On a recent visit to silicon valley, I and a number of colleagues found businesses that were capable of cutting those costs on a massive scale.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

A study by the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations has found that applications by charities for emergency help were highest in the north-east, because the 20 poorest areas suffered 40 times as much reduction in their funding as the 20 richest. A year ago the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin), said that the voluntary sector would

“find that there is access to a large amount of revenue”.—[Official Report, 20 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 936.]

Has he disappeared because he no longer believes that?

[Mr Maude]

I deeply regret that it has been necessary for the Government to cut spending in the way that they have. The reason is very simple—the Government of which the hon. Lady was a member left this country with the biggest budget deficit in the developed world.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor-General]

There is also another rule that the Law Officers do not tell the police what to do. It is entirely a matter for the police to deal with arrests. If matters come to their attention that need the advice of the Crown Prosecution Service, which the Attorney-General and I superintend, we will no doubt examine them.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

One issue that will arise in this context is contempt of court and the extent to which the media need to be controlled. I was rather disappointed to hear the Attorney-General’s responses on Radio 4 this morning. Would the Solicitor-General like to make it absolutely clear to the entire nation that, notwithstanding the rights and wrongs of particular cases, it is possible to commit contempt on Twitter?

[The Solicitor-General]

That is a deeply uncontroversial statement to make.

Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Friday 9th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 3, page 1, line 2, leave out ‘publishing draft’ and insert ‘presenting’.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 6, page 1, leave out lines 7 to 10 and insert

‘“legislation” means primary legislation, secondary legislation or amendments to primary legislation’.

Amendment 8, page 1, line 16, leave out ‘draft’.

Amendment 14, title, line 1, leave out

‘preparing draft legislation for publication’

and insert ‘presenting legislation’.

[Helen Goodman]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this Bill and to the amendments standing in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty). The long list of amendments that we have tabled demonstrates that this is an extremely badly drafted piece of legislation. As I am sure Government Members know, Her Majesty’s Opposition oppose the Bill. It is ill-conceived, badly drafted and full of technical problems, and we do not accept its underlying principles. For a start, it does not make sense to look at draft legislation only. Most Bills do not appear in draft at all, so this would catch only a tiny number of the Bills that the House considers.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

The hon. Lady and her hon. Friend tabled 14 amendments and one new clause, only four of which have been selected for debate. Does that not suggest that her amendments and new clause were badly drafted as well?

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has been here long enough to know that we do not discuss the selection of amendments.

[Helen Goodman]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I would like to point out some of the problems with what has been suggested by the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), whose Bill this is. Every piece of legislation has a territorial extent clause at its end. Let us consider the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, which is currently in Committee. The hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) has been chairing some of its sittings, so he knows what I am talking about. Clause 117 states that the Bill, as a whole, applies to England and Wales, and then explains which clauses apply more widely. There is no lack of clarity about the legal status of Bills before the House.

Clearly, the hon. Lady’s underlying concern is that people are taking views on legislation that affects parts of the United Kingdom beyond those in which their constituencies are located. If that is her concern, she should have presented a Bill making that case. However, she has presented a different and flawed Bill.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill undermines the basic principle that all Members are equal?

[Helen Goodman]

Of course, my hon. Friend is absolutely correct.

[Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

The hon. Lady will be aware that the procedure for Scottish Bills, as set out in Standing Order 97, requires the Speaker to issue a certificate stating that a measure is predominantly Scottish, after which it can go to the Grand Committee. It would be possible to do the same for England. Surely it would be worth printing a complex Bill in draft—so that it can be published and people can look at it—because, if there were territorial issues on the margins, it would provide an opportunity to consider them fully before the Speaker issued his certificate. Is the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) not a valuable addition to how we have dealt with such matter traditionally?

[Helen Goodman]

As the hon. Gentleman says, arrangements are in place for legislation that takes effect predominantly in Scotland. However, the Government seem to be rushing legislation through so fast that it is quite possible that the Speaker and his offices might not have time to take all these complex matters into account. That is a problem with the way this Government are ramming through legislation on the NHS and, if I might say so, this Legal Aid—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We are meant to be discussing the amendments, but we are getting drawn elsewhere by certain Members. I am sure that, with the hon. Lady’s experience, we can stick to the amendments.

