Valedictory Debate

Margot James Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson); I will miss him at breakfast time.

My late father’s birthday was on 5 November. My father, Colin Lucas, and my mother, Alice Lucas, were profound influences on me and they taught me some very basic values. They taught me to tell the truth, to respect the law and always to listen to other people. I do that, and that has guided me in my parliamentary career.

I want to talk about the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, of which I have been a member since 2015. Since 2017, it has shown Parliament at its best. It has worked across parties to produce work that I believe is world-leading. Twitter announced last week that it is stopping paid political advertising. I believe that that process was commenced by the DCMS Committee and its report on disinformation last year.

I am afraid that I am now going to change the tone of the debate, because I want to place on the record some information that I have concerning disinformation and the Government of the day. Sitting opposite me in this debate, I have seen many wonderful Conservative MPs for whom I have huge respect, people I have learned to respect since I came here in 2001. When I came to Parliament, I did not understand how Parliament worked so well on a cross-party basis. I know that now, and there are many, many noble, good and very skilled Conservative MPs. Unfortunately, they are not running the Government at this very serious time.

I want to draw the House’s attention to the serious position that exists on the cusp of a general election, because we have laws in place that are completely inadequate to deal with that general election. I want to quote the words of Dominic Cummings in correspondence that he sent to the Electoral Commission. He said:

“Overall it is clear that the entire regulatory structure around national elections including data is really bad. There are so many contradictions, gaps, logical lacunae that it is wide open to abuse…There has been no proper audit by anybody of how the rules could be exploited by an internal or foreign force to swing close elections. These problems were not fixed for the 2017 election, and I doubt they will be imminently. The system cannot cope with the fast-changing technology.”

The main adviser to the Prime Minister is telling us that the current legal structure for elections is unsound. We are going into a general election that is going to be fought online and we are already seeing the way in which that is affecting the campaign.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

The Information Commissioner’s Office is empowered under the Data Protection Act 2018 to produce a code of practice for political campaigning and it has produced a code. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the next Government should put that code of practice into statute?

[Ian C. Lucas]

Absolutely I agree. I fundamentally believe that we should implement all the recommendations of the ICO and the Electoral Commission, because the legal structure under which we are fighting the election is open to electoral fraud. That is the position in which we are going into the general election.

On electoral fraud, I want to refer to some correspondence that Dominic Cummings sent to another person in the referendum campaign in 2016. He was talking about breaking spending limits in the referendum, and that led to an offence for which Vote Leave was fined. Dominic Cummings said:

“We’ve now got all the money we can spend legally. You should NOT send us your 100k. However, there is another organisation that could spend your money. Would you be willing to send the 100k to some social media ninjas who could usefully spend it on behalf of this organisation? I am very confident it would be well spent in the final crucial 5 days. Obviously it would be entirely legal.”

The truth is that it was not legal at all, and Vote Leave was fined in connection with that campaign. As a result, the matter was referred to the police and has now been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service, and the investigation is ongoing.

Furthermore, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Prime Minister were both aware of the fact that offences had been committed and were both heavily involved in Vote Leave. This document also has a statement from Dominic Cummings, which he wrote and sent to the Electoral Commission. He said:

“I never discussed VL’s donations to BL”—

the donations to BeLeave for which Vote Leave was fined—

“with either of them (before the referendum) and to the best of my knowledge neither did anybody else and they were wholly unaware of this issue until after the referendum.”

So, both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster were aware of Vote Leave’s offences, but they have not come clean to the House of Commons or to the DCMS Committee by producing that evidence. Furthermore, Dominic Cummings has refused to come to the DCMS Committee to speak about these matters. Even worse, the Prime Minister will not tell him to come to this House to speak to the Select Committee to explain himself and to give evidence. I have secured these documents through the Committee, and I am placing them on the public record, because they relate to something that should be known by the public before we vote in a general election. That information has been withheld from the British public, and it ought to be known.

What the British public also need to know is that, apart from the honourable Conservative Members facing me at the moment, we have a Government whose leadership includes a Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster who is in charge of electoral reform and who is not divulging his full knowledge of the 2016 referendum, his role in it, and the offences committed at the time. If this House is to regain the respect of the public, Select Committees need real powers to compel witnesses to attend. We should never again be frustrated by a Prime Minister who prevents a witness from giving evidence to a Committee.

It has been a real honour to be in this place. I have loved every minute. I love this House of Commons, and I will be sad to leave. We need to respect each other more in this House but—to go back to my mother and my father—we must have basic honesty. There is nothing complicated about that. Telling the truth and straight- forwardness are the principles that we should stick to, but I am afraid the Government do not have them at the moment.