Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Philip Hollobone and David T C Davies

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend. It is incumbent on all of us in this Chamber to support the decisions of the court, as I am sure all of us do.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

6. Whether he has had recent discussions with Cabinet colleagues on the export of Welsh lamb to the United States.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Philip Hollobone and David T C Davies

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

8. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the cost of living support for households in Wales.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (David T. C. Davies)]

My ministerial colleagues and I fully accept that there is a cost of living challenge, but this country has faced some exceptional challenges over the past few years, including a global pandemic and a European land war. We have responded vigorously by providing £37 billion to help households across the UK through these challenges.

[David T. C. Davies]

I agree completely with my right hon. Friend. Households across the whole United Kingdom will be receiving a cost of living support payment worth £650 this month. By contrast the Welsh Labour Government want to spend £100 million to increase the number of Welsh Senedd Members. Some people believe in levelling up, but I am afraid that Opposition Members believe in leaving people behind and spending more money on further politicians.

[Mr Hollobone]

Across the UK, 8 million low-income households will get £1,200 in financial support to help with rising electricity and gas bills. Would not the £100 million being spent by the Welsh Government on extra politicians in Cardiff be better directed at helping those families?

[David T. C. Davies]

I fully agree with my hon. Friend. Not only will households receive an extra £1,200, but next week, 8 million households on means-tested benefits will get an extra £326 in their bank accounts; in September, 6 million people on disability benefits will receive a £150 payment; and in October, £400 will come off households’ energy bills. There is much more to follow, because the Government believe in levelling up, not in spending £100 million on extra Senedd Members.

Shared Prosperity Fund: Wales

Debate between Philip Hollobone and David T C Davies

Wednesday 14th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I would regard nothing that Mr Davies has said thus far as out of order, but I note Mr David’s objections and I am listening closely to all contributions made by all Members. I draw Mr Davies’s attention to the clock. He has just over a minute left.

[David T. C. Davies]

None of these is an accusation. They are all in the Auditor General’s report, which only came about as a result of the information that I gave them, because nobody in the Welsh Assembly—neither Members nor Government—was particularly interested in the fact that millions of pounds of their money was being spent. The reason I sent the information off was that the directors of that company came into my office and told me that their project was being backed by BMW and General Electric. It was not, because I checked with them afterwards. Then the directors sent their lawyer, Jonathan Coad, to try to take legal action against me, Martin Shipton and Trinity Newspapers, for falsely alleging General Electric and BMW’s involvement, but they did not realise that my tape recorder had accidentally been left on at the time and I had the whole thing on tape.

I say to hon. Members that the Welsh Assembly Government have failed over and over again. At least one civil servant’s name comes up every single time, many of the people involved in the decisions are all known to each other, and a lot of them have links back to the Labour party. I have touched on only three or four projects, but we all know that there are various others—Kukd was another one, as well as Kancoat and Blurrt. One after another, projects have received large amounts of funding, often running into millions, from the Welsh Government, and no proper checks and balances have been pursued.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. I call Mr Ben Lake.

The BBC and Political Impartiality

Debate between Philip Hollobone and David T C Davies

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the BBC and political impartiality.

Thank you, Mr Davies, for your chairmanship of this debate. May I begin by saying that this debate is about the BBC and impartiality, and the bias that has a tendency to creep in? This is not in any way meant to be a full-scale attack on the BBC, which is an organisation greatly respected by everyone, not least myself. In fact, I think that some of the programmes made by the BBC are absolutely second to none—in particular in the news department, which I am going to talk about in a bit more detail in a minute.

News and current affairs programmes on Radio 4 such as “From Our Own Correspondent” or “The Report” are absolutely excellent. I also pay tribute—as I am sure you would, Mr Davies, if you were able to—to the contribution the BBC has made to the Welsh language in Wales. Nor do I think that there is any argument for privatising the BBC; again, that is not what I am here to suggest. But I do think that unless the BBC is able to deal with the bias that many people have complained about, it is going to be harder and harder for it to justify the licence fee, which is in effect a tax on everyone whether they are supporters of what the BBC says or not. I will come to some examples of that.

Peter Sissons made the point in his book that there is a cultural bias within the BBC because it is a metropolitan organisation that seems to be peopled by employees who have a certain world view. It is always difficult to put people into categories, but in my opinion, one could fairly say—I have been in and out of BBC studios on a more-than-weekly basis for about 17 years now, as you know, Mr Davies—that that world view is somewhat left of centre. I have been in many BBC studios and canteens and I have yet to see anyone sitting there reading a copy of the Daily Express or the Daily Mail, loudly complaining about immigration, Brussels or suggesting that claims about climate change are somewhat overegged, yet that is a perfectly normal situation in many other places. Anyone trying it in the BBC studios would probably find that their promotion ceiling was hit fairly quickly.