[Helen Goodman]

I stand corrected. I am sorry, I was seduced by the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Oliver Heald).

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

On the issues raised by the amendment, my hon. Friend said a minute ago that she suspected that the real motivation behind the Bill was not just to specify whether a Bill applied to England, Scotland or Northern Ireland only, but to lead to a situation where certain MPs could not vote on those Bills. If she has any doubt about that, the BBC reported yesterday that the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin)

“hoped that this would allow it to become accepted practice that Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs would not vote on England-only bills.”

If that is what she really wants, would it not be better to have a Bill to that effect for us to discuss and debate, rather than one that tries to introduce such a measure through the back door?

[Helen Goodman]

That is exactly right. This is a campaigning Bill; it is not a serious Bill. The hon. Lady cannot possibly expect the House to support this ill-conceived Bill, which would not even do what she wants.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

So in reality these amendments are not really important in the hon. Lady’s estimation; she is simply intent on wrecking this Bill by any means possible. That is the reality, is it not?

[Helen Goodman]

I am not intent on wrecking the Bill; I am intent on opposing it, which is not quite the same thing.

[Mr Leigh]

Perhaps I used the wrong words. What the hon. Lady is determined to do is stop this Bill making any further progress. That is the reality and she might as well be honest about it.

[Helen Goodman]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Lady is being tempted all the time. She must not give in to that temptation. Let us stick to the amendments.

[Helen Goodman]

Let me turn to the parts of the Bill that relate to the financial implications, which we also looked at in—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Lady must not make a Second Reading speech. Let us deal with the amendments that are before us.

[Helen Goodman]

One of the problems with looking at draft legislation rather than legislation in its final form is that it is not possible at that stage to say what the financial implications across the United Kingdom might be. The Government would be forced not simply to identify the territorial extent of a Bill, as they do currently, but to look at the differential impact of clauses that apply across the United Kingdom. For example, some legislation could be applicable throughout the UK but have a greater effect in some places than in others. Let us take social security as an example. If unemployment is higher in Wales than in England and changes are made to the rate of jobseeker’s allowance, the impact in Wales will obviously be different from the impact in England. I am sure that that is not what the hon. Lady intends.

[Oliver Heald]

But social security is a UK-wide competence. It is nothing to do with just England, Wales or Scotland; it applies all over the country.

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman makes my exact point, but unfortunately that is not the way the Bill is drafted. That is one of its faults.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

That is a very interesting point, but what exactly does it have to do with the amendments?

[Helen Goodman]

What I am trying to do is demonstrate that the Bill is not well drafted, and the amendments that we have tabled do just that. I fear that the object of this Bill is really a political object—that what the hon. Member for West Worcestershire is doing is disingenuous and that her concerns are different from those that she has set out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

That is for the Chair to decide, as the hon. Gentleman well knows. I would point out that I am allowing a little bit of latitude and, in fairness, the hon. Lady has been brought back to the point, to which, in general, she is sticking at the moment. I will decide from the Chair how far we go.

[Helen Goodman]

I do not wish to delay the House any further on these technical amendments. I think I have made my point perfectly clear. I do not intend to push the amendments to a vote, but I hope that I have demonstrated a small number of the problems with this Bill.

[Oliver Heald]

Let me start by saying that my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) has done the House a service by introducing the Bill. It is a modest measure, but it provides something useful for the House, if the commission proposed by the Minister, which I also welcome, decides that we need a procedure for England similar to Standing Order No. 97, which sets out the Scottish procedure. That Standing Order says that when a piece of legislation is first printed, the Speaker can issue a certificate saying that it is a Scottish Bill. In those circumstances it is dealt with by the Scottish Grand Committee, which means that Scottish Members decide what happens in Scotland. I personally have always felt, as has my party, that England should have a similar opportunity, and the details of how that might be achieved have been discussed and argued over for many years.

