Oral Answers to Questions

Rob Butler Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for championing his constituency, as always. Just this week I spoke to one of his DUP colleagues about some of the great work going on with Fibrus, which is making Northern Ireland one of the best connected areas of our country and with the fastest speeds. Of course there is still more work to do. I was going to meet one of the hon. Gentleman’s counterparts in the Northern Ireland Assembly to discuss the issue, but unfortunately he came down with covid. I shall follow up and arrange that meeting again.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

3. What recent assessment her Department has made of the contribution of Channel 5 to public service broadcasting.

[The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Ms Nadine Dorries)]

I congratulate Channel 5 on its 25th anniversary, and I was delighted to attend the parliamentary reception this week to celebrate that significant milestone. Channel 5 has played an important and award-winning role in our public service broadcasting system, through its provision of new programming, and its unique focus on children’s television. Thanks to its significant investment in the regions, it is the levelling-up broadcaster, and I look forward to another successful 25 years.

[Rob Butler]

As my right hon. Friend says, Channel 5 is 25 years old this month. I was a news presenter on the channel at the beginning and for the next eight years, and our aim was to make the news more accessible to a wider audience, ensuring that everybody in the country could understand what was going on. Will my right hon. Friend join me in celebrating Channel 5’s team who had the imagination and confidence to do that then, and the current team who continue to bring understandable, relevant, and relatable news to people in all parts of the UK today?

[Ms Dorries]

I will—I congratulate and applaud them. My hon. Friend was there on Channel 5’s opening night, and so were the Spice Girls. Some of us in this House are old enough to remember that evening. Channel 5 does a huge amount for independent production companies, and one fifth of all its commissioning spending goes to those smaller companies. That is a larger spend than the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV. It also does a huge amount in the regions, and it far exceeds its Ofcom quota every year. As I said in my first reply, it is the levelling-up broadcaster, and I think those statistics alone bear that out. I wish it another 25 years, and I congratulate everybody working there.

BBC Funding

Rob Butler Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ms Dorries]

No.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

I was proud to spend the first seven years of my career at the BBC, but it is worth remembering that back then, in the 1990s, there were only four main terrestrial TV channels. The Secretary of State is absolutely right to say that the whole landscape has changed fundamentally since then, and I tend to agree with her that the licence fee must therefore be on borrowed time, but does she agree that any new long-term model of funding for the BBC will need to take into account the possible implications and repercussions for the commercial public service broadcasters that currently rely on advertising?

[Ms Dorries]

That is a very important point. Everything needs to be considered in the round: all the elements of the BBC’s reach, everything that it does and everything that it achieves. That is why we have to start the debate now, even though the future funding model would not come in until 2028. We need that time to prepare, to ensure that all the elements that are beneficial to the UK, to the BBC and to producing that great British content will remain.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rob Butler Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

We are subject to international obligations that make it clear that, if people have legitimate claims for asylum, there are safe and legal routes through which they may pursue those. To get on an illegally manned vessel and to try to break through our borders illegitimately is dangerous, immoral and unlawful.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

7. What recent steps she has taken to improve working practices on disclosure between all parties in the criminal justice system.

[The Solicitor General (Alex Chalk)]

Effective disclosure is a vital part of the criminal justice process, and it is inseparable from the right to a fair trial. The Attorney General is now undertaking the first annual review of the disclosure guidelines to ensure that this complex area is continually monitored and that issues that can have such profound implications for securing justice for victims are identified and resolved.

[Rob Butler]

I entirely agree with the Solicitor General that providing defendants with full disclosure of the evidence against them is extremely important, but it is also vital to ensure that police are not taken away from their frontline duties by overly bureaucratic requirements. Currently, for example, local officers in Aylesbury have to spend many hours redacting video evidence they send to the CPS before a charging decision is made just in case it is eventually shared with the defence. What can be done to reduce this burden so that police can be where they are most needed, which is on the streets?

