Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Jo Swinson Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

As Rebekah Brooks said yesterday in Parliament, there was never a conversation that could have been held, in front of the Select Committee. [Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman asks me to answer the question—perhaps he will now be transparent, as he was Culture Secretary, about all the contacts he has had with News International over many years. I have set out the clearest possible position; it is for others now to do the same thing.

[Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)]

In the light of Mrs Brooks’s revelations about quite how cosy and close the relationship was between News International and Tony Blair, and Murdoch’s secret back-door meetings at No. 10 under both the last and present Governments, does the Prime Minister agree that this explains why successive Governments have been so reluctant to act in response to the 2003 Culture, Media and Sport Committee recommendations, the 2006 Information Commissioner report, and calls last year from Lib Dem MPs for a judicial inquiry into phone hacking? [Interruption.]

[The Prime Minister]

People should not shout the hon. Lady down, because she is making a very fair point, and frankly, it is a point that does not reflect very well on either Conservative or Labour, which is that there were a lot of warnings about what was going wrong—warnings from the Information Commissioner, warnings from the Select Committee—but we did not put high enough up the agenda the issue of regulating the media. We should not be pointing fingers about this; we should be recognising that we need to work on this to get it right, to respond to those reports and actually put some of their proposals into the law.