Johnston Press: Administration

Ian Murray Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I hope my right hon. Friend will forgive me—I am going to sound like a cracked record by the end of this urgent question—but there are reasons why I need to be cautious at this stage about what I say about the transaction and the way it has been conducted. There will be inquiries made into the way in which this has transpired, including the effect on small creditors. At this stage, we must await some of those conclusions before taking matters further.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

Johnston Press pursued a very aggressive acquisition strategy over the past 10 years, which has partly put it in this position. It has left titles such as The Scotsman and the Edinburgh Evening News operating on very, very small numbers of staff. Can the Secretary of State tell us whether there is any liability to the public purse and if so what he will be doing to pursue the new company to ensure that the public purse is repaid?

[Jeremy Wright]

For the reasons I have just given, I will not comment on the nature of the transaction itself. The hon. Gentleman is right that over the preceding years Johnston Press has acquired a number of different titles. That, of course, is a matter for its judgment. In the process of looking at the transaction, it will have to answer for judgments and decisions it has made. At this stage, however, we must await what the various bodies I have described conclude.

Draft Breaching Of Limits On Ticket Sales Regulations 2018

Ian Murray Excerpts

Monday 21st May 2018 General Committees

[The Minister for Digital and the Creative Industries (Margot James)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Breaching of Limits on Ticket Sales Regulations 2018.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. The regulations will be an important addition to our efforts to stamp out unacceptable behaviour in the ticketing market. The activities of the secondary ticketing market are of interest to many parliamentary colleagues, including everyone here today, I am sure. The Government recognise that the process of distributing and buying tickets can be a cause of great public frustration and concern. We have probably all experienced the frustration of waiting for tickets to go on sale, our fingers hovering over the keyboard in the final countdown, only to find that all the tickets seem to have been mysteriously snapped up in seconds. What is even more frustrating is seeing those same tickets reappearing on secondary sites almost instantaneously at a massive mark-up.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

Does the Minister feel that there is any cartel between the ticket reselling companies and the promoters of certain concerts, as tickets can be sold quickly before they even go on public sale?

[Margot James]

I could not comment very clearly on that. The hon. Gentleman raises a murky area, but given that so many of the tickets have been hoovered up by computer bots, I suggest that perhaps it is not all the result of cartel activity.

There is evidence that the cause of the problem is largely software bots that automate the ticket purchasing process on the primary market to circumvent limits on the maximum number of the tickets that are supposed to be purchased at any one time. The issue was specifically addressed by Professor Waterson in his May 2016 independent review of consumer rights provisions relating to online ticket sales. His view, which the Government share, was that ticket sellers should adopt strategies to prevent automated ticket purchasing by bots, although he noted that there was some uncertainty about the existing legal position on their use.

The regulations clarify the law by making it a criminal offence to purchase more tickets than the maximum permitted for recreational, sporting or cultural events in the UK, where the purchase is made electronically through the use of software designed for that purpose, and where the intent is to obtain financial gain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margot James]

The draft regulations cover any electronic means and make it a criminal offence to purchase tickets in bulk electronically, through the use of software. I might have to come back to the hon. Gentleman on whether that includes phone banks and whether electronic means include telephones. I shall make some more progress before I come back to him on that.

The draft regulations apply to events in the United Kingdom, but they cover activity to obtain tickets in any jurisdiction. The intended offence will be summary only, with a maximum punishment of an unlimited fine in England and Wales or an exceptional summary maximum in Scotland, as magistrates courts in Scotland do not have the power to impose unlimited fines. The relevant section of the Digital Economy Act 2017 was not commenced in Northern Ireland because of the ongoing suspension of the Northern Ireland Executive, but the intention is for it to be commenced and for this instrument to apply to events in Northern Ireland once legislative consent can be secured.

[Ian Murray]

Regulation 3(b) defines the offence that the Minister has just covered as not only

“to obtain tickets in excess of the sales limit”,

but

“with a view to any person obtaining financial gain.”

