Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Edward Miliband

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

I welcome this debate and in starting it, all of us should remember what brings us here. Parliament would not have been recalled today had it not been for the revelations about the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone. That revelation shocked our country and turned something that had seemed to be about the lives of politicians, footballers and celebrities into something very different about the lives of others who had never sought the public eye. It is the courage of Bob and Sally Dowler, and Milly’s sister Gemma, in speaking out, that has been the spur for much that has happened in the last fortnight. I pay tribute to them for their courage in speaking out about these issues.

People’s anger about what has happened with phone hacking has been real, but some people will no doubt ask—indeed, we heard a bit of this in the statement—why, when we have so many other problems facing the country in relation to the economy, the NHS, defence and all those issues, the House of Commons is debating this issue in particular. It is true that this issue does not directly concern our jobs and living standards, but it does concern something incredibly important on which all else depends—the fabric of our country. We do not want to live in a country in which the depraved deletion of the voicemails of a dead teenager is seen as acceptable, in which the police’s failure to investigate that is seen as just the way things are and in which politicians’ failure to tackle it is seen as the way things are.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

I do not think there is one person in the country—well, maybe there are a handful—who thinks the depraved deletion of a voicemail, as the right hon. Gentleman describes it, is acceptable. What people are wondering about is whether politicians find it acceptable when people are not honest—this is across the House—about dealings between politicians, the press and the police. That is why we are here today. I do not want him to think that anyone in the House would think those deletions were acceptable.

[Edward Miliband]

I agree completely with the hon. Lady’s comments. As the Prime Minister said in his speech, there are issues here for the press, the police and, indeed, politicians.

This debate goes to the heart of the country we should aspire to be. It goes to the integrity, responsibility and accountability of some of our established institutions. At the heart of the debate is the issue of how these institutions and the people who head them act. Can the press be trusted, in the words of the Press Complaints Commission’s first chairman, Lord McGregor, not to dabble

“their fingers in the stuff of other people’s souls”?

Can the police be trusted to investigate wrongdoing without fear or favour? Can we, as politicians be trusted—as I have said and as the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) has just said—to speak out when wrong is done?

For the Dowler family, let us be honest, until just two weeks ago the answer to all those questions was no—and the fact that it was should shame our country. So when I read in the newspapers that this is the angst or obsession of a few people in Westminster, I say that it is not, because it goes to the kind of country we are.

It also goes directly to something else that we on both sides of the House hear and talk about a lot: the responsibilities of those without power in Britain, such as those on benefits. We all use words such as “cheats” and “abusers” and we saw that language in the News of the World; some of it is even true in respect of a minority, but how much—let us be honest about this—do we talk about the responsibilities of the powerful? What message does it send to the rest of our society when the established institutions of our country behave without responsibility? It sends the message that anything goes because no one seems to care about right and wrong.

This debate goes to one more, final issue: just as the expenses issue undermined the reputation of the good, decent majority on both sides of the House, so too this scandal affects the vast majority of good, upstanding police officers on whom all our communities rely and affects the vast majority of decent journalists who are doing their job and are, as the Prime Minister said, necessary for a free and fair society. It is also in their interests that we sort this out.

When people say that this does not matter they are not just saying, “Let’s talk about something else”, but something far more serious. That cynicism about the country we live in is almost inevitable—that nothing can be done. I say to Members on both sides of the House. and I am sure that I speak for Members across the House when I say it, that if we fall prey to that, nobody will trust established institutions in this country—or, indeed, anyone else.