What my hon. Friend is suggesting will help in the difficult process of deciding whether a Bill is predominantly Scottish or, in this case, English. The difficulty that the Speaker has always had to contend with is that, under Standing Order No. 97(1)(a), he can provide a certificate, and that

“it shall not be withheld by reason only that the bill...makes minor consequential amendments of enactments which extend to England and Wales”.

So it is possible for a Bill that is predominantly about Scotland but has some implications for England and Wales to be dealt with under the Scottish procedure. My hon. Friend is proposing that draft legislation would contain a certificate from the Secretary of State explaining the territorial extent of its legal and financial effects on the various parts of the UK. That would be useful in cases that were on the margin.

[Helen Goodman]

But can the hon. Gentleman not see that the territorial extent is already in a Bill, and that the financial implications are set out in the impact assessment that is published alongside it?

[Oliver Heald]

The mistake in the hon. Lady’s amendments is that they would not give the Speaker any opportunity to present his certificate. She is proposing that the Secretary of State’s explanation would be provided when the legislation was presented, rather than when it was first printed, which would give the Speaker no time to do his work. These are therefore wrecking amendments.

[Helen Goodman]

The issue is the speed with which this Government are putting through legislation, and their failure to leave adequate time between First and Second Readings, and between Second Reading and the Committee stage. If they were to give Bills adequate time, that would give the Speaker the time for which the hon. Gentleman calls.

[Oliver Heald]

I completely disagree. The hon. Lady would give the Speaker no time at all. Under Standing Order No. 97, the Speaker has the time between the Bill first being printed and its presentation in which to decide whether or not to provide his certificate. Her proposals would provide no such time. The Bill would simply be presented; the helpful information from the Secretary of State would not be given to the Speaker before that point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I must stay in order while answering that question, Mr Deputy Speaker. I referred to the “so-called” West Lothian question because it is not simply about West Lothian; it applies also to west Belfast, west Cardiff and even west London, in that certain matters relating to Greater London have been devolved to the London assembly. I accept that the hon. Gentleman is asking a reasonable question, but the Bill does not provide an appropriate way of dealing with it.

The Bill, rather than creating constitutional symmetry that would apply beautifully to all parts of the UK, would seriously affect the way in which the House operates and the ability of all Members to participate in debates. This question deserves an answer. I represent a Scottish constituency, and I am interested in how these issues apply to the UK as a whole, but if Members in England really feel strongly about this, I would argue again that the answer involves another measure, rather than creating two kinds of Member in this House.

[Helen Goodman]

Does my hon. Friend agree that another technical defect—I hope the amendments made this clear, but perhaps they did not—is that the hon. Lady has not done with her own Bill what she is suggesting that Ministers should do with every Bill? There is no explanation of how her Bill would apply in each of the jurisdictions, or of what financial burdens it would create. She cannot do that for this tiny Bill, yet she intends to impose a massive bureaucratic burden, which is something that I thought the Government were opposed to.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I have sympathy with the hon. Member for West Worcestershire, given the difficulties involved in introducing a private Member’s Bill; I introduced three over the years, having been lucky enough to come up in the draw. We are obviously in a different position from Governments in the level of support available and the amount of information that we can put before the House. I do not want to criticise her too much, but it would have been helpful if she had provided a background paper to support the Bill, rather than simply relying on the material supplied by the House of Commons Library. I apologise if she did produce such a paper and I have not seen it.

In regard to amendment 6, there are a number of important issues about how the Bill would work. A great many pieces of legislation that pass through the House simply cannot be categorised as English-only, Scottish-only, Welsh-only or Northern Irish-only Bills. A large number of Bills overlap in various ways. Most Bills on transport affect transport in England but are likely to have knock-on effects on other parts of the UK. We debated the Health and Social Care Bill this week and although it primarily covers England and Wales, the provisions on abortion would have applied to the United Kingdom. Every measure that has spending implications will have consequential effects on every part of the UK because of the Barnett formula.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman is leaping into solution space, but he is right. I agreed with one thing he said in an exchange with my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), when he referred to the so-called West Lothian question. That was helpful as the West Lothian question is called that because it was raised by the then Member for West Lothian, but we are really talking about how we deal with legislating for England in a country that has devolution. That is not very catchy, and if any Members can think of a more catchy way of describing the West Lothian question that encapsulates its nature in a way that will resonate with people, they could perhaps suggest it to me.