What is the definition of “financial gain”? Might we have a situation in which someone buys 50,000 tickets for a certain concert and sells them in such a way that financial gain would be difficult to determine?

--- Later in debate ---

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure and privilege to serve under your chairmanship this evening, Mr Evans.

May I offer begrudging congratulations to the Minister on implementing yet another measure from the Labour manifesto, where we set out with a clarity that was perhaps lacking in the Conservative manifesto that we would implement anti-bot legislation to stop professional ticket touts ripping off thousands of fans in this country? The Minister did not put on the record her thanks to Professor Waterson, but let me put on the record our own thanks to him for his excellent review.

We shall not divide the Committee on the draft regulations, because the measure was such a clear and popular one in our manifesto, but we encourage the Minister to go a little further and to look at what else we promised in our manifesto. We said clearly that we would like to go beyond the recommendations that Professor Waterson proposed, which were good, but which we thought could be strengthened still further.

With that in mind, I shall ask the Minister a few questions. First, has she considered the recommendation by Professor Waterson that large-scale sellers on secondary platforms should be reclassified as traders? If someone is classified as a trader, a number of protections kick in under the Consumer Rights Act. At the moment, those protections are not available in the case of secondary platforms. It is therefore a very important question, and the Committee will want to hear the answer from the Minister.

Secondly, has the Minister considered Professor Waterson’s recommendation that such organisations should have to attain a licence to sell a large number of tickets? At the moment, they are making enormous profits from the Government’s rather hands-off, slipshod and laissez-faire approach. We think that that should change, and that Professor Waterson’s recommendation is important. We would like to hear the Minister’s conclusion, having considered the matter now that she has been in position for some time.

The third question is about the secondary ticketing market through companies such as Ticketbis and Viagogo, which continue to leave fans open to large-scale fraud. I understand that tickets for World cup and premier league games are on sale on Ticketbis without the relevant information required by the Consumer Rights Act. This will shock you, Mr Evans, but some tickets for the World cup final are coming in at more than £20,000. The Minister shakes her head, but she is the Minister, and I think the Committee would like to know what the Government are doing to ensure that fans are not being scammed.

[Ian Murray]

As a fan of Heart of Midlothian football club, I have never suffered from the inability to gain tickets to big matches, but there is a report today that some tickets for the champions league final on Saturday—Liverpool versus Real Madrid—with a face value of £61 are selling for nearly £15,000 on secondary ticket sites. Not only is that detrimental to fans who wish to purchase those tickets, but someone is making an awful lot of money.

[Liam Byrne]

I can scarcely believe what my hon. Friend has told the Committee. It is a very good example of the profit margins being made by unscrupulous traders, who are being allowed to get away scot-free by this careless Government.

My fourth question is about an important health and safety matter. As the Minister knows, at the moment secondary ticketing websites allow tickets in the away end of football stadiums to be acquired by home fans. That undermines safety regulations that have been in force in stadiums for decades. I did not hear what the Government propose to do about that. At the moment, the Premier League is describing organisations such as Ticketbis and other platforms as unauthorised sellers of tickets for games, yet they continue to operate with extraordinary impunity and in a way that completely flouts the protections that this House put in place in the Consumer Rights Act. We would like to hear what the Minister will do to bring order to this chaos.

Data Protection Bill [Lords] (Sixth sitting)

Ian Murray Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Public Bill Committees

The position in the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill reflects the reality that in leaving the EU we will be ending the direct jurisdiction of the CJEU over our domestic courts while also allowing judges to take account of post-exit CJEU judgments. This is similar to how the UK courts can currently take into account judgments made by courts from other jurisdictions, although of course we recognise that as the text of our law and EU law will at the outset be the same or substantially similar in many cases, it is highly likely in practice that our courts may find it helpful to look at the CJEU judgments, and it is perfectly legitimate and sensible for them to do so.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister said in her Mansion House speech earlier this month that as a country we may have to stay under the jurisdiction of the ECJ for the purposes of organisations such as Euratom and other EU-wide organisations that the UK may wish to remain part of. Is the Minister saying that that is a possibility with regard to data protection laws in this legislation?