[The Solicitor General]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for once again raising a really powerful point. In my discussions with police officers up and down the country, this issue of redaction has arisen again and again, and he is right that this is creating a serious administrative burden that absorbs resources that could profitably be deployed elsewhere. That is why I can assure him that this issue is receiving very close and current attention, and I expect to say more on that shortly.

Safety of Journalists

Rob Butler Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

Politicians and journalists do not always make easy bedfellows, but as MPs we fundamentally respect the right of journalists to report without fear or favour, to comment without the prospect of harassment by the forces of the state. In too many countries, this is still not the case, sometimes with the most horrendous or even fatal consequences, so as a former journalist turned politician I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this important debate.

I began my career in the autumn of 1989—a momentous time, as communism was collapsing and the Berlin wall fell. Many years later, I went to eastern Europe and the middle east to train TV news teams. They had spent most of their working lives terrified of upsetting tyrants. One man told me how colleagues would sometimes just disappear from the newsroom from one day to the next, with no explanation given. This particular journalist was even scared of the consequences of putting a comma in the wrong place in his copy.

Sadly, more recent events in parts of both eastern Europe and the middle east suggest that those days have not entirely disappeared. We have heard of 50 journalists being killed around the world last year and of around 274 imprisoned now, of which about 47 are in China, where there is brutal suppression of the truth about the regime’s repression in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. The BBC World Service has a long and depressing list of examples of the persecution of its journalists. Staff at the BBC Persian service are being consistently harassed and intimidated by Iran. This includes death threats to journalists based here in the UK, along with frightening and aggressive targeting of elderly parents, siblings and extended family members in Iran itself.

The regimes putting journalists at risk do it for one reason: they are scared of the truth. We must stand up to them, because along with the physical harm there is the psychological impact—a justifiable and understandable nervousness that can result in self-censorship. Nor can we be complacent here in the UK—reporters here, especially in broadcasting, face malicious abuse online every day. As ITN says, this creates a chilling effect on journalism. The BBC’s Marianna Spring, whose very job is to tackle disinformation, receives frequent threats. Only four years ago, the BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, had to be accompanied by bodyguards at the Labour party conference.

None of that is acceptable. Journalists are not fair game, and we must not turn a blind eye. With a Prime Minister who was formerly a journalist himself, it is apposite that the British Parliament today focuses on the safety of journalists, and that we reaffirm our determination to support a free press in every country of the world—including, of course, our own.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rob Butler Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

I feel that that is a massive under-representation of the huge amount of work that has happened over the past year. The Government agreed a set of commitments with the UK’s major broadband and mobile operators to support vulnerable customers during the covid-19 period. A whole heap of extra laptops—1.3 million of them, on top of the 2.9 million that were already in schools—have been rolled out to young people. In February, to tackle the disproportionate impact of covid-19 on disabled people, the Department launched a £2.5 million digital lifeline fund to support 5,000 people with learning disabilities to access devices, connectivity and digital skills support.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to (a) protect users online and (b) improve the accountability of technology companies.

[The Minister for Digital and Culture (Caroline Dinenage)]

Last week we published the Online Safety Bill. For the first time, tech companies will be held accountable by an independent regulator for keeping their users, especially children, safe from harmful content and behaviours online. If companies fail to keep their users safe, Ofcom will have the power to fine companies up to £18 million or 10% of their annual global turnover.

[Rob Butler]

I thank the Minister for her answer. This is an incredibly important policy area. As well as the online harms that she mentioned, an increasing number of people throughout the country, including in my Aylesbury constituency, sadly fall prey to online financial scams, which can not only have a profound impact on somebody’s financial status but result in great anxiety for victims. Will the Minister outline the action her Department will take to ensure that technology companies really step up and play a full part, alongside the police and banks, to protect us all from online fraud and identity theft?