Let me give one more straightforward example of an extent clause. It was in a Bill for which I was responsible, which is now an Act of Parliament: the well-supported Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. The Act applied for the most part throughout the United Kingdom, with a limited exception. Part of schedule 3 extended only to Great Britain and one part extended only to Northern Ireland as a result of the different electoral arrangements. It had a very short extent section but meant that Members were very clear about where it had effect.

I hope I have set out for the House why we do not support the amendments. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland has already said that she will not press them to a vote, but this has been a helpful debate to flesh out some of the concerns about this approach. She has done the House a service through her amendments, as has my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire by allowing the House to debate these important matters.

[Helen Goodman]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Third Reading

--- Later in debate ---

[Harriett Baldwin]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct; there has been a substantial body of work looking at exactly how to resolve this question without creating the completely impossible situation of having two classes of MP.

[Helen Goodman]

An interesting point is developing here. I wonder whether the hon. Lady is considering not voting on the Government’s Scotland Bill, in line with what she is saying, and whether the Government are looking to have the support of a majority of Scottish Members for the Scotland Bill before it receives Royal Assent.

[Harriett Baldwin]

The hon. Lady points out precisely why it is so important to resolve in this Parliament some of those complex constitutional issues. There will be others, I am sure, who will refer to the problems of the other House and the fact that there is draft legislation currently in this place about reforms to that House. There might be consequences for that piece of legislation as well.

Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

During the Prime Minister’s statement, several hon. Members, especially those seated on the Government Benches, asked whether this really matters. Let us face it, there are many other issues that are probably far more pressing and significant to our constituents, including jobs, the economy and the state of the national health service. For some, I admit, that list might also include Europe, although in my experience, Europe tends to be a long way down the list of things that really matter to my constituents. Crime is normally at the top. However, the tendency to downplay this issue over the past few years has fed into the cover-up that was originally done by News International, and that was a mistake. I fully understand why it has happened on occasion. Boris Johnson was very foolish to say that this was

“a load of codswallop cooked up by the Labour party”

for party political gain.

In the end, we have seen the two most senior police officers in this country lose their jobs—one of whom, I think, was falling not on his own sword but on the Prime Minister’s. We have also seen some very senior journalists and company executives lose their jobs, and serious questions have been asked about the way in which the police operate. This has called into question the integrity of the police, which in turn strikes at something that really matters to our constituents.

Earlier in the year, the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) was a little more sceptical about much of this, when he was questioning me and others about it. However, I think that he has seen, over the past few months, that the evidence from senior officers such as Assistant Commissioner Yates has been risible, and has not met the standards that we expect of a senior police officer in charge of counter-terrorism. I had never meet Andy Hayman until I saw him in the Home Affairs Committee the other day, and, frankly, I was shocked that someone of that calibre—or rather, lack of calibre—was in charge of counter-terrorism in this country. The heart of this matter is therefore probably not the original criminality, which undoubtedly was extensive but was in one sense relatively minor, in terms of the criminal law; far more significant is the cover-up that has taken place. I very much hope that people will not feel from yesterday afternoon that we have got to the bottom of what went on at News International.

Let us be clear about what happened. In the criminal case that was brought against Goodman and Mulcaire, both pleaded guilty. We already know that Mulcaire’s fees were paid by News International, even though he was not a full-time employee of the organisation. I presume that Clive Goodman’s legal fees were also met by News International, and that it encouraged them to plead guilty because it did not want this to go to full trial. It did not want all the evidence to come out into the public domain, because then, what the judge said at the end of the process might have been proved: that this was probably just the tip of a very large iceberg, and it certainly did not want the rest of the iceberg to be seen.

The reason why News International continued to pay Glenn Mulcaire’s legal fees, until this afternoon, as I understand it—I thought it was bizarre that James Murdoch still did not know whether it was paying them yesterday; anyway, today he said that it is not paying them any more—was that it wanted to keep control of the case and to make sure that he did not say anything additional that further incriminated other people at the newspaper, or in the wider company.

