Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

People should not shout the hon. Lady down, because she is making a very fair point, and frankly, it is a point that does not reflect very well on either Conservative or Labour, which is that there were a lot of warnings about what was going wrong—warnings from the Information Commissioner, warnings from the Select Committee—but we did not put high enough up the agenda the issue of regulating the media. We should not be pointing fingers about this; we should be recognising that we need to work on this to get it right, to respond to those reports and actually put some of their proposals into the law.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who chairs the Home Affairs Committee, referred earlier to the file compiled in 2007 that was sent off to the legal firm, Harbottle & Lewis. In that, according to Lord Macdonald, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, there is absolutely blindingly obvious evidence that police officers were paid for information by the newspaper. News International is still refusing to allow that to be fully considered and is insisting on client confidentiality, so Harbottle & Lewis, which is an important British firm, is unable to put its side of the argument. Is this not clear evidence that News International, contrary to the pretend humility yesterday, is still refusing to co-operate fully with the investigation?