Coronation Street: 60th Anniversary

Rob Butler Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Tracy Brabin]

That is a great intervention, because wasn’t it groundbreaking? So many families watching that storyline in their living room may not have understood the humanity or the difficulties of being trans in 21st-century Britain, but they loved Hayley. It opens people’s mind to things they may not necessarily have experienced, so my hon. Friend is absolutely right. Those script writers pushed the boundaries. They were very brave to have that storyline, but we loved her. We really did love that couple so much. It was absolutely heartbreaking.

To pick up on a couple of other storylines: Aidan’s suicide, which led to more calls to the Samaritans than they have ever had; Shona’s memory loss; revenge porn; racism, with the writers working closely with Doreen Lawrence to make it authentic and to give it credibility; and James, a young gay footballer struggling against homophobia. And, right up to recent days, with Bethany Platt’s sexual exploitation, David Platt’s male rape ordeal, Yasmeen’s marital coercive control and, as was mentioned, the sad death of baby Oliver. Never shying away from a difficult storyline and shining a light into the lived experience of others is what our soap operas do best. They strive to inform as well as to entertain.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. As a long-time fan of the programme and, indeed, her role in it, I am a little bit jealous, having only graced the small screen reading the news—nothing as glamorous as the Street. She mentioned the topical storyline of the challenge of being a gay footballer, but I would submit that the Street has done a great deal over many years to support challenging attitudes to homosexuality, particularly by following the experiences of existing and well-loved characters such as Todd Grimshaw or Sophie Webster as they came out, and more recently gay parents. Does she agree that it is by being entertaining that information is often best imparted and taboos are overcome?

[Tracy Brabin]

I thank the hon. Gentleman so much for that intervention—he is absolutely right. As we were saying about the trans character, these things could not be discussed in any other forum than that of a show. Looking at fictional characters, we wonder, “What would I think if I was that person?” Storytelling has huge power to change people’s mind.

If my history of soaps is correct, the first ever male gay kiss on television was on “EastEnders” and the first female gay kiss on “Brookside”. We must not forget the power of those shows to get that liberal view and those conversations going in people’s living rooms. As Dame Carol Ann Duffy said at the funeral of the creator of “Coronation Street”, Tony Warren,

“the millions who have loved Coronation Street for over half a century have lost their Dickens.”

Isn’t that the truth? He and others are commentators on our lives; they amplify and give opportunities to share experiences.

“Corrie” has given us actors and characters so well written and so brilliantly acted that they could be part of the family. Names such as Jack, Vera, Roy, Rita, Steve, Gail, Ken, Sally, Jim, Betty, Mike, Fred—the list could go on and on of characters so distinctive that they are recognised across the country by their first name alone. It is also a show that incubates talent, giving new actors a chance to cut their teeth on great storylines and powerful emotions. “Corrie” gave us early moments in the careers of Ben Kingsley, Sir Patrick Stewart, Joanna Lumley, Sarah Lancashire, Joanne Froggatt and Bradley Walsh. Even Sir Ian McKellen dropped by, wearing a very dodgy hat and scarf, I seem to recall.

Writers including Jack Rosenthal, Kay Mellor, Sally Wainwright and Paul Abbott have all worked in the writers room carving out brilliant plotlines and one-liners. So powerful is the writing that as a young girl I felt the trials and tribulations facing the Duckworths were as vivid as those of my own family. To go on to become part of “Coronation Street” was almost an impossible dream.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rob Butler Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

I understand the many challenges faced by freelancers and I hear about this every day in my capacity as Culture Secretary. Across the economy, 66% of freelancers can benefit from the Treasury scheme, which has been increased again by the Chancellor. In addition, as the hon. Gentleman knows, as a result of Barnett consequentials and the culture recovery fund, there are opportunities for almost £100 million to be spent on this by the Scottish Government.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con) [V]]

Over the past few days, I have had many requests from constituents in Aylesbury to keep gyms, swimming pools and golf courses open to enable people to maintain both their physical and their mental health under the new coronavirus restrictions. What can my right hon. Friend do to convince the Cabinet Office to consider this?

