Deregulation Bill

Debate between Helen Goodman and Baroness Primarolo

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 62, page 40, line 13, at end insert—

‘(3) The Secretary of State must lay the terms of reference of a review under subsection (1) before each House of Parliament.”

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Government amendments 14 and 15.

Amendment 63, in clause 55, page 41, line 26, at end insert—

‘(14) The power conferred by subsection (1) may not be exercised until after the BBC’s Royal Charter has next been reviewed.”

Government amendments 20 and 22.

[Helen Goodman]

I want to speak to the amendments in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), as well as to the Government amendments.

Clause 54 puts a duty on the Secretary of State to review the sanctions on those who own a television but fail to pay the licence fee. Our amendment would require the Secretary of State to lay the review’s terms of reference before both Houses. Clause 55 gives the Secretary of State a power to decriminalise sanctions on those who fail to pay the licence fee. Our amendment would prevent this power from being used before the completion of the next review of the BBC’s royal charter.

The BBC is a universal service, and the licence fee is a universal payment for anyone with a television. The licence fee is not a tax; it is a guarantee of the BBC’s independence. The BBC is the most trusted source of news in the United Kingdom, with 58% of people rating it as their most trusted news source.

Corporate Structures and Financial Crime

Debate between Helen Goodman and Baroness Primarolo

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Before the hon. Lady returns to her point, I am sure she is going to tell us how what she is talking about connects with financial crime. We are discussing corporate structures, tax evasion, money laundering and financial crime. The crime she was describing was serious, but she said there was a link between it and financial crime, and I would quite like to hear what it is.

[Helen Goodman]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Let me respond to the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke). The companies that I listed have been inadvertently caught up in financing in this particular way, but the question for them is whether they have made it clear, publicly, that they do not wish to be financing the distribution.

In response to your point, Madam Deputy Speaker, the problem is that we have a system through which money is hoovered up in one way and can then be used to finance any other kind of crime—the crimes that I have described, but also those mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw. What we do not have from these organisations is any proper accountability that would allow us to get to the bottom of the issues and tackle them properly. It is extremely problematic that we do not have international agreements about how to deal with these internet companies when it comes to their taxes and their other behaviour. Although it is true that tax avoidance is a scourge and tax evasion is a crime, the industry’s use of these sites helps to promote other kinds of crime. I believe that there is a serious cultural issue about these companies that must be addressed.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Helen Goodman and Baroness Primarolo

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys). I agree that reform and an elected House of Lords are essential. It is a basic principle of democracy that those who legislate for everybody else are voted for by the other citizens of the country.

Whatever their positions on the Bill, hon. Members on both sides of the House agree that the House of Lords should complement and not duplicate the House of Commons in both its function and its make-up. Unfortunately, the Bill is weak on both counts. Clause 2 is inadequate in setting out the functions of the reformed House. I agree with the letter written by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) to the Deputy Prime Minister. We must see a new draft of clause 2 early in the passage of the Bill. We cannot be expected to agree to a measure if we do not know what the functions will be until some distant time in future, after the Bill has been to the Lords.

Furthermore, the Bill reveals one of the weaknesses of our unwritten constitution. It would be helpful if Ministers considered not only how to preserve the primacy of the Commons but what special responsibilities the other House should have. At one point, giving the other House special responsibility for human rights was considered.

On the make-up of the second House, many noble Lords are going around saying that the Lords is more reflective of the population than the Commons. That is not true. Only a fifth of Members of both Houses are women and 5% or fewer are from ethnic minorities. However, more than 96% of Members of the other House are over 50. The Government’s proposals in the Bill are extremely weak on that. The proposed 15-year terms are weak not just on accountability; they will add to that age bias.

The objective is surely to widen involvement in our political institutions—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady. You have made your speech, Ms Sandys. Turning round and having a private conversation, along with many other Members, is not fair and does not show due respect to the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman). Given the importance that hon. Members have attached to this Bill, perhaps they can ensure they listen to the debate on it.

[Helen Goodman]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am obviously so boring that other hon. Members cannot be bothered to listen—[Hon. Members: “No!”]

