Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Graham Allen and Susan Elan Jones

Tuesday 10th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Allen]

May I put on record my thanks to the Minister for making it clear that there will be clear words in the Bill that meet the hon. Gentleman’s proposal in amendment 47, and that meet the proposals of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform? The provisions must be clear in the Bill, and I welcome the fact that the Government have engaged in the process on clause 26. There are 30 or 40 clauses, and I hope that this sets a precedent for other clauses that are subject to equally fierce criticism from the charitable and voluntary sectors.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

rose—

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Graham Allen and Susan Elan Jones

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Allen]

It beggars belief that we have three days to talk about a lobbying Bill and some of the key issues highlighted by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee will not be paid the due respect of having an airing in a Committee of the whole House. I agree with the hon. Lady that people outside will say, “What are they playing at? They promised us a Bill, and now they are playing parliamentary games so that we do not have the time to debate very important matters, such as the role of MPs, the definition of lobbyists, whether there should be better scrutiny of expenses paid by charities, and the definition of political activities.” I will not make that worse by going on for too much longer.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

The Deputy Leader of the House made a point about logging meetings with internal representatives of organisations. The problem is that, even if we accept that the system is 100% perfect, which I do not, the log does not include Parliamentary Private Secretaries, special advisers, senior civil servants and other people to whom internal representatives speak. I was contacted recently by a senior figure from Starbucks. I will not meet them, but their interest in me was because of an all-party parliamentary group with which I was connected. Such contacts should be logged.

[Mr Allen]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have only a day to discuss those issues, which will be covered in the next group of amendments. I hope that the Committee will have the time to debate them, but it is now a matter of doubt whether we will have the chance to do so.

Much comes back to the fact that the Government do not consult Parliament in an effective way. If the Government had consulted Parliament, many of the foibles and flaws in the Bill could have been dealt with. My Committee spent a year, on behalf of every Member, considering this matter. We then spent seven hectic days trying to produce a report for the House. It is as if we had not bothered; it is as if the parliamentary process were irrelevant. The Bill has been stuffed into the sausage machine in the hope that it will be voted through tonight and the next two nights.

In conclusion—I will speak to other amendments on behalf of my Select Committee and others—the Prime Minister said that lobbying would be the next big scandal to hit us. I am afraid that there has been another scandal: the prostitution of the House of Commons by the Government in the way that the Bill has been brought forward. This is not a partisan point, but a point about the legislature and the Executive. I hope that there is a communion between Members of this House, who are parliamentarians, to say that this is an unacceptable way of making law. It would be unacceptable if it produced good law; it is absolutely intolerable that it produces such terrible law.

On behalf of my Select Committee, let me say that the Bill should be put into a special Committee so that we can have something we can all be proud of and say to our constituents, “You wanted us to do something about lobbying. The Prime Minister said it was a big issue, the coalition agreement said it was important, those on the Labour Front Bench said it was important and here it is, we have done the job. It has taken us a few years and another six months, but here it is.” If it is not, I am afraid that this House will be dragged into disrepute because of the way the Bill has come before us.

Media Ownership (Regulation)

Debate between Graham Allen and Susan Elan Jones

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood.

Media ownership in this country is massively over-concentrated, and that has resulted in a number of problems, some of them profoundly unhealthy for our democracy. The media are so over-powerful that they have frightened and corrupted Governments of all political colours, and have chilled and intimidated Parliament and Members of this House in the performance of their duties. Vibrant British politics has shrunken into a grotesque tango between the press and No. 10 Downing street, who are unwilling but inseparably locked partners in a duopoly that diminishes all others, including Parliament, local government and civil society. For me, the ownership problem is not about the corruption techniques that have recently been exposed; it is part of the broader question of the settlement of our democracy: a democratic agenda, and a Britain in which people know their rights, own their politics, aspire to better for themselves and their families as citizens, and are less subjects and placid consumers of low-grade trivia.

The problems of the press pre-date hacking. There are a number of problems with the role of the press, including the constant denigration of individuals, the culture of cynicism, the trashing of whole classes of people—Members of Parliament know a little about that—the demise of the inspiring and investigative journalism that I was used to in my youth, the dumbing down of once-great newspapers, and the international reputation of our press. Those problems deserve a hearing, but I will not go into them in any detail here. All too often, the press will lead and the rest of the media pack—TV and internet—will fall behind the very low standards that are set. We deserve better from our media.

Today I want to focus on the greatest threat to a free and independent media: the over-concentration of ownership. When one person or organisation can become so insulated by its own power from scrutiny of its behaviour, and so important that Prime Ministers of all colours go cap in hand hoping for its approval, our already feeble and unwritten system of checks and balances becomes more obviously ineffective, and we should fear for our democracy and take action to protect it.

Much of the recent debate has been about symptoms not causes, about the things that the press themselves are interested in, including hacking and intrusion, and unhealthy links and relationships, rather than about what we as politicians should focus on: the power that distorts markets and politics alike. It is that distortion that drives the practices that we have recently seen, such as hacking and a tendency to be loose with the truth and protected from the consequences. The answer is to create a broader diversity of ownership of media outlets and let good, professional, effective journalists blossom and get on with their job of standing up for ordinary people and getting the truth our there for us all to consider and reflect upon.

Now is a good time to make progress. I congratulate the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport for picking up on this problem, along with the Minister present today—the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey). In the middle of the hacking scandal, the Opposition day motion on Mr Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation’s bid for BSkyB contained no reference to ownership. I amended it by adding that the Prime Minister

“should consider a statutory settlement for the press based upon the principles of diversity of ownership, fairness and honesty”.