[Oliver Dowden]

As my hon. Friend will know, it is a cause of great regret to me, and indeed to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, that these restrictions had to be imposed. Put simply, they are necessary to help to control the virus, which thrives on social interaction. However, I can assure him that I am working closely with other Ministers across Government to ensure that those places will be at the front of the queue to return when the restrictions expire.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rob Butler Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the central role of the arts in our creative industries, which help to make us a powerhouse. That is why we are working to ensure their reopening as rapidly as possible, and announcements on that will come shortly. It is also why I welcomed the Chancellor’s tremendous announcement yesterday; those VAT cuts will apply to almost all the sectors that my hon. Friend highlights.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

Throughout the current coronavirus crisis, communities around the country have relied on their local radio stations, both BBC and commercial. In Aylesbury, Mix 96 has been a vital and valuable source of information, building on its 40-year commitment to the town. Does my right hon. Friend agree that when big media groups such as Bauer buy up small stations like Mix, it is important to balance commercial imperatives alongside a genuine commitment to serve communities with locally produced content, local news and jobs for local people?

[Oliver Dowden]

I wholly agree with my hon. Friend. Reliable local news is an important way of tackling the rise of misinformation and disinformation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rob Butler Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor General]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise that point, which applies, as she says, to vulnerable defendants as well as witnesses—to all participants in these proceedings. Each individual court—each tribunal—is responsible for ensuring the best possible course of action in each individual case. A virtual hearing will not be appropriate in every case. Where there are particularly vulnerable persons involved, perhaps a virtual hearing will not be appropriate, but we do not micromanage that. We ask each individual judge to have that in mind when making decisions about virtual hearings, but where they take place, we want and expect them to do so in the confines of a situation where everyone feels comfortable and able to perform the functions required of them.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

The CPS has done sterling work to ensure that offenders can still be brought to justice in the current crisis, but can my right hon. and learned Friend give me more details about how it has ensured that the best interests of victims, many of whom may never have experienced the courtroom system before, are being served?

[The Solicitor General]

Sometimes alternative mechanisms are in place. For example, remote hearings can take place using more than one courtroom, and it is sometimes possible for hearings to take place via technology from the home of various individuals. However, each individual circumstance will have to be looked at in assessing each individual, appropriate measure in each case. Caution is being exercised, but 4,000 virtual hearings have already taken place in the magistrates and Crown courts, and we expect to see more of them.

British Library Board (Power to Borrow) Bill

Rob Butler Excerpts

Friday 13th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Bim Afolami]

I agree with my hon. Friend. It is worth saying that in 2013 many DCMS-sponsored museums—such as Kew Gardens, the British Film Institute, Historic England and the Ministry of Defence museums—were given 12 operational freedoms to help them become more financially independent and access finance for new projects, through commercial revenues, philanthropic donations and the like. Of the 12 freedoms, the British Library has 11. It is just that the 12th was prohibited by the 1972 Act, which this Bill seeks to change. My hon. Friend is indeed right that this Bill will bring the British Library up to date with other similar museums.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

I wonder whether my hon. Friend could explain how the British Library will repay the money it borrows, because we are the party of responsible borrowing, as he knows, and indeed as the Chancellor outlined in his Budget only this week.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bim Afolami]

The answer is that some would be charged for and some would not. I repeat the example I gave a few minutes ago about membership. If there were a members’ area in the British Library—it has one at the St Pancras site but if it wanted to extend that model to one of the public libraries across the country—members would pay a subscription that enabled them to go to a certain part of the library. There would also probably be a café in that part of the library, which would obviously charge for food and drink: coffee, tea and the like. Again, the café would be making commercial revenue and the members would pay, but that would not prevent people from going to the library, using the computers, borrowing books, getting advice for their business and so on entirely for free. It is a mixture and it would really depend on the part of the country people are in.