The reality, of course, is that although the BBC goes out of its way to try to be impartial, it is very difficult for it to be when all—or most—of its employees share a particular set of opinions. We see that in several ways: for example, pressure groups are dealt with in different ways by the BBC. One could google its website right away to see what I am talking about. Organisations such as the Institute of Economic Affairs—one might suggest that that is a right-of-centre organisation—will always come with a health warning on a BBC webpage that it is a centre-right think-tank or a centre-right organisation. The situation is similar for the Adam Smith Institute or the Centre for Social Justice, which is always described as a think-tank set up by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith).

Meanwhile, other think-tanks that are asked to comment or supply speakers are not given health warnings in the same way. Organisations such as the Institute for Public Policy Research, which is a left-of-centre pressure group, is very rarely described as one. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation is a left-of-centre pressure group that supports higher taxes and higher spending. That is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but it has a left-of-centre view in everything that it suggests. It is never, ever described as that; it is always described as an anti-poverty charity or think-tank, or in some kind of a positive way.

When it comes to climate change, we see the same thing happening. Groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are simply described as that and their spokespeople are given licence to say whatever they want, whereas that is not the case for an organisation that may question some of the so-called consensus about climate change. The Global Warming Policy Foundation, for example, will always be described as an organisation set up by Nigel Lawson that questions the scientific consensus around climate change.

We see that bias creeping in when speakers are interrupted. For example, in November 2013, Evan Davis interviewed two speakers on the European Union, one of whom was Paul Sykes, who obviously took the view that the EU was not a good thing. He was interrupted 11 times a minute. The other speaker, Karel De Gucht, who I think was an EU trade commissioner, was interrupted just twice a minute. We see that bias in the number of speakers and the kind of views that they espouse. Again, in January 2013 when “Newsnight” ran a special on the European Union, the overwhelming majority of speakers—I think 18 out of 19—were pro-EU, with only one alternative voice.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I am listening to my hon. Friend’s speech with great interest, and I congratulate him on it. Does he agree that each morning on the business section of the “Today” programme, we still get an unrelenting diet of doom and gloom about Britain’s economic prospects after the Brexit vote? If anybody is trying to talk this country into recession, it is the business section of the “Today” programme. Does he share my concern that it should grow up and accept the result from the British people that we want to leave the European Union, with the positive benefits that that will bring this country?

[David T. C. Davies]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. It is not just that programme, but many others and many other aspects of the BBC. I took a few examples of this from the website earlier. I do not want to go through all of them, but an article asked, “Was there a Brexit graduate gap?” to try and perhaps suggest that people voting to leave the EU were not intelligent. Another article said, “PM condemns ‘despicable’ post-EU referendum hate crimes”.

In fact, if I may come to that point, I think the referendum campaign was run in a relatively fair fashion. In Wales, I was in and out of the studios a lot and I will not complain about what happened during the campaign, but what has taken place afterwards has been an absolute disgrace.

The worst aspect is the fact that there have been hate crimes, and we should not shy away from that. There always have been and possibly always will be. Every single person I know who campaigned for Brexit totally and utterly condemns hate crimes of any sort. Every reasonable and rational person condemns them. I have said to BBC reporters, “Why are we not allowed to go out there and say that we totally and utterly condemn these crimes? Why do we even have to put up with suggestions on BBC websites implying that somehow people who voted for Brexit are responsible for these despicable crimes that have taken place?”

We see headlines such as “Young Muslim women say they’re feeling the Brexit effect”, “Hate crime ‘still far too high’ post-Brexit”, “UN blames UK politicians for Brexit hate crime spike”, and “Brexit: Children hear racist abuse ‘for first time’”. There is one after another, always with the suggestion that somehow those 17 million people who went out and voted for freedom from the European Union are in some way responsible for the actions of a despicable minority who are condemned by absolutely everyone.

To put that in perspective, in the past we have seen despicable crimes by religious extremists. Whenever those crimes have taken place, the BBC has rightly made it absolutely clear that those crimes have been carried out by a tiny minority of people who share those particular religious views and that the vast majority of people sharing that religion do not support any form of violence. The BBC is right to make that point and yet, it is not doing so when dealing with Brexit.