That was happily superseded by the Prime Minister’s amendment to the motion, which set up the review of media ethics and regulation that we now know as the Leveson inquiry, and included

“the issue of cross-media ownership…more effective way of regulating the press—one that supports its freedom, plurality and independence from Government”.—[Official Report, 13 July 2011; Vol. 531, c. 312.]

I am pleased that the Government have developed a position that includes those matters.

We all await the results of the Leveson inquiry, and I very much hope that it will balance its examination of the symptoms—some of the sexier press behaviour—with that of the causes, such as the lack of plurality of the media, and media and cross-media ownership. It should not be an incestuous inquiry, giving the media prurient stories about the media and thus feeding the cycle. It should look outwards at the media’s involvement in and relationship to our constitution and our politics. It should seek to lay the ground rules of a strong, independent media, with the possibility of opening up a new chapter and restoring the media’s reputation as a key contributor to the plurality of institutions in our democracy. That is what the media need to be, and Justice Leveson might help to nudge us all towards that better position.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that a plurality issue in Wales concerns the fourth channel, S4C, which is Britain’s only Welsh-language television channel? Many people fear that the proposed Government changes to the channel will jeopardise its independence. That is important, not just because of Welsh-language broadcasting but because of the plurality of media ownership. Many of us fear that the channel will be subsumed into the BBC, and that monolithic way of broadcasting cannot be good for any of us.

[Mr Allen]

My hon. Friend makes her point very eloquently, and the Minister will no doubt wish to refer to it in his concluding remarks.

Those of us who support effective regulation are the friends of an evolving, developing, vibrant and refreshed media and will not be painted as people who do not want diversity. On the contrary, the people who object to diversity and plurality are the very people who have a monopolistic settlement that they wish to preserve. It is very important to consider this matter, and that Lord Leveson, with the Minister’s encouragement, looks at proper regulation, not by the Government but by a strong, independent regulator that is respected by all parties. That should not be feared. We can consider the ethical codes that apply to the BBC and to independent television. Those codes are fair, uncontroversial and totally accepted, and there is absolutely no reason why we should not aspire to the same sets of ethics for the press.

Tougher media ownership laws are required in this country; the ownership of the press needs to be at the forefront of the debate. I hope that Lord Leveson does not decide that there has to be a totally comprehensive and coherent cross-media ownership set of rules, or that he is paralysed by dealing with sectoral ownership in the press, television or other media outlets. There should never again be the concentration of unaccountable power in this country that we have seen in the media in recent years.

While there is a well-documented history of the rich and powerful abusing media ownership and resisting regulation, there is also a history, from this place, of efforts to attempt to tackle the abuses. I would like to pay tribute to a former colleague, Clive Soley, who in 1992, when he was the MP for Hammersmith, called for a new independent press authority to investigate and monitor ethical standards of the press, distribution of newspapers, ownership and control of media, access to information, restrictions on reporting and any related matter that that authority might consider. He could have been speaking at the end of the recent hacking scandal, and I hope that Mr Soley feels that his day may soon dawn.

Certainly, the long-running weaknesses of the Press Complaints Commission have recently been starkly exposed, and it is here that self-regulation most clearly fails. Many of us may have suffered from being traduced in the media. We complain, and then the complaint disappears into the bowels of the PCC. Many months later, if we are lucky, we may get a microscopic apology on an obscure website. That is frankly no longer acceptable in a modern democracy and needs to be examined. Lord Leveson also needs to look at a right of reply that can be fairly and practically implemented, so that people feel that they have redress if they are wronged or feel wronged by the press.

I was pleased that the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport stated that we need to look carefully at cross-media ownership laws and whether the merger rules for media takeovers work as effectively as they could. Consideration must also be given to the suitability of those who push for greater slices of the media pie for themselves. Does the Minister support my call for a negative resolution of this House that would explicitly enable his boss, the Culture Secretary, to take the public interest into account, and which would give him the ability to order a fit and proper person test to be carried out in any future media acquisition? It would be a simple and modest safeguard to look after the interests of the broader media family. Also, does the Minister agree that an immediate amendment to the Enterprise Act 2002 to allow the public interest and a fit and proper person test to be taken into account in media takeovers would be a positive step that should secure all-party support? In doing that, along with introducing tougher cross-media ownership laws and ensuring the plurality of the media, we will finally be able to begin to develop a plural and diverse media in the UK and to tackle the causes of some of the gross abuses of power that we have seen from the rich and the powerful who own those organisations.

The key question is whether there is the will to do it. I hope that given the recent scandals, the Government can take courage from the public reaction to take the necessary steps. There is a moment here. Many of us have waited many years for it, and if it is not seized, we could wait many more years to give the press and the media the boost, encouragement and boldness to start to be a new part of a wider, broader and democratised constitution. Can the House of Commons, enfeebled by years of subservience to the Government and the media, also help to seize the opportunity? The jury must be out on that particular question.

If we get those two big institutions—the Government and Parliament—to work as effective partners with the media, instead of sour cynicism, denigration and mutual recrimination, we could enter a new partnership between those three institutions, with all of them playing an enhanced role. I hope that that will happen. If we do that, Parliament can be less inhibited in holding the Government to account and, above all, it will increase the potential for the Government to work for the future rather than for the next day’s headlines.