Phone Hacking

Oliver Heald Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

As I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will be aware, the question of whether any organisation is a fit and proper person to own a broadcasting licence is a matter for Ofcom, and not the Secretary of State, under section 3 of the Broadcasting Act 1990. Indeed, the Secretary of State would not be allowed to get involved in that matter.

[Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

On the previous occasions these matters were debated in the House, there were many concerns that constitutional issues and issues of privilege arose from the potential hacking of MPs’ telephones. Since that time, the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges has considered this issue and produced its 14th report. In framing the inquiries suggested today, would it be possible to take account of the recommendations of that report, which suggest some ways of clarifying this quite difficult situation?

[The Attorney-General]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I have no doubt that that factor, along with every single representation made by Members of this House on how they think the inquiry or inquiries should be conducted, can be taken into account.

--- Later in debate ---

[Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

May I start by picking up on a point that the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) made? He said that celebrities and Members of Parliament having their phones hacked into was bad enough. However, whenever a child goes missing or there is a death in suspicious circumstances, people up and down the land and parents in particular feel a sense of dread and great concern. To think that the allegations that are coming out now relate to such incidents is truly shocking, and that sense of shock is felt right across the House.

When we last debated the matter on 9 September last year, concern was expressed about the position of Members of Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman made a speech, as did the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who has been so dogged on the issue. The point they made was not that an MP is above anyone else, because of course they are not, but that we have ancient rights that are very important to democracy. We call them privilege, but they are really about having freedom of expression to come here and put our case for the people whom we represent without being impeded in that work. The fact that those rights might have been interfered with in the course of the scandal was why the issue was referred to the Committee on Standards and Privileges.

Of course, the Committee was in the position that my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General described. We were not able to look into the detail of the allegations, because we did not want to prejudice what the police were doing any more than anybody else. However, we did look into the principle of how our rights are affected in the modern idiom. Our rights were put forward in 1688, I believe, in the Bill of Rights, which explained what we now call privilege. It was the following year, in 1689, that somebody started trying to interfere by intercepting our letters, so this is not a new problem.

However, the Committee considered whether we needed to do something to tackle the problem in the modern context. We came to the conclusion, first, that it was necessary for us to debate whether it is just parliamentary activities that should be covered by privilege, or whether it should also include constituency work. We also thought that there was now a case for a privileges Act that would set out what our privileges are and what they mean in the modern context.

I strongly support the setting up of inquiries, but let us not forget that it is important to tackle the issues set out in the Committee’s 14th report of this Session. I hope that it might be possible for the Government to bring forward a draft privileges Bill fairly soon, so that we can have important debates on a matter that affects the rights of the public in this country. They are perhaps misdescribed as privilege, because they are the rights of the people and are very important.