Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary) Debate
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Steve McCabe
Main Page: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)Department Debates - View all Steve McCabe's debates with the Cabinet Office
Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)
Steve McCabe Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a good point. We could not even guarantee that the independent adviser would be quicker, but as I tried to explain earlier there would be a danger of a duplicative fact-finding process that would cut across what Lord Justice Leveson is doing. But let me repeat again: I am not in any way denying that I am responsible for the ministerial code. If breaches occur, I must act, or ask the advice of Alex Allan in order to do so. I could not be clearer about it.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
The Prime Minister told Andrew Marr yesterday that he did discuss the BSkyB bid with James Murdoch at the Rebekah Brooks dinner. I wonder why, since there is nothing to hide, the Prime Minister felt unable to admit that last July, when it was put to him eight times by Members of this House.
The Prime Minister
What I have always said is that I have not had any inappropriate conversation about this issue—and, indeed, I have not. But clearly it is very important, in the context of this inquiry, to recall everything possible, and what I recall is that, because of the frankly rather embarrassing situation that we were in, whereby a Minister had said that he was trying to “destroy” a media company, it was perfectly appropriate for me to say that that was not correct or appropriate and that these things would be dealt with properly in future. That is a thoroughly responsible and sensible thing to say.