Phone Hacking and the Media Debate

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Jack Straw

Main Page: Jack Straw (Independent - Blackburn)

Phone Hacking and the Media

Jack Straw Excerpts
Monday 11th July 2011

(13 years, 3 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Jeremy Hunt Portrait Mr Hunt
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Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I think that everyone will be reflecting on what has happened. In the last Parliament there were two Select Committee inquiries on the matter and two reports by the Information Commissioner stating that things were wrong and needed to be sorted out, but nothing happened. Let us hope that as a political class we are up to the challenge of sorting things out this time.

Jack Straw Portrait Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
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Extraordinarily, the Secretary of State has come to the House without any briefing whatsoever to give further and better particulars behind the Prime Minister’s statement on Friday that he had—very careful words—no “specific” knowledge that Mr Andy Coulson had appointed a known criminal to work at the News of the World. Given the absence of a briefing today, does the Secretary of State accept that it is his duty to go back to the Department and to Downing Street and insist that a full, detailed chronology of who informed whom—or failed to inform whom—by name and what they said is published by the close of play today?

Jeremy Hunt Portrait Mr Hunt
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I believe that the Prime Minister is a man of honour and integrity, and when he says that he had no knowledge of that particular episode, I believe him.