Oral Answers to Questions

John Bercow Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan]

My hon. Friend is in some sense right, although the tunnels are in Egypt, not at the normal crossings from Israel. The volume of goods and mostly people—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I apologise for interrupting the Minister of State. I have been listening to the Minister of State for 20 years, and I want to carry on enjoying listening to him, and I want to be able to hear him.

[Mr Duncan]

Thank you, Mr Speaker; we are halfway there, perhaps.

My hon. Friend is right to say that much more comes in through the tunnels than through Israeli-approved access points. Perversely, that is assisting Hamas, which is something we would like to reverse.

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[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend is right to this extent: we could spend this hard-earned budget twice over, because there is need that we could satisfactorily address. But the world, many years ago, settled on a figure of 0.7%, and all of us have made a promise to stand by that commitment and the Government are absolutely right, even in these difficult economic circumstances, not to seek to balance the books on the backs of the poorest people in the world.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Far too many noisy private conversations are taking place on both sides of the House. I want to hear Harriet Harman.

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

I strongly support the Secretary of State on the points he made. Will he join me in making the point that our aid is vital in the terrible situation for the people in the horn of Africa, where there is suffering on a massive scale? Will he also join me in paying tribute to the generosity of the British people in response to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal? I strongly welcome his rapid response on Ethiopia, but what steps is he taking to ensure that other countries play their part, too, and what help is he giving to the people suffering in Somalia and Kenya?

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[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend is right. The $800 million is part of the US military budget. All of Britain’s aid that is spent in Pakistan, which is particularly focused on trying to get 4 million children, especially girls, into school, is not spent through the Government. We are very anxious to ensure that there is always accountability to the British public and that aid is transparently used. Those policies will continue.

[Mr Speaker]

Clive Efford—not here.

[Mrs Linda Riordan (Halifax) (Lab/Co-op)]

T4. It is just 12 months since the devastating floods in Pakistan. Will the Secretary of State outline what support his Department has given to help rebuild that country?

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[The Prime Minister]

I would like to answer this, if I may, Mr Speaker, in full, and I do need to give a very full answer. First, all these questions relate to the fact that I hired a tabloid editor. I did so on the basis of assurances he gave me that he did not know about the phone hacking and was not involved in criminality. He gave those self-same assurances to the police, to a Select Committee of this House and under oath to a court of law. If it turns out he lied, it will not just be that he should not have been in government; it will be that he should be prosecuted. But I do believe that we must stick to the principle that you are innocent until proven guilty.

Now, let me deal directly with the information given to my office by figures from The Guardian in February last year. First, this information was not passed on to me, but let me be clear that this was not some secret stash of information; almost all of it was published in The Guardian in February 2010, at the same time my office was approached. It contained no allegations directly linking Andy Coulson to illegal behaviour and it did not shed any further light on the issue of phone hacking, so it was not drawn to my attention by my office.

What is more, Mr Speaker—let me just make this point—I met the editor of The Guardian the very next month and he did not raise it with me once. I met him a year later and he did not raise it then either. Indeed, if this information is so significant, why have I been asked not one question about it at a press conference or in this House? The reason is that it did not add anything to the assurances that I was given. Let me say once more that if I was lied to, if the police were lied to, or if the Select Committee was lied to, it would be a matter of deep regret and a matter for a criminal prosecution. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Anybody might think that orchestrated noise is taking place—[Interruption.] Order. The House will come to order and these exchanges will continue in an orderly way.

[Edward Miliband]

The Prime Minister has just made a very important admission. He has admitted that his chief of staff was given information before the general election that Andy Coulson had hired a man who had been jailed for seven years for a criminal conspiracy and who made payments to the police on behalf of the News of the World. This evidence casts serious doubt on Mr Coulson’s assurances that the phone hacking over which he resigned was an isolated example of illegal activity. The Prime Minister says that his chief of staff did not pass on this very serious information. Can he now tell us what action he proposes to take against his chief of staff?

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[The Prime Minister]

I am afraid, Mr Speaker, that the person who is not getting it is the Leader of the Opposition. What the public want us to do is address this firestorm. They want us to sort out bad practices at the media. They want us to fix the corruption in the police. They want a proper public inquiry. And they are entitled to ask, when these problems went on for so long, for so many years, what was it that happened in the last decade? When was the police investigation that did not work? Where was the public inquiry over the last 10 years? We have now got a full-on police investigation that will see proper prosecutions and, I hope, proper convictions, and we will have a public inquiry run by a judge to get to the bottom of this issue. That is the leadership I am determined to provide. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Mr David—[Interruption.] Order. Mr David—[Interruption.] Order. I say to the Children’s Minister: try to calm down and behave like an adult, and if you cannot—if it is beyond you—leave the Chamber and we will manage without you. Mr David Ward.

[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

Q2. Thank you, Mr Speaker. What a case of the—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. This is intolerable behaviour as far as the public—[Interruption.] No, it is not funny. Only in your mind, Mr Loughton, is it funny. It is not funny at all; it is disgraceful.

[Mr Ward]

What a case of the pot calling the kettle black, but perhaps we can just have a pantomime interval for a moment. Is the Prime Minister aware that there are now young people in Bradford being quoted, without convictions or claims, £53,000 to insure their first car? These ridiculous premiums are being driven by insurance companies selling fresh details to personal injury lawyers. What are we going to do to outlaw—

[Mr Speaker]

Prime Minister.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point about the problem of referral fees that are driving up the cost of insurance for many people. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) has made some very powerful points about this. There was a report to the Government calling for referral fees to be banned. I am very sympathetic to this, and I know my right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary is too, and we hope to make some progress.

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[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

My question to the Prime Minister concerns the contract for the Thameslink rail programme. As he will be aware, that is of great concern throughout the House, and with 20,000 manufacturing jobs at risk, it is right that it should be. Will he confirm that no contract has yet been signed, and indeed that no contract can be let or signed until the funding package is determined? That is a complicated process.

This is the heart of my question to the Prime Minister: given that the funding package—[Interruption.] Twenty thousand jobs are at stake! Given that 20,000 jobs are at risk, will the Prime Minister look at holding the competition for that funding package with the Secretary of State for Trade—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I think we have got it.

[The Prime Minister]

I know that the right hon. Gentleman cares deeply about this issue. Bombardier is a great company, and it has a great future in our country. We want to see it succeed, but I have to say that in this case, the procurement process was designed and initiated by the previous Government. This Government were bound by the criteria that they set, and therefore we have to continue with a decision that has been made according to those criteria. But we are now looking at all the EU rules and the procurement rules to see whether we can change and make better for future issues like that one.