Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

At the heart of this debate are two allegations about the ministerial code, so let me address them straight away—first, the disgraceful allegation that I deliberately misled Parliament—[Interruption.] Do Opposition Members want to hear what I have to say about it, since they called the debate?

In response to a question on 3 March 2011 I stated that I had published correspondence between myself and News Corp. In answers to those questions I referred back to that statement, and if there was any misunderstanding about the extent to which I was publishing correspondence, it was addressed as long ago as last September in a written parliamentary answer to the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann). That spelled out precisely what information I was releasing and what information I was not releasing.

I know that the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) has found it difficult to read the volume of correspondence that I published. The content of the correspondence is what is important. If she read it, she would see that I have taken more trouble and published more information than probably any other Government have published in any previous bid. I made huge efforts to be transparent and she knows it perfectly well.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Hunt]

I will give way in a moment.

Paragraph 1.2.c of the ministerial code, to which the right hon. and learned Lady referred, is very clear. If Ministers make an inadvertent error, they should correct it at the earliest possible opportunity, which I did, not breaking the ministerial code, but acting in accordance with it. I have not very often had to correct things that I have said, but may I remind the right hon. and learned Lady that she had to correct the record in January 2010, May 2009, April 2009, July 2008, July 2007 and November 2003—one of many aspects of this job where she has much more experience than I do.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I have had to correct the record as well. There is no dishonour in correcting the record. However, what the Minister just referred to was his reply on 7 September, when he said that it was for reasons of cost that he was not able to provide anything more. How much would it have cost him to remember that he had sent a memo to the Prime Minister on the matter, or to have checked his own mobile phone for the text messages that he sent to James Murdoch? He has lied to Parliament. [Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

The answer is no, it would not be legitimate to make such a charge against an individual Member who was not the subject of the motion under debate in the House. The hon. Member for Rhondda has said what he has said. I have explained why it may not be proper for him to say it. I know that, being as well behaved as he is, he will not persist.

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

With great respect to your office, Mr Speaker, I think that there is a huge difference between misleading Parliament inadvertently and lying.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I appreciate the Secretary of State’s respect, but let me say to him explicitly and for the avoidance of doubt what I have just said. There is a motion. That motion is being debated. He will make his case, and I look forward to him continuing to do so. I will be the arbiter of order, and I know that he will leave that to me.

[Mr Hunt]

It is because I wish to make my case that I want to draw the House’s attention to the very important distinction between inadvertently misleading this House and lying. Lying implies that there is deliberate intent. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who has made great play in the press of how he has suffered when inaccurate allegations about him have been bandied about in the press, would, I am sure, not want to associate himself with the comment he has made unless he has any evidence. I am happy to give way to him now if he will show me evidence of any occasion when I have misled Parliament deliberately.

[Chris Bryant]

Mr Speaker, I very much hope that I will manage to catch your eye later in the debate. I hope that the Secretary of State will stay because I have a great deal of evidence to prove that he has lied to Parliament. That will be the subject not of a point of information now, but of a whole speech.

[Mr Hunt]

This point is very pertinent, because I am here to respond to any allegations that the hon. Gentleman might make. If he is not prepared to come forward with evidence that I deliberately misled the House, I will have to assume that he does not have such evidence.

[Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)]

Perhaps I can give the Secretary of State the opportunity to answer one of the allegations. He told me that he had made no attempt to intervene while the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills was dealing with this matter. Will he tell me, therefore, what the purpose was of his memo to the Prime Minister, if not to influence the outcome?

[Mr Hunt]

Let me help the hon. Lady by telling her about the Enterprise Act 2002, which was passed by the Labour Government and which says—

[Hon. Members]

Answer the question.

[Mr Hunt]

Would Members like me to answer the question?

[Hon. Members]

Yes.

[Mr Hunt]

Good. The 2002 Act states that the responsibility for a quasi-judicial decision is that of the Business Secretary. The note that I sent to the Prime Minister made it very clear that I did not believe that it would be appropriate to make any intervention in a quasi-judicial decision, and that I would not seek to do so. That is what the note states. Members can select parts of the note and try to misrepresent them, but what I said was very clear and the Prime Minister read it out earlier at Prime Minister’s questions. I made no intervention seeking to influence the Business Secretary’s quasi-judicial decision.

[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Hunt]

I will make a little progress, then I will come back to the right hon. Gentleman.

The second allegation is over ministerial responsibility for my special adviser, as set out in paragraph 3.3 of the ministerial code. Adam Smith, my former special adviser, is someone of the highest integrity—[Interruption.] He is. However, he did engage in some contact with News Corporation that was inappropriate and he has resigned. Lessons will be learned about how to improve processes and to avoid that happening again. I did not know about or authorise—

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Hunt]

If hon. Members will let me make my case, I can perhaps answer some of their questions.

