Privilege

Debate between John Robertson and Simon Hughes

Thursday 9th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes]

The hon. Lady is quite right. In common with my right hon. and hon. Friends, I have seen great changes in the use of electronic media for communication during my time in Parliament. I hope that the hon. Lady’s expertise will be made available to the Standards and Privileges Committee if it requests it.

I want briefly to discuss two other issues. First, it is easy to misrepresent and thus tell untruths on the basis of misunderstood messages and information. To lighten the mood for a moment, I had a message on my phone the other day from a woman who sounded as if she was of a certain age and who said, “Darling, I really need to speak to you urgently. If we do not meet today, our marriage might be at an end.” I thought that that message was unlikely to be aimed at me! She clearly had not read the press enough! Not knowing who she was, I nevertheless phoned her back and said, “Madam, I do not know who you are and you might not know who I am, but I think that the message you left was not intended for me. You ought to think about who it was intended for before it is too late.” The serious point is that messages left were clearly misinterpreted to lead people to conclude that they were about one thing when they were not really about that at all. There is scope for terrible abuse if we do not rein in this activity completely.

Finally, this is without doubt a job for the Standards and Privileges Committee, but I hope that that will not mean that others who have a responsibility do not do their jobs, too. The Metropolitan Police Authority has a job—to hold the Metropolitan police to account.

[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way.

[Simon Hughes]

I would rather not, as I want to be brief.

The Justice Committee might well want to ask Law Officers about whether the Crown Prosecution Service did its job properly. Of course there is a case for only specimen counts to be investigated and put forward in a court case, but I share the view of the hon. Member for Rhondda that people on the list as prospective targets should have been informed, even if their phones had not been hacked at the time.

We also have a wider responsibility, which I hope we can deal with more fully on another occasion. The power of the media—broadcast, televised and written—is an issue for this country. My right hon. and hon. Friends have been brave enough to set up a commission into the banks, but I hope they will also set up a commission into broadcasting and the media, because the Press Complaints Commission has not done a robust job. The public are not adequately protected from the press. I am someone who, like the hon. Member for Rhondda, will defend the freedom of the press to the end, but there is a big difference between the freedom of the press and abuse by the press. This is abuse and illegality. It has to end, and we must be robust about it.

Nuclear Energy

Debate between John Robertson and Simon Hughes

Tuesday 22nd June 2010 Westminster Hall

[John Robertson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I will go into that in more detail later. The situation with Forgemasters is symptomatic of the problem that we will face in years to come. The previous Government pledged cash to Forgemasters to enable the Sheffield company to build parts for nuclear power stations—it was as simple as that.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I have a simple question that touches on the Forgemasters issue. Should there or should there not be any direct or indirect public subsidy to the nuclear industry?

[John Robertson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, which he has made many times. It has been said on many occasions that no subsidy will be given. Indirect subsidy is a different thing; it would be about what was happening with the carbon price in European markets and so on. We can never say never about anything, but the Labour Government said that they would not give any subsidy, and that it was down to the companies to cover the cost of not only building plants but dismantling them at the end of their life cycle. I hope that that answers the hon. Gentleman’s question.

When the loan to Forgemasters was announced in March, it was clear that it would make the plant one of two in the world—the point that my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) made—able to make large forgings for the nuclear energy industry. Apart from creating employment opportunities and highly skilled jobs, it would lead to international order opportunities for the product. Those of us who have been involved in nuclear energy know that a number of nuclear stations are being planned all over the world. It does not come as a surprise to me, although it will to some, to hear that even Sweden is jumping on the bandwagon. As we speak, people all over the world are tackling the issues of security of supply and the need for a base load that includes nuclear. On that basis, it is essential that the Government look again at the decision. We need world leaders, and the Sheffield plant, with the investment, would have an opportunity second to none.

I do not feel the need to rehearse the concern about climate change and emissions targets; we have expressed it many times. However, I seek assurances from the Government about their intent. It is vital that we hear at first hand what position Ministers at the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Prime Minister will take not just on climate change but on nuclear power. I have some concerns about their policy on new build. The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change has long been completely and unequivocally opposed to nuclear build. He has said:

“No private sector investor has built a nuclear power station anywhere in the world without lashings of government subsidy since Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. The World Bank refuses to lend on nuclear projects because of the long history of overruns.

Our message is clear, No to nuclear, as it is not a short cut, but a dead end. Yes to energy saving, yes to renewables, and yes to a sustainable energy future.”

That view—that nuclear power is not the answer to future energy needs—is the view, of course, of the Secretary of State.

On Friday 12 May 2006, the Secretary of State said, responding to an affirmation by the then Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband), that the Government were considering a new generation of nuclear power stations:

“While Mr Miliband’s acknowledgment of the scale of the climate change challenge is welcome, his comments on nuclear power are worrying.”

He went on to say:

“Not only does nuclear cause a great threat to the environment through the large amounts of waste produced, but it is also economically unviable.

The Government intends to use private investment to fulfil our future energy needs. However, since the Chernobyl disaster, no nuclear power station has been built anywhere in the world without huge amounts of government subsidy.”

That is the point that the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) was making earlier. Such statements cause problems for those of us who want a balanced energy policy, because it is the Secretary of State making them, and one would expect him to be writing the policy.

I want to quote Melanie Phillips of the Daily Mail, although it is not a paper that I quote very often, and is not known to be a friend of mine—