When the civil cases were brought, there was the next part of the cover-up. News International would have had to provide full disclosure of all the e-mails, all the transactions within the organisation and the whole way in which the scheme was put together whereby Mr Mulcaire engaged in all this activity. I believe that News International was absolutely desperate to make sure that that never came into the public domain, so the most important thing for it to do was to make sure that that never went to trial.

Yesterday afternoon, James Murdoch said that his lawyers had advised him at the time that they had to offer £700,000 to Gordon Taylor—I repeat, £700,000—because they were advised by their lawyers that if the matter went to litigation and the court found against them, they might have to pay £250,000 in damages, and in addition, they would have the costs of having run the case. However, James Murdoch must surely know—unless he is using really bad lawyers—of the part 36 procedure. Under it, when an offer is made—of £200,000, let us say—it is put into court and if the court itself does not offer more, the claimant has to pay the legal costs subsequently incurred, which in this case would have been the greater part of £500,000. I am afraid that Mr James Murdoch yesterday was either extremely poorly briefed on the legal situation, or, frankly, he was still dissembling. I believe that in practice, what they were doing was paying £700,000 to Gordon Taylor—and also to Max Clifford—expressly to maintain the cover-up.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend noticed that James Murdoch used in his evidence a very ambivalent phrase that has a particular meaning in law and another in common parlance:

“Subsequent to our discovery of that information in one of the civil trials”.

That reinforces exactly the point my hon. Friend is making.

[Chris Bryant]

Absolutely.

Then there were the subsequent civil cases, which could only be brought once The Guardian had run its story suggesting that there were many more victims of phone hacking. Some people started writing in to the Metropolitan police and then suing the police to force them to give them the information, so that they could then take action against News International and get full disclosure from it. It is only as a result of those cases that the cover-up has effectively been smashed apart.

There remains this issue of the material that was gathered and put into a file in 2007, including various e-mails and other pieces of paper, and given to Harbottle & Lewis. Only this year, it was shown to the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, who said that, within three minutes of looking at it, he could see that there was material relating to the payment of police officers that should always have been given to the Metropolitan police. That seems to me a far greater criminal offence than the original criminal offence of phone hacking. That is why my concern is about the cover-up at the heart of this.

Yesterday, Rupert Murdoch was asked whether he was responsible and he said, “No,” but I am afraid that in this country we have to have a much stronger concept of responsibility. It is not just about whether something happens on one’s watch—that is ludicrously broad. If someone has taken all due diligence steps to try to ensure that criminality has not happened, then of course they are not personally responsible. But if someone’s argument is, “Our company is so big that I could not possibly be expected to know whether my journalists were being arrested for criminal activity or whether I was paying out £2 million in hush money,” one must question whether they have a proper corporate governance structure or system in place to make sure that the same thing does not happen again next year or next week—or even that it is not happening now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I am sure that this will be looked into in more detail as news of what the hon. Lady has just spoken about arrives. It is news to me, but I am sure that it will be fully looked into and may be properly addressed later on.

[Helen Goodman]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. There are clearly a number of concerns about who gets press passes. I wonder whether, when the matter that the hon. Member for Corby (Louise Mensch) has raised is looked into, some consideration might be given to publishing who has press passes. At the moment, we do not know that.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Again, I am sure that will be looked into. I am not absolutely sure whether the names of those who have press passes are not already in the public domain in the directory that is made available to the House, but I will look into the matter myself to see what the truth is.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

This is clearly an extremely important debate for the future and quality of our democracy and the nature of our country. Across the House, Members are in agreement that we want a free press, but at the moment we are not quite agreed on what we mean by freedom of the press. A free press is obviously part of the rights we have under the European convention on human rights to free speech and free expression, but I remind Members that the exercise of this freedom also carries duties and responsibilities. The convention says that the exercise of these freedoms is “subject to” limitations

“in the interests of national security…public safety…the prevention of…crime”—

ironically—

“the protection of health or morals”

and so on. So, this freedom of expression is not a freedom from all constraints or legalities, and nor is it a freedom to chase stories using any technique possible. Significantly, it is also limited by article 8 of the European convention, on the right to privacy. As we move forward and look at the appropriate regulation, we need to have in mind article 8 as well as article 10.