I did not know about or authorise that contact, but in accordance with the ministerial code, I accepted full responsibility for it by making a statement to the House the day after the contact became apparent.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

May I take the Secretary of State back to what he said a little earlier? He said that he was making no attempt to influence the quasi-judicial process because the Business Secretary was responsible for it at the time. However, his memo suggested a meeting with the Business Secretary. In what sense was that not an attempt to influence the process?

[Mr Hunt]

The memo, if the hon. Lady has read it, said that we should have a meeting that should not intrude on the quasi-judicial decision that the Business Secretary had to make. Something very significant, which she is forgetting about, is that no meeting happened. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Members must not shout at the Secretary of State. [Interruption.] Order. The House needs to calm down. The Secretary of State is entitled to make his case in the way that the shadow Secretary of State made hers.

[Mr Hunt]

I want to address the second allegation, which relates to my responsibility for the actions of my special adviser. I took responsibility for those actions in my statement.

The question that the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham has failed to answer is why it is a breach of the ministerial code when a Conservative special adviser behaves inappropriately, but not when a Labour special adviser does. Why is she calling for my resignation, when she did not call for that of the last Labour Prime Minister following the actions of Damian McBride or Charlie Whelan? Her inability to answer that question betrays her motives as being not about ministerial conduct, but about rank political opportunism. It may be that she holds Conservative Ministers to a higher standard of conduct than Labour Ministers because she believes that Conservative Ministers behave better than Labour Ministers. In that case, I would agree with her. I gently remind her that her position is not entirely consistent.

[Mr Denham]

Like the Secretary of State, I was responsible for appointing a number of special advisers who worked for me. It is inconceivable to me that any one of my special advisers could have maintained contact of this volume with a major stakeholder without me, as the Secretary of State, being aware of it. How on earth can he explain his apparent case that he knew nothing about what was going on?

[Mr Hunt]

I had hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would explain why it is a breach of the code when a Conservative special adviser behaves inappropriately, but not when a Labour special adviser does, but he did not.

I want to get on to the substance of what the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham said. Parliament rightly holds Ministers to account, and I strongly defend the right of this House to do so. Since my answer to the hon. Member for Bassetlaw in September, as a result of our gathering evidence for the Leveson inquiry, more than 2,000 pages of paperwork relating to the BSkyB bid have been assembled and placed in the House Library. That shows that time after time I sought to supply the House with as much information as possible, far beyond what was required by the Enterprise Act 2002, and probably far more than for any previous deal. It shows that I not only followed legal advice but went beyond it, seeking and publishing independent and expert advice about every key decision—an approach that was confirmed by nearly six hours of testimony under oath from myself and others, including my permanent secretary, who said that I had deliberately reduced my own room to manipulate the process to vanishing point.

Indeed, the evidence shows that the real story of this bid was insistence by me at several key stages on decisions that News Corp did not consider to be in its interests—the involvement of independent regulators; the stopping of James Murdoch being chairman of the spun-off Sky News; the refusal to rush the process; the decision to consult not once but twice. This was not an easy process, nor was it ever likely to command popular support, but the decisions were taken fairly and my Department deserves enormous credit as a result.

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

This was clearly a very controversial issue, and I imagine that competitors of Murdoch and News International would have been watching hawk-like to see whether there was any opportunity of taking the Secretary of State to judicial review. At any point during the process, did anyone indicate that they wished to take the Secretary of State to judicial review on the procedures and process that he used?

[Mr Hunt]

They did not, and that itself indicates the robustness with which we approached the decision.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Adam Smith told Leveson, “Jeremy told me, ‘You have done nothing wrong. You are just doing your job.’” How is that consistent with what the Secretary of State has told the House?

[Mr Hunt]

I do believe that Adam Smith did some inappropriate things, and he has paid a heavy price for that. He used inappropriate language, but I do not believe that anything he did had any material impact on the impartiality of the decisions that I made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Hunt]

I will take one last intervention, from the hon. Member for St Helens North (Mr Watts), then I am going to make some progress.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Let us be absolutely clear about what the Secretary of State seems to be saying. He is saying that he did not know what went on with the actions of his special adviser. Is he trying to tell the House that he is so incompetent that he did not know what his special adviser was doing?

[Mr Hunt]

No, I am saying that we knew that he had a role as one of a number of official points of contact in the process, and we knew that he was in contact with News Corporation, but we did not know about the volume and tone of that correspondence.

If I may say so, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham was brave to call an Opposition day debate on the topic of accuracy, because in the past few weeks that has not been her strong point. Let us look at a few of the things that she has said, and we will see who has been the more accurate. First, on 25 April, she said that I was not judging the bid but backing it—quite a big claim, for which we would think she had some evidence. But she was wrong, because as she knows perfectly well, in every case I followed advice from one, and sometimes two, independent regulators. Were they biased as well? Of course not, and nor was I in following their advice.