[Margot James]

The future of our membership of the European Data Protection Board will be subject to negotiations. I cannot prejudge how those negotiations will develop and finalise in respect of our membership of that important body.

[Ian Murray]

Am I right in saying that the Minister is not ruling it out as part of the legislation?

[Margot James]

I would not rule it out, but the negotiations are between two parties, so however much we may wish to maintain our membership of the European data protection board, that might not be something that the EU will grant us. As I say, it is a matter for negotiation and I am sure things will become clearer over the next 12 months. To take an approach now that would require our courts to follow future case law of the CJEU, even if only in some areas, would place limitations on the discretion and independence of our courts.

Cambridge Analytica: Data Privacy

Ian Murray Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I agree with the hon. Lady very strongly on the premise of her question. The first thing that we will do is listen very carefully to the report of the Select Committee, which as I said at the start, is doing excellent work in this area. We insist that all companies comply properly with what the Select Committee says, and I think that it has plenty more work to do, as we are just discovering. We will not rest until we put this right, because, frankly, the quality of the liberal democracy that we live in depends on having a high-quality political discourse. That means making sure that online, as well as offline, we can have exchanges that are robust but based on reasonableness and an objective truth.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

The allegations from the weekend that were uncovered by a brave journalist involved Facebook—it involved Facebook because that is the one that has been caught. Will the Minister assure the House that he will be calling every large company that may be attempting to subvert our democracy into his office to ask them whether they have been involved in any of these data breaches and whether they will come clean, so that we can be confident that our data are protected?

[Matt Hancock]

I hope that they have heard that, and I think it would be very sensible if they did.

Dr Elsie Inglis and Women’s Contribution to World War One

Ian Murray Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Dr Elsie Inglis and the contribution of women to World War One.

As always, it is a great pleasure to be in a debate with you in the Chair, Mr Davies. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocated time for this important debate in this important week for remembering Dr Elsie Inglis. She was a truly historic and remarkable woman—an Edinburgh woman, no less, and very proud of her roots. This week is the centenary of her death and of the state funeral that she was afforded, which will be re-enacted tomorrow.

Who was Dr Elsie Inglis? Born in India in 1864, she was the daughter of John Inglis, a chief commissioner in the Indian civil service. She studied medicine at Dr Sophia Jex-Blake’s then newly opened Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women and was one of the first women in Scotland to finish higher education, although she was not allowed to graduate. She went on to complete her training under Sir William Macewen at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

The now famous exhortation,

“My good lady, go home and sit still”,

was the response that Dr Elsie Inglis received when she asked the War Office whether female doctors and surgeons could serve in frontline hospitals in world war one. At that time and for many years to come, that was the attitude that women faced in making vital contributions to society.

Despite attempts to repress her efforts—and those of many other women—to contribute, Elsie did not, in the words of the exhortation, “sit still”. Instead, she persevered, setting up the Scottish women’s hospitals, which were all-female units that played a vital role with Britain’s allies, including the French, the Belgians and, particularly, the Serbs.

Elsie was 50 when war broke out and she defied British Government advice by setting up female-staffed field hospitals close to the frontlines. She travelled to France within three months of the outbreak of war, and the Abbaye de Royaumont hospital, containing some 200 beds, was in place by the end of 1914. That was followed by a second hospital, at Villers Cotterets, in 1917. Tens of thousands were helped by the hospitals she set up in France, Serbia, Ukraine and Romania, acting with the support of the French and Serbian Governments.

Prior to that, Elsie was a strong advocate of women’s rights and a leading member of the suffragette movement in Scotland, playing a notable role in the establishment of the Scottish women’s suffragette federation in 1906. She fought energetically against prejudice and for the social and political emancipation of women, and had already made a huge impact in Edinburgh by working in some of the poorest parts of the city with women and babies who were in desperate need of help. Selflessly, she often waived the fees of patients who could not afford to pay.

