Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Oliver Heald Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Edward Miliband]

I give way to the hon. Gentleman; he and I are old sparring partners.

[Oliver Heald]

The Leader of the Opposition rightly talks about the independence of the police, yet he seems to have expected that, during the course of a police inquiry, the assistant commissioner would go and see the Prime Minister and talk about the emerging evidence. It seems, extraordinarily, that the assistant commissioner had a similar expectation. Can the Leader of the Opposition tell us whether that is the way it went on in Labour years? Is that what was happening? If not, will he say now that he thinks the police should be truly independent?

[Edward Miliband]

This is not about the operational independence of the police and I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman wants to return to these issues because it is the wall of silence that was erected around the Prime Minister that meant that he did not hear the facts about Andy Coulson, which were facts that he should have heard. We need reforms—

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[Keith Vaz]

I will write to the previous Attorney-General today to ask for that information.

[Oliver Heald]

rose—

[Mr Cox]

I will give way to my hon. Friend.

[Oliver Heald]

When the former Home Secretary spoke a moment ago, he used the words, “or informally”. Does my hon. Friend think that one aspect that may need examining is whether the matter was another subject that fell into the “sofa Government” category, and that the Attorney-General may have spoken to the Prime Minister or one or two others, but it was not brought before the full Cabinet?

[Mr Cox]

The matter needs to be closely examined, and the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee has taken it on board. With the greatest respect to the Attorney-General at the time, if he was informed of the matter, he should have interested himself in exactly how the investigation would be conducted. On the face of it, an enormous amount of wrongdoing was simply ignored. The police appear to have proposed a strategy, which would, as the briefing paper put it to the Attorney-General, “ring-fence” Mulcaire and Goodman and exclude a whole raft of serious criminal wrongdoing from investigation. That may well have affected Members.

I do not know to whom the Committee refers when it says that neither Ministers nor the police escalated the matter. As the Committee put it, if Ministers at the time had taken those issues sufficiently seriously, the matter would have been investigated. The truth would have been discovered then and we could have avoided a whole series of events that we now know unfolded.

My second point is about the review suggested by then Deputy Assistant Commissioner Yates. The Home Affairs Committee has rightly judged, in tone and substance, its criticisms of Mr Yates and Mr Hayman. There are serious questions to be asked about why an investigation or a review—I appreciate that it was not a formal review—that was carried out in eight hours apparently failed to read material that, as the former Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions was able to determine in a few minutes, gave rise to the gravest illegalities. On the face of it, that is either wilful blindness or rank incompetence. Whatever the reason, Mr Yates’s resignation was right and done for proper reasons. It is inconceivable that, if the exercise had been carried out properly, the material would not have come to light in 2009. Questions arise about the closeness of officers of the Metropolitan police to News International and whether that deflected and deterred them from a rigorous analysis of the evidence that had been in their possession since 2006. It was not only in their possession, but, as the memorandum of 30 May 2006 to the Attorney-General shows, they had discovered that it included

“a vast array of offending behaviour.”

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[Mr Clappison]

I have to say, having heard the evidence, that the answer to my hon. and learned Friend’s point remains hanging in the wind. I am not satisfied with the explanations that we have heard, which will appear in the evidence that will be published by the Home Affairs Committee. One explanation that was given by a senior investigating officer in the case was that the police had other priorities, and this matter was not regarded as sufficiently important when set beside them. We have to accept that police resources are limited and the police have to determine their priorities, but their credibility on the matter is not assisted by what the senior investigating officer of the case wrote about it—incidentally, in a News International newspaper of which he had subsequently become an employee. I am referring to Mr Hayman, who said:

“In the original inquiry, my heart sank when I was told the accusations came from the Palace. This was not the time for a half-hearted investigation—we put our best detectives on the case and left no stone unturned as officials breathed down our neck.”

I believe that was inconsistent with the evidence that we heard from the police about the priorities that they set themselves at the time. That is the honest conclusion that I have come to on the basis of that evidence.

The Committee has gone as far as it can. I believe we have gone to the limits of what a Select Committee can achieve in carrying out an investigation. These questions now remain to be resolved by others in the course of the Leveson inquiry, which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has rightly set up, and further criminal investigations must go forward under the direction of Sue Akers in Operation Weeting. In view of the evidence that we have now heard from the former DPP and others, I will not be surprised if evidence is uncovered of further phone tapping, further payments to officers and, I am afraid, possibly other offences involving the corruption of police officers. I hope that that is not the case, but the important thing for the reputation of the police, the good reputation of many honest officers and the public interest is that these matters are now fully investigated impartially and independently, and that those investigations are carried through to their conclusion.

We have heard a great deal about the press. One catastrophic effect of the original failed investigation, along with the failed review carried out by Mr Yates in 2006, was that senior police officers went to see representatives of The Guardian, which had been carrying out an investigation, effectively to try to put them off further investigations by persuading them that their investigation, which was based upon matters that were seeping out through the civil courts, was exaggerated and unjustified. It is to the credit of The Guardian, and particularly its journalist Nick Davies, that it persisted with the investigation. I say that as somebody who is no great sympathiser with The Guardian—I do not expect to receive an invitation to lunch there any time soon, and I do not know the people concerned. However, that was to their credit, and it was an illustration of the value of a free press.

That brings me to my next point. It is very important to keep the criminal side of this separate from the issues that arise in respect of the regulation and ownership of a diverse, free and robust press. The matters that we have been talking about are criminal matters, not just matters of comment or of insufficient comeback from the Press Complaints Commission. They are serious criminal matters involving a wide range of people—politicians, celebrities and, as we have heard, many ordinary members of the public often in tragic circumstances. Each case has to be properly investigated, and anybody who has committed offences has to be brought to justice.

[Oliver Heald]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we must not forget that there is a presumption of innocence right at the core of our criminal justice system? It is all very well for us to debate matters and examine what speculation there is, but people are entitled to a fair trial in our country.

[Mr Clappison]

My hon. Friend is right, and that is why I have been very careful to refer to investigations that should take place, and which we now believe are taking place. We should not do anything that will either interfere with the proper course of those investigations or prejudice a fair trial for anybody who is brought to trial as a result of them. However, the question of a free and robust press is separate from that. An under-reaction would not be in the public interest, but neither would an overreaction, would could even be more damaging. We need a diverse, free and robust press that is unmuzzled.

Too great a concentration of broadcasting, which is so important, in one