The right hon. and learned Lady’s next claim was that I went against Ofcom’s advice by not referring the bid to the Competition Commission. Wrong again. As she should now know, if she has read the evidence that she brandished, my first decision was to refer to the bid to the Competition Commission, but I then had a legal obligation to send News Corp a letter saying that I was minded to refer it, and then to consider undertakings offered in lieu of a referral. Had I not done that, I would have been going against legal advice. Her party wrote the Enterprise Act 2002, so she must be the first politician to call on someone to resign for following the law that her party itself wrote into statute.

Then there was the claim that I used my special adviser as a secret back channel throughout the bid. Wrong yet again. As the right hon. and learned Lady knows perfectly well, my special adviser was one of many official points of contact, which my permanent secretary was aware of and content with. Then she wanted to claim that I somehow authorised my special adviser’s behaviour when it was inappropriate. Unfortunately for her, after I released texts and e-mails between me and him, the evidence showed that she was wrong. Finally, there was the very serious claim that I misled Parliament, which I have dealt with.

Why has virtually every claim that the right hon. and learned Lady made been proved wrong? Because she did not even read the evidence before making her judgment.

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Hunt]

No, I am going to make progress.

In fact, the right hon. and learned Lady called on me to resign just 23 minutes after the evidence was published. That was despite saying on the Marr show that she wanted to work on a cross-party basis. When it came down to it, the temptation to get a political scalp was just too strong, and brazen opportunism took the place of responsible politics. To try to dress up partisan advantage as concern for the rights of this House will disappoint many and fool none, and she should know better. Some may say that she has proved herself to be little better than the newspapers that she has so criticised.

I have spent six weeks being accountable for my actions and being proved right. The right hon. and learned Lady has spent six weeks cooking up allegations and being proved wrong. The Culture Secretary must be accountable to this House, but so too must she.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State is a nice man. He is courteous; he is polite; that is not in doubt—but that is not the matter in hand today. It is also perfectly understandable that on certain occasions the House is misled. It is not uncommon for a Minister to say something in the honest belief that what he is saying is true, and for it to turn out not to be true—a distinction that he himself made. That is why there is a means of correcting the record. I did that myself quite recently. I believe that the House sees no dishonour in correcting the record—indeed, quite the reverse: it enhances somebody’s reputation.

The issue, therefore, is the deliberate misleading of Parliament and the requirement, in the words of the code,

“that Ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity.”

Evidence of not complying with the code can be drawn from the fact that the misinformation provided was emphatic rather than tentative, was repeated, was not corrected when fuller information was available or was calculated to deceive for political advantage. I believe that there is prima facie evidence that all these things apply to the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport.

Some facts are not in dispute. First, the Secretary of State was a strong supporter of Sky in general and the bid in particular. Indeed, he wrote to tell the Prime Minister so, he texted James Murdoch so on the very day he was given control of the bid, and he told me so in September 2010. Secondly, James Murdoch knew what the Secretary of State was going to say before Parliament did. Thirdly, Fred Michel is not a clairvoyant; he was given privileged information directly by Adam Smith, the special adviser to the Secretary of State, quite possibly breaking the law. This was not just on one occasion; it was repeated time and again—hundreds of texts, dozens of e-mails and who knows how many phone calls of which we have not yet been informed.

Fourthly, the Secretary of State doubts that

“there’s a minister who worked more closely with a special adviser than I worked with Adam Smith”—

closer than DEFRA special adviser Osborne worked with Douglas Hogg and closer than Treasury special adviser Cameron worked with Norman Lamont. Yet the Secretary of State expects us to believe that he had no idea what his special adviser was up to; no idea that he was colluding with Sky in a way that would have led to an expensive judicial review, which the taxpayer would have had to pay for if the bid had not been scuppered by the phone-hacking revelations. He has been hanging out with News International so much that he even expects us to accept the “one rogue reporter” defence that News International deployed, long after it knew that it was a lie in relation to hacking.

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

Let me just correct the hon. Gentleman. It is standard practice for my Department, and indeed other Departments, to let companies know if there is a statement being made in Parliament about them in advance of that statement being made, and that is exactly what Adam Smith was doing, and it was proper that he should do so—I believe in every situation, but we are still looking through the evidence very carefully. Secondly, if, as the hon. Gentleman says, I had a plan—some grand scheme—that was going to deliver BSkyB to News Corp, why would I say that I was going to ask for the opinion of independent regulators, whose advice I have absolutely no control over, and that I was going to publish it at the same time as I published my decision? The reason I did that was because I was setting aside the views I had prior to the bid taking place, and that has been vindicated by every single page of the evidence.