Politically, Elsie was a staunch campaigner for votes for women, and her involvement in the suffragette movement prompted her to raise money to send out to female doctors, nurses, orderlies and drivers on the frontline. She recorded many great achievements, including setting up 14 hospitals during the war—staffed by 1,500 Scottish women, all volunteers. Most notably, Elsie raised the equivalent of £53 million in today’s money to fund greatly needed medical care for those on the frontline. Her efforts reached across the waters on another level, attracting volunteers from New Zealand, Australia and Canada. As I am sure everyone would agree, that showed fierce independence and capability from women who were well ahead of their time.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this timely debate and on ensuring that it coincides with the anniversary. This type of discussion, debate and acknowledgement is significant, given the issues that he mentioned. For example, we must not only pay tribute to the many voluntary detachments of women in the first world war from all across the UK, including Scotland and Northern Ireland, but ensure that future generations never forget the contributions that they made.

[Ian Murray]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. Commemorating the centenary is easy, but we need to ensure not only that the education and commemorations run right through society, in schools and workplaces, but that all four corners of the United Kingdom commemorate the contribution of women—and indeed, of everyone, including those who made the ultimate sacrifice in giving their lives.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. Does he agree that we need to learn lessons not necessarily only from the extraordinary contribution that women made during the great war and the social strides that they made in that time, but from what happened during the peace? It is certainly the case that many of the advances retreated in the immediate post-war era and into the 1920s, and in many ways women were set back to where they were in 1914. As we approach the centenary of the end of the great war, perhaps we need to give thought to what happened shortly thereafter.

[Ian Murray]

Absolutely. As the hon. Gentleman said, we should commemorate not just the contribution that women made during the wars, but the contribution that they made subsequently. Indeed, in this very building, Emily Davison is commemorated downstairs for her contribution to the suffragette movement. I am very much of the view that if more women had been running the world, perhaps the great wars would never have happened.

[Dr Murrison]

I think the hon. Gentleman might have misunderstood my point. In the years following the great war, many advances that women had made and the position that they had established for themselves in society sadly took a step back. People such as Dr Inglis, who had become very prominent, were in fact told to take a back seat, particularly when the men came back from the war.

[Ian Murray]

Absolutely. Women are still fighting the same battles today. The advancement that they made during the great war was almost forgotten, until the second world war, of course, when women again played a significant role. We need to remember their contribution not just during the war efforts, but in between. That is part of the story of the commemorations and the story we should tell of our recent history.

The women’s dedication to help thousands of badly injured men in dire conditions is commendable. In Serbia in particular, the typhus epidemic had gripped the country, and without those women many tens of thousands—if not hundreds of thousands—of lives would not have been saved. Serbia was home to the first Scottish women’s hospitals field unit in 1914. Despite the life-threatening conditions of the typhus epidemic, to which four staff from the Scottish women’s hospitals had lost their lives, Elsie went to serve in the hospital on the frontline. Sent out to look after 300 beds, Elsie and her team were in fact faced with 550 beds filled with injured and ill soldiers. With a dreadful lack of sanitation in the overcrowded hospitals, Elsie faced the Serbian officials and firmly refused to let the overcrowding endanger the lives of patients and nurses. A true heroine, she went from negotiating with Serbian officials to finding innovative ways to deal with the overflow patients at the hospital, without a second thought for her own safety. Her colleagues took the same approach.

Even after the beginning of the great retreat, in which Serbia was invaded by the Austrian army, Elsie and many of her volunteers refused to give up. Again, she defied demands from the British Government to return home. Despite finding out that she had cancer—I stress that she had cancer as well—she set up two more field hospitals. In 1915, she was captured and repatriated, but still did not rest until Serbian soldiers were guaranteed safe passage out of Serbia. Once this safe passage had been granted and the soldiers arrived in Newcastle, Elsie battled through the pain of her own illness to greet them. Sadly, she passed away on 26 November 1917.

