Phone Hacking

Debate between Jim Sheridan and Lord Watson of Wyre Forest

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Watson]

I agree, and, just as the people of Liverpool no longer buy The Sun, thousands of people have joined a Facebook group to boycott—along with advertisers—the News of the World. I am sure that people watching this debate will consider that fact.

[Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will be aware that there are people currently serving prison sentences in this country, none more so than Tommy Sheridan, the former MSP. That successful prosecution was based on evidence from Andrew Coulson, but it now seems that the jury did not get all the e-mails that were pertinent to the case. If that is true, surely the appropriate authorities should revisit the case and ask Mr Coulson whether that evidence and that information were withheld intentionally.

[Mr Watson]

I cannot answer my hon. Friend fully, because of the time restrictions. I will reveal more on the issue later in the week, except to say that I think the Sheridan trial was unsound and may need revisiting.

Families who trusted Rebekah Brooks when she said she felt their pain, families who have been cruelly let down by the intrusion into private grief and the callous exploitation of their suffering—anguished families, indeed—are now being tortured yet again by the knowledge that in the world of Rebekah Brooks no one can grieve in private, no one can cry their tears without surveillance, no one can talk to their friends without their private feelings becoming public property.

The whole board of News International is responsible for the company. Mr James Murdoch should be suspended from office while the police investigate what I believe is his personal authorisation to plan a cover-up of this scandal. Mr James Murdoch is the chairman. It is clear now that he personally, without board approval, authorised money to be paid by his company to silence people who had been hacked, and to cover up criminal behaviour within his organisation. That is nothing short of an attempt to pervert the course of justice.

There is now no escape for News International from the responsibility for systematically breaking the law, but there is also now no escape from the fact that it sought to pervert the course of justice.

I believe that the police should also ask Mr James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks whether they know of the attempted destruction of data at the HCL storage facility in Chennai, India. Mr James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks now have to accept their culpability, and they will have to face the full force of the law.

Their behaviour towards the most vulnerable, their knowledge of lawbreaking and their failure to act, their links with the criminal underworld and their attempt to cover up lawbreaking and to pay for people’s silence, tell the world all we need to know about their character—that they are not fit and proper persons to control any part of the media in this country.