[Chris Bryant]

I am sorry, but I simply do not believe the Secretary of State, because I believe that he secured precisely the outcome that he wanted to achieve—or that he wanted the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills to achieve—and that is exactly what he put in the memo to the Prime Minister before he took over the bid. Secondly, in relation to providing information, what is key about—

[Mr Hunt]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

If the right hon. Gentleman will wait a moment and just let me finish—[Interruption.] If the Whip could just calm down—

[Chris Bryant]

I will give way again to the Secretary of State in a moment, but I just want to answer the point about providing information to Sky before it was available to this House. Yes, there are certain circumstances where that option is available to a Secretary of State, but not normally before the markets have opened, not when it can be used for commercial advantage for that organisation and not when people on the other side of the bid have been treated in a completely different way. That is why I think the Financial Services Authority may still want to investigate.

[Mr Hunt]

I just want to understand: is the hon. Gentleman actually saying that the independent advice that I received from Ofcom and the OFT was not, in fact, independent? If I ask for independent advice, what that means is that I do not know what it is going to say. Unless I have very good reason, I am likely to follow that advice. That could not possibly be the actions of someone who was trying to achieve a specific outcome.

[Chris Bryant]

I am afraid that the issue is the way in which the back channel was organised through the Secretary of State’s special adviser, Adam Smith, of whom the right hon. Gentleman has said there has never been a closer working relationship between a Minister and a special adviser—and we are meant to believe that the information this person was providing to Sky was not material—and the process whereby all the e-mails that were provided made it absolutely clear what was in the Secretary of State’s mind and how he was trying to secure that outcome.

That brings me to the central charges: first, that the Secretary of State deliberately misled Parliament. He told Parliament in March 2011 that he had published

“all the documents relating to all the meetings—all the consultation documents, all the submissions we received, all the exchanges between my Department and News Corporation.”—[Official Report, 3 March 2011; Vol. 524, c. 526.]

That was a very, very emphatic statement, which clearly had not been verified, because then, on 7 September, he tried to backtrack a bit—or cover his tracks. In a written answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), the Secretary of State said:

“A search for correspondence from officials, press officers and special advisers to and from all the individuals listed would incur disproportionate cost to collect.”—[Official Report, 7 September 2011; Vol. 532, c. 616.]

He did not choose to correct the previous statement. He chose not to reveal that he had texted James Murdoch himself and had sent a memo to the Prime Minister. Far from exonerating the Secretary of State, the answer he provided on 7 September proves beyond doubt that he deliberately failed to tell the whole truth to this House. It was only the legal powers vested in Leveson that forced the truth out into the open.

[Chris Bryant]

This House has regularly excoriated Ministers when they have resorted too swiftly to the argument that it is too expensive to provide the full information, but to be honest, I cannot see how it could have been too expensive to have found the memo that the Secretary of State wrote to the Prime Minister—or, for that matter, the text messages that the Secretary of State sent to the people concerned.

There are some other facts to be dealt with. The deliberate nature of the misinformation is also evidenced by the Secretary of State’s response, following his statement in April this year, to questions from two Back Benchers—both doubtless inspired directly by the Whips, as was the question posed earlier by the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns). When one Back Bencher—helped, I am sure—asked him how many conversations he had had, meaning how many with News International and News Corporation, the Secretary of State said, quite categorically and emphatically, “zero”. When another Back Bencher—a Conservative Member; this did not come out of the blue—asked whether the Secretary of State recognised the conversations attributed to him by Fred Michel, he said:

“I do not. Throughout the bid process, when I got responsibility for it, the contact that I had with Fred Michel was only at official meetings that were minuted with other people present. The fact is that there is a whole pile of e-mails—54 in total—in which he talks about having contact with me, but that simply did not happen.”—[Official Report, 25 April 2012; Vol. 961, c. 543.]

Neither response was unpremeditated; they were deliberately placed on the record. Both are deliberate obfuscations and lies.

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not wish to mislead the House, so let me just tell him that in both cases the question I was asked—one was from my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) and the other was from my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham)—referred to the 54 e-mails that Fred Michel wrote in which he talked about conversations with “JH”. In both cases I confirmed that no such conversations with me had happened.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Denham]

I would indeed welcome an intervention that told the House why neither the Secretary of State nor the Prime Minister thought it appropriate to tell the Cabinet Secretary of the existence of the November memo to the Prime Minister. The Culture Secretary should have gone to the Cabinet Secretary and said: “This is relevant to your decision as to whether I am a suitable person”. Why did the Secretary of State not make that available?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

Because I was not party to any of the discussions between the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Secretary.

[Mr Denham]

The Secretary of State would have known on 22 December that the Cabinet Secretary had written to me saying that he was in the clear. Any honest Secretary of State would have turned around at that moment—