It has been said that Dr Elsie Inglis

“made Florence Nightingale look like a part-time care assistant”.

Her fierce dedication to helping others leading up to the great war shows that Elsie really was a role model in her own right. I am pleased that my constituents in Edinburgh and people in the rest of Scotland have such an outstanding figure to look up to and aspire to. Elsie broke down barriers and proved time and again that women will always be an integral part of society. She continually praised the work carried out by her many volunteers, refusing to think of her effort as any greater than theirs. Elsie never asked them to do something that she would not be willing to do herself. She took part in the most menial tasks and always worked as part of the unit.

Elsie’s humbleness about the great things that she achieved is why I feel so strongly about remembering her legacy and giving her and other women who contributed to world war one the recognition and commendation they deserve. We should commemorate and celebrate her life and work.

On 29 November, 1917, Elsie Inglis was buried in Edinburgh following a state funeral at St Giles’ Cathedral, with the flags of Great Britain and Serbia placed on her coffin, the lilies of France around her, and the torn banners of Scotland’s history hanging over her head. She was later awarded high honours by France, Russia and Serbia. Indeed, in Serbia, Dr Inglis and her colleagues are regarded as heroes and saints, with 17 statues to her in Serbia alone.

The UK should properly recognise Dr Inglis and the other unacknowledged British heroines who set up the Scottish women’s hospitals during the first world war. To mark the centenary of her death, I am pleased that this year the City of Edinburgh Council has decided to name a street after her and that the Edinburgh Evening News is running a fundraising campaign to have a statue of Elsie erected in her beloved Edinburgh.

The Scottish Women’s Hospitals Trust, led by my constituent Ian McFarlane and his trustees, aims to work with the Serbian Government and the Edinburgh Evening News to get the funds to build this well-deserved and much-overdue monument. A private ceremony was held at her grave on Sunday to mark the centenary of her death. As a mark of her growing reputation, a commemoration will also take place at St Giles’ cathedral tomorrow, on the same day as her state funeral 100 years ago.

But what about the countless other women who poured compassion and dedication into saving lives during the great war? November 2017 also marks the centenary of the foundation of the Women’s Royal Naval Service. The Royal Navy became the first of the three services officially to recruit women. Expansion of the wartime Navy led the Wrens to take on tasks that the Royal Navy had previously considered beyond women’s capabilities. Women’s contributions to the war effort went from strength to strength, and many Wrens were involved in planning naval operations, including the D-day landings in June 1944.

In December 1941, the Government passed the National Service Act 1941, which allowed the conscription of women into war work or the armed forces. In 1944, some 74,000 women were doing more than 200 different jobs. Of the courageous Wrens, 303 were killed on wartime service; we should pay tribute to them and all their efforts. On 7 July 1917, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps became the British Army’s first all-female unit. More than 57,000 women served from July 1917 to 1921, including 10,000 in France.

I would like to recognise in particular the contribution of two great Scottish women to the WAAC: Alexandra “Mona” Chalmers Watson and Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan. Mona was from a high-achieving Edinburgh family and was the first woman to graduate from Edinburgh University as a doctor. Helen, who studied botany at King’s College London, had deep family roots in Ayrshire and Aberdeen. As well as playing leading roles in the WAAC, they fought hard against the patriarchy to show that women must have a more equal place in society and in the world.

It is also 100 years since Passchendaele, one of the most notorious battles of the first world war, which the House commemorated last month. In just three and a half months of fighting, an estimated 550,000 Allied and German troops were killed, wounded or lost. Around 90,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers went missing: 50,000 were buried without being identified, and 42,000 were never recovered from the fields of Flanders, which turned into an ocean of mud.