One of the things we have thankfully moved away from in this country over the last 10 or 15 years is the idea that one centralised model works everywhere. I know that libraries operate in my constituency differently from how they operate in the constituency of the hon. Member for Batley and Spen. It is just different: the demographics are different, the ages of people wanting to do things are different; the atmosphere is different; the landscape is different; the sorts of companies people want to set up are different; and the types of books people borrow are different. This is about giving our institutions enough freedom that they can move forward and innovate in an entrepreneurial way, but do that locally in a way that is locally based and locally sourced.

It is time that we gave the British Library the same freedom to borrow, the same flexibility and the same opportunities that so many other cultural institutions have, because this country will benefit from that. The British Library overall will benefit, both in St Pancras and in west Yorkshire. The expanding network of public library hubs will benefit. Indeed, the British people, whom we were all elected to represent, will benefit.

In speaking to colleagues about this Bill, they have been generally supportive, but I was asked one question more than any other. Indeed, I touched on it when my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) made this point earlier. What happens if the British Library borrows money and cannot pay it back? Just to reiterate, should the British Library apply for and receive a Government loan, it would have to pay it back, and if it did not pay it back either in part or in full, the grant in aid would be reduced correspondingly, and the British Library would have to adjust to that reduction in revenue. Ultimately, it would have to make sure that the public purse—the taxpayer—did not lose out as a result of the Bill. It is very important that the House recognises that point.

Some people, although I definitely do not agree with them, have mentioned—[Interruption.] Yes, this sounds like a straw man, but it is actually true. Some people have said that what libraries actually need to do is to move entirely online and get rid of the physical books. [Interruption.] No one here—good—but some people do think that. Indeed, I know some people do because, when I was speaking to the Department about the Bill and thinking about the questions people had already been asking and what had come up, one of the main things that came up was, “Bim, you’re going to have to have an answer to this question”.

So I thought about an answer to the question. My view is that there has to be a mix. Yes, we have to have physical collections, but we also have to match them with digital collections, a good online presence and digitising things where we can so that we can share them across the world—for example, for a school kid doing a project. We all remember having to do projects at school, and we had to go to a library and do all these things. The worse one I had to do was something on the WWF. I spent lots of time working on it, until, the night before, I realised it was meant to be about the World Wildlife Fund, rather than the World Wrestling Federation, which meant I did not get a very good mark. I do not know why I have shared that with everybody, but I have been living with the shame for a long time.

[Rob Butler]

Does my hon. Friend agree that actually there is a distinct joy in having a physical book and turning the pages that simply cannot be replicated by moving everything online and having an entirely digital world?

[Bim Afolami]

I agree so strongly, as somebody who owns well over a thousand books. My wife is always complaining that I buy more books than I can read.

The philosopher/hedge fund manager Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote a famous book called “The Black Swan”, but in his book “Antifragile” he makes the persuasive point that if we really want to judge how long a type of technology will be around, we should look at how long it has already been around, because that actually tells us more about it than anything else. In every single age, we all think that the new thing will be the thing that endures, but of course what tends to happen is the new thing is replaced by another new thing and so on. Books are not a new thing. Books have been around for a long time, and I am sure that books will be around for centuries to come.

Before I conclude my remarks, to everybody’s joy—[Interruption.] There was too much laughter from the Whip at that. What is the point of libraries in the modern world? We have talked about access to learning, digital, soft power and levelling up, all sorts of things, but the real point, I think, of libraries—and where the British Library is so important and why it needs this power—is that libraries help to strengthen communities. They help to provide a place for people to go, where they can come together, but yet be solitary at the same time. Thriving libraries in our communities, in our towns, cities and villages all across the country, are one of the things that if we can support them in this Parliament—and the British Library can help play its role in doing that—we will be serving our constituents very well indeed.

The Bill is a small but critical piece of legislation to help strengthen our communities, to help level up the country, to help improve our soft power, to help bring the British Library into the modern world, and to help improve the access that entrepreneurs and people who want to start their own business have to quality advice. It is a small thing, but it could become a big thing, and it could be a big thing for all our constituents and in all our constituencies. I ask the House to support the Bill.