Phone Hacking

Nick Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We should celebrate good journalism and social responsibility in journalism and media organisations. Let me put it on the record that many media organisations do some brilliant things in our country to build up what I call the big society. We must not damn all media because of what is happening and what has happened in some organisations. As well as a good regulatory system, we need a culture that is, yes, about getting to the truth but, no, not about breaking the law.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

Given the point made earlier by the Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs that the Metropolitan police’s small team will take many months to go through all the names and phone numbers that they have to go through, may I press the Prime Minister to make sure that they have enough police officers to do the job in good time?

[The Prime Minister]

As I said in my statement, this is one of the biggest police investigations currently ongoing in Britain. In defence of the Metropolitan police, next year is the Olympics and we have an enormous security challenge to get right in this country. The Metropolitan police has to meet a huge number of objectives—it is for the police authority to help to set those—so I do think it is putting adequate resources into this. As I have said, it is one of the biggest operations in Britain today.