Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)

John Denham Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Hunt]

I will make a little progress, then I will come back to the right hon. Gentleman.

The second allegation is over ministerial responsibility for my special adviser, as set out in paragraph 3.3 of the ministerial code. Adam Smith, my former special adviser, is someone of the highest integrity—[Interruption.] He is. However, he did engage in some contact with News Corporation that was inappropriate and he has resigned. Lessons will be learned about how to improve processes and to avoid that happening again. I did not know about or authorise—

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[Mr Denham]

Like the Secretary of State, I was responsible for appointing a number of special advisers who worked for me. It is inconceivable to me that any one of my special advisers could have maintained contact of this volume with a major stakeholder without me, as the Secretary of State, being aware of it. How on earth can he explain his apparent case that he knew nothing about what was going on?

[Mr Hunt]

I had hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would explain why it is a breach of the code when a Conservative special adviser behaves inappropriately, but not when a Labour special adviser does, but he did not.

I want to get on to the substance of what the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham said. Parliament rightly holds Ministers to account, and I strongly defend the right of this House to do so. Since my answer to the hon. Member for Bassetlaw in September, as a result of our gathering evidence for the Leveson inquiry, more than 2,000 pages of paperwork relating to the BSkyB bid have been assembled and placed in the House Library. That shows that time after time I sought to supply the House with as much information as possible, far beyond what was required by the Enterprise Act 2002, and probably far more than for any previous deal. It shows that I not only followed legal advice but went beyond it, seeking and publishing independent and expert advice about every key decision—an approach that was confirmed by nearly six hours of testimony under oath from myself and others, including my permanent secretary, who said that I had deliberately reduced my own room to manipulate the process to vanishing point.

Indeed, the evidence shows that the real story of this bid was insistence by me at several key stages on decisions that News Corp did not consider to be in its interests—the involvement of independent regulators; the stopping of James Murdoch being chairman of the spun-off Sky News; the refusal to rush the process; the decision to consult not once but twice. This was not an easy process, nor was it ever likely to command popular support, but the decisions were taken fairly and my Department deserves enormous credit as a result.

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[Mr Whittingdale]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It has been made clear that the decision to pass responsibility to my right hon. Friend was made after he had indicated that he was on record expressing a view on the merits of the bid before he was given that responsibility.

[Mr Denham]

Will the hon. Gentleman clarify something for me? When the Cabinet Secretary took the view on the suitability of the Secretary of State, had the Cabinet Secretary been made aware of the memo from the Secretary of State to the Prime Minister proposing a joint meeting with the Business Secretary on this matter? It would be surprising if he had not been told that by either the Secretary of State or the Prime Minister.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am not in a position to know that but it is a question that the right hon. Gentleman can perfectly fairly put to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Secretary. I want at the end of my speech to say what might happen next, if there are still some questions.

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[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to follow the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee, the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin). I think that his last remarks should be heard by the Secretary of State, who, at the very least, must conclude that there was a gross dereliction of duty in his failure to supervise and properly manage his special adviser on an issue that was not a minor matter for his Department but an £8 billion takeover at the centre of the media dominating our country. It is inconceivable that the Secretary of State was able, as he claims, to allow his special adviser to operate in such a way without ever knowing what was going on. That alone should be cause for him to consider his position.

Secondly, let us deal with this idea, compounded by the Prime Minister today, that Sir Alex Allan’s letter in any way vindicates the Prime Minister’s decision not to send this matter to the independent adviser. The question is not the facts, but the judgment that should be made on the facts. That can be done only by Sir Alex Allan. The case of Baroness Warsi has been referred to him, and the Prime Minister did not suggest today that there were any unknown facts in her case; he wanted the independent adviser’s view on her conduct. That is all Labour Members are asking for in this case—and not a single argument has been given for resisting it.

Many of the facts are known, but I want to concentrate on the part that briefly involved me personally in the saga. As shadow Business Secretary, I was preparing—until the previous Business Secretary was caught declaring war on Murdoch—to shadow this procedure. When the decision was taken to refer it to the Culture Secretary, I wrote to Sir Gus O’Donnell on 22 December, referring to public statements made by the Secretary of State and asking whether, in the light of those statements, Sir Gus was satisfied that the Secretary of State could rule with impartiality on this matter.

As is now well known, Sir Gus replied to me on 22 December, stating, having taken advice:

“I am satisfied that those statements do not amount to a pre-judgement of the case in question”.

That seems pretty clear, and that was the judgment made at the time. The judgment has been relied upon by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State on countless occasions since to justify the Secretary of State’s being asked to exercise that role. It is now clear, is it not, that Sir Gus O’Donnell did not have available to him or his lawyers all the evidence that he might have considered about the suitability or the impartiality of the Secretary of State? Not only that, as the Culture Secretary and the Prime Minister, who relied on Sir Gus’s advice, actively, knowingly and deliberately kept the Cabinet Secretary in the dark about what had been going on between them in respect of matters that were at the very least entirely relevant to whether this Secretary of State was a suitable person to conduct this process.

[Kevin Brennan]

While my right hon. Friend was making this accusation, the Culture Secretary was shaking his head. He now has an opportunity to refute the allegation by intervening. Would my right hon. Friend welcome such an intervention?

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[Mr Denham]

I would indeed welcome an intervention that told the House why neither the Secretary of State nor the Prime Minister thought it appropriate to tell the Cabinet Secretary of the existence of the November memo to the Prime Minister. The Culture Secretary should have gone to the Cabinet Secretary and said: “This is relevant to your decision as to whether I am a suitable person”. Why did the Secretary of State not make that available?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

Because I was not party to any of the discussions between the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Secretary.

