Business of the House

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

As the hon. Lady will know, the Government have demonstrated their commitment to trying to help people who are victims of domestic violence. The Prime Minister takes a very close and strong personal interest in this issue and, as she has said within the past week, the Government are committed to looking again at the whole range of laws that apply to domestic violence to consider what changes should be made. If the hon. Lady would like to provide me with some details of the particular problem she raises today, I will certainly draw it to the attention of the appropriate Ministers.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

The Leader of the House will be aware that there will be Assembly elections in Northern Ireland next week. It has been revealed this week that the even-more-holier-than-thou sister party of the Liberal Democrats, the Alliance party, has been seeking to manipulate phone-in programmes by encouraging its members to give fake names and addresses and claim to be members of other political parties—a tactic that it says has worked at previous elections. So far, the BBC has provided very little coverage of this story, which is yet another example of the biased way it has conducted itself during the election campaign. May we have a debate in the House on the political bias of this publicly funded body and how it has breached its charter?

[Mr Lidington]

The hon. Gentleman has made his point powerfully. The BBC in Northern Ireland, as in everywhere else in the United Kingdom, is under an obligation, particularly during any kind of election campaign, to demonstrate that it is impartial with regard to rival political parties, but it must be for the BBC, not Government Ministers, to take responsibility for editorial decisions.