As well as paying tribute to those who lost their lives, I would like to recognise the contribution of Sister Kate Luard, who served as a nurse in the second Boer war as well as being head nurse at a casualty station on the western front. Sister Luard often described her work in letters from Passchendaele as “UBC”—“utter bloody chaos”. Despite the chaos, she persisted, saving countless lives. I am glad that her efforts were recognised; she was awarded the Royal Red Cross and bar. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to serve so close to the frontline under such enormous pressures, but her letters are a small insight into the passion and dedication that it must have taken to do so:

“The uproar is almost stupefying. They burst on two sides—streams of shrapnel which were quite hot when you picked them up. They came everywhere, through our canvas huts. Bursting shells are an ugly sight—black or yellow smoke and streams of jagged shells flying violently in all directions. It doesn’t look as if we should ever sleep again.”

More than 100,000 women joined Britain’s armed forces during the war. From ambulance driving to translating, women served Britain in a variety of ways; I will highlight a few more. Elizabeth Knocker and Mairi Chisholm set up their own first aid post close to the Belgian frontline at Pervyse in November 1914. Mary O’Connell Bianconi went to France in August 1917 as a member of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, where she worked as a driver in the St Omer ambulance convoy. After an air raid in July 1918, Molly and six of her driver colleagues drove their ambulances to pick up the wounded. Dame Katharine Furse joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment in 1909. On the outbreak of the first world war, she was chosen to be head of the first VAD unit to be sent to France. In 1917 she became the director of the newly formed Women’s Royal Naval Service.

We all know the immeasurable contribution women made back home—everything from working in munitions factories to building guns. I wish that I could identify by name each and every woman who made an enormous contribution to the great war. Unfortunately, time does not allow, but those unmentioned are by no means unnoticed. It is hard to imagine that women with such passion and hunger to help, and who spoke up when they were told to be quiet, could ever be forgotten. They most definitely helped to pave the way for future women to crack the glass ceiling.

Some important centenaries approach next year. To name a few, April 2018 will mark the formation of the Women’s Royal Air Force, an invaluable asset to the RAF in which around 32,000 women enrolled in its first two years. May 2018 marks the day that nine members of the Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps became the first British women to die on active military service when their trench was hit by a German bomb in Abbeville, France.

Many of the women whom I have mentioned saved lives through innovative thinking, putting the wellbeing of others above their own safety. They often worked under fire, in unthinkable conditions with little sleep and few resources. They offered a helping hand not because they wanted praise, but because they had valuable experience and skills to offer to those who were also putting their lives on the line for their country. I am extremely pleased to have had this opportunity to ensure that we continue to give them the recognition that they deserve, and I hope that their legacy will live on.

I will finish where I started by reading out what is on the gravestone of Dr Elsie Inglis, who is buried in Dean cemetery in Edinburgh:

“To the beloved and honoured memory of Elsie Maud Inglis. Born 1864, died on active service 1917. Surgeon, philanthropist, patriot, a leader of the movement for the political emancipation of women and founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for foreign service. Mors janua vitae”—

meaning “Death is the gateway to life”.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Murray]

I thank the Minister and the shadow Minister for their wonderful contributions and the moving stories they told from their personal experience. What we see from the debate—from Dr Elsie Inglis, Mary Barbour and Florence Green, whom the Minister mentioned; from Plymouth to Wales to Glasgow to Edinburgh, from Barnsley to Caithness to Northern Ireland and right across the country; from the RAF, the Army and the Royal Navy—is that the contribution that these dedicated, passionate and often modest women made to the war effort, and subsequently, without any regard to their own safety, shows that we owe them a great deal of respect and remembrance. Perhaps, if someone from the BBC is watching, they might want to change “Dad’s Army” to “Mum’s Army” and make a new comedy series about the contribution of women to the war effort.

We will see many centenaries this year and next in the run-up to the centenary of the end of the first world war. For everyone who made an effort, particularly for women, we will do two things: thank them for the service they gave this country and say that we will always remember them.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Dr Elsie Inglis and the contribution of women to World War One.