[Mr Denham]

The Secretary of State would have known on 22 December that the Cabinet Secretary had written to me saying that he was in the clear. Any honest Secretary of State would have turned around at that moment—

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. When an hon. or right hon. Member starts a sentence with “Any honest” something or other, we are getting close to the time when we need to be careful.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

That is not a point of order for the Chair. We must use temperate language throughout this debate. That would be incredibly useful for its tone. We also need to be aware that the winding-up speeches will commence at around 3.45 pm, so it would helpful if we focused on the subject matter of the debate.

[Mr Denham]

It must, shall we say, have occurred to the Secretary of State that the Cabinet Secretary did not know of his memo. It must certainly have occurred to the Prime Minister that the Cabinet Secretary could not possibly have had the chance to consider that memo before he wrote the letter. Thus, from 22 December onwards, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister have relied essentially on a fiction—a letter from Sir Gus O’Donnell that relied on his not knowing what had been going on between them in the memos.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Denham]

I need to make some progress.

What do we now know about the conduct of the Secretary of State? On 12 November 2010, he was advised not to have any external discussions on the merger and not to write to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills about it. He was told that if he did so, it carried risks to the robustness of the decisions.

As other Members have said, there were two key parts to the memo sent to the Prime Minister. The first lets us know in no unambiguous terms of the Secretary of State’s support for the merger proceeding and his belief that if it were blocked, our media sector would suffer for years. Secondly, however, and of equal significance, it proposed a meeting between the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Business Secretary and the Culture Secretary himself

“to discuss the policy issues that are thrown up as a result.”

In the light of the legal advice given to the Secretary of State on 12 November, he must have known not only that sending that memo was inappropriate, but that the course of action he was proposing—a cabal of Ministers at the top of Government involving the one person who was meant to be acting in a quasi-judicial manner and who should have had no discussions and no connections with anyone else—flew in the face of the advice he had been given and was clearly acting in an entirely inappropriate manner.

[Damian Collins]

The right hon. Gentleman has read out the last sentence of the memo. Will he read out the preceding sentence?

[Mr Denham]

The previous sentence referred to the procedural processes. [Interruption.] Let me acknowledge that the memo refers to the proper procedures, but I will make this point to the House. The Secretary of State seems to be under the impression that if only he litters his memos and letters with the occasional reference to proper procedure, he can behave in a way that is entirely improper and outside the procedure. The sentence about proper procedure to which the hon. Gentleman wants me to refer is totally invalidated by the following sentence, which effectively says, “Let’s do something completely improper”—have a meeting involving the Business Secretary. The Secretary of State, of all people, should have had no discussions with any Minister, the Prime Minister or the Deputy Prime Minister, because he was meant to be acting in a quasi-judicial manner.

My final point is about the relevance of the motion. I believe that the Secretary of State’s and, indeed, the Prime Minister’s actions in concealing this memo are an absolute disgrace, placing the advice that the Cabinet Secretary was able to give us in a very bad light. They failed to correct that; they failed to go to the Cabinet Secretary to say, “You should know about his memo.” What is more, and it is directly relevant to the motion, when the Culture Secretary had the opportunity to put the record straight on 25 April in response to my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell), he failed to do so. He has concealed the existence of the memo, concealed the fact that he was proposing to act in an entirely inappropriate manner and failed to disclose it to the House when he had the opportunity to so. At the very least, shall we say, might that not suggest in the mind of a reasonable person that there is a question or two for Sir Alex Allan to consider? It is the refusal even to look into these matters that makes this matter such a disgrace. That is why this motion should be carried.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

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[Sir George Young]

No, I will make a little more progress.

I very much regret the intervention that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) made about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. Despite Mr Speaker’s ruling, I believe that it did nothing to enhance Parliament’s reputation. I very much hope that at some point the hon. Gentleman will consider withdrawing what he said.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) referred to the thoughtful report that his Committee had just produced—before the recent controversy, as he pointed out. He rehearsed the argument for the role of the adviser on ministerial interests being self-starting rather than his having to wait for a referral. The Government will of course respond to that report in due course. He also touched on broader issues to do with the civil service and special advisers.

The best speech from the Labour Benches, if I may say so, came from the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham), but he missed the point by not distinguishing between what my right hon. Friend did before and after he assumed responsibility. He produced no evidence at all of my right hon. Friend’s decisions being in any way contaminated by what had happened before he assumed responsibility.

[Mr Denham]

Surely the issue for today’s debate is not the Secretary of State’s conduct on the merger but how he acted in relation to the provision of information to the House. My contribution did not deal one way or the other with his conduct on the merger; it was about his failure to disclose to the Cabinet Secretary his attempts to influence the decision before it was his responsibility.

[Sir George Young]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State dealt with that point substantially in his contribution.

My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) contrasted the actions of the previous Government with Labour Members’ criticism of the coalition Government, implying that they expect higher standards of us than they expected of themselves.

The hon. Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) said that today’s debate was the only opportunity for the House to deal with the matter, ignoring the role of Select Committees, the statement that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made and the urgent question answered by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) made a robust defence of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and rightly made the point that the ultimate decision rests with the Prime Minister. My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) said that the Opposition’s fox had been shot by the exchange of letters published today.

On the matter at hand, the controversy surrounding the Culture Secretary’s handling of the BSkyB bid first arose on 24 April. The next day, the Prime Minister responded to questions at Prime Minister’s Question Time and the Culture Secretary came to the House to give a full account of himself for just over an hour. The following week, the Prime Minister answered questions for 52 minutes, and two weeks ago my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State appeared in front of Lord Justice Leveson for almost eight hours. And yet when did the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) first call for his resignation? At 4.30 pm on 24 April, before a single question had been raised in Parliament and before he had had an opportunity to respond to any of the allegations.