Our politics and our democracy are not exactly in a crisis, but confidence in them is beginning to look rather tattered round the edges. If we are to restore that confidence, we need both institutional reform and higher levels of participation. Today is an opportunity to discuss the institutional reform—we can talk about participation on another occasion.

For many, the heyday of our popular democracy was the early 1950s, when voting participation under universal suffrage was at its highest, and when the two-party system seemed to provide a reasonable reflection of the choices for the country. However, in 1997, at the end of 20 years of Tory rule, the overwhelming sense one had was of anachronistic institutions that were completely unrepresentative of who we are and what we expect from our democracy. Institutional reforms redressed the balance between citizens and the state. They were significant and welcome, but they did not address some of the key failings. Why are so few Members of Parliament in either House women? Why is it right that the second Chamber should reserve places for Anglican bishops but none for other denominations and religions? Those are failings of the institutional arrangements, but they reflect a deeper failure: a failure to make sense of our new British identity.

To tackle that malaise, we need institutions that provide equal rights within their arrangements. This is an extremely unusual country, because it is both a multinational state built over more than 500 years from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and a multi-ethnic country, which in the past 50 years has had a huge change in its constitution. Such significant cultural diversity can make the task of building inclusive citizenship seem huge, and we do it against a background of growing globalisation, which seems to be reducing the importance of the nation state. It is vital, however, if we are to get the levels of participation that we need.

Defamation Bill

Debate between Helen Goodman and Baroness Primarolo

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. That was a very long intervention, much as it might have been appreciated by hon. Members. If the hon. Gentleman wants to make a longer intervention—it is called a speech—he can try to catch my eye.

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention was so long that I cannot remember what he said, but I know that when I was listening I agreed with both his major points.

The solution of notice and takedown proposed by the Joint Committee on the draft Bill is a good, pragmatic one, recognising that although we cannot legislate for the net in exactly the same way as we do for other areas, we can reproduce the rights and responsibilities in the real world. I must say to Ministers, however, that given that the Joint Committee report was produced last October, they ought by now to have got parliamentary counsel to have drafted the regulations, so that we could see them and be confident that they were right.

Clause 10 is extremely welcome. We should probably call it the Private Eye clause. For years, high street newsagents refused to stock the Eye because they thought they might be sued over its potentially litigious content. The clause is welcome, therefore, given that we are all deeply dependent on the Eye for keeping up to speed with what is going on.

As is often the case with this Government, however, the problem is not so much with what is in the Bill as with what is not in it. There is nothing to tackle the lack of access to justice for ordinary people, whether as claimants or defendants. That inequity was demonstrated in the case of Trafigura, which damaged the environment in Ivory Coast, and in the case of Barclays and Freshfields concerning tax avoidance. Those large corporations were able to hide and threaten The Guardian, which was trying to publish stories about them. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) will say more about those cases. When I am told, not by the editor of The Guardian but by the editor of another quality national newspaper, that his major, No. 1 problem is oligarchs threatening to sue his newspaper when he tries to report on them, I know we have a problem that needs addressing. The Libel Reform campaign, which campaigned for the Bill, has called for it to include a clause requiring non-natural persons to show actual or likely financial harm. The campaign is right. Such a clause should be inserted and would be a helpful strengthening of the Bill.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) said, the Government have done nothing to right the wrong of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 through their failure properly to implement the Jackson proposals on no win, no fee cases. The McCann and Dowler families would not have been able to take the newspapers to court under the laws that the Government have implemented. That is a complete disgrace. We want a justice system available to all and a free and responsible press, but we will not achieve the latter without the former.

Armed Forces Personnel

Debate between Helen Goodman and Baroness Primarolo

Thursday 10th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have been listening to the evidence given by James Murdoch to the Select Committee. He has admitted that members of the Committee were followed at the point when the Committee was undertaking an inquiry into the phone hacking activities of News International. This is obviously an extremely complex matter, but I wonder whether a breach of privilege might be involved.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Anything going on in respect of evidence given to a Select Committee is a matter for that Committee to deal with. If the hon. Lady believes that a breach of privilege has been committed in any way, as an individual Member of this House she should write to Mr Speaker about it. It is not a matter that would be dealt with on the Floor of the House.