It really is not reasonable for people to pretend that uncovering the sex lives of footballers is equivalent to the fight for freedom of expression we have seen in north Africa and the middle east in recent months. It is also disingenuous for so-called celebrity columnists to pretend they are some latter-day combination of Bob Woodward and Dean Swift. I do not agree with Lord Kinnock about the rules on balance for the broadcast media being taken across into those for the press, but I do think that the Leader of the Opposition was absolutely right that the problems we have faced over a long period of time have been because of a very significant concentration of power, which led to a web of corruption.

It is not acceptable that a quarter of the Met press office had formerly worked for News International. It is a matter of concern that Andy Hayman went to work for News International from the police, that the former DPP went to work at News International and that News International has also employed, as a so-called independent adjudicator, a former High Court judge, Sir Charles Gray. I am not suggesting that all those cases involve impropriety, but we must know what the rules are. I hope when the Secretary of State winds up he will be able to tell us the truth about what happened in the autumn of 2009, when, it is widely rumoured, the broadcasting policy that he wanted to publish was held up because the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to clear it with James Murdoch.

What I really want to remind hon. Members is that those who have suffered most as a result of these abuses are ordinary people. What has been uncovered very recently has been extremely shocking, and there is a long history of ordinary people being abused and not having proper recourse because they did not have the money to employ lawyers and because the PCC is such a toothless tiger.

Let me tell hon. Members a couple of stories about that.A boy in my constituency, who was obviously badly behaved, was described in one of the tabloids as “terrorising” the town, which was a total exaggeration and is not a way in which any of us would allow our children to be described. In another case, a woman I met who was a victim of domestic violence was also denigrated—in The Sun in this instance—because her neighbours had been blagged. There was complete deceit about the nature of the inquiry and how the story would be written up. We are talking about extremely vulnerable people and we must take them into account in any new regulations that are set up.

Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am delighted to do that. My hon. Friend makes a good point. That is why I was concerned to ensure that there are people on the panel who really understand how television, newspapers and regulation work. For instance, I think that the fact that George Jones, who spent many years in the Lobby, will be on that panel of experts will help the committee of inquiry do its work.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Last week, I asked the Prime Minister whether Andy Coulson had been through the official positive vetting procedure. Instead of answering, he referred me to the rules of conduct for special advisers and the standard contract. Will he now answer the question?

[The Prime Minister]

He was vetted. He had a basic level of vetting. He was not able to see the most secret documents in the Government. I can write to the hon. Lady if she wants the full details of that vetting. It was all done in the proper way. He was subject to the special advisers’ code of conduct. As someone shouted from behind me, he obeyed that code, unlike Damian McBride.

Phone Hacking

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend correctly identifies this as a problem, but I am not sure that I agree with his solution, although I will certainly look at it. It seems to me that it would be much better to try to have the same sort of transparency between the police and the media that we want between politicians and the media, because, in the end, I think transparency about media contacts would help to prevent the culture of leaking and briefing that has grown up in some parts of the police.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister’s statement was a bit complex, but it sounds as if the decision on the takeover would be made before the end of the judicial inquiry and the police inquiries. Is that correct, because surely it is not right?

[The Prime Minister]

The problem we face is that we have a set of rules concerning competition policy, plurality and “fit and proper” tests that are all laid down in the law and have to be carried out by Ofcom, the competition authorities and, indeed, the Secretary of State. He has to obey the law—and these laws were, largely, put in place by the previous Government. The Competition Commission will look at this; it will take its time, but it cannot take for ever in making its recommendation. Then there will be a decision for the Secretary of State. We cannot do anything but obey the law, but what we are doing today—what the leaders of the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats and I are all doing—is making a clear statement about our opinion by saying to this business, “You can’t go on pursuing a merger when you ought to be dealing with the mess you’ve got in your own business”, and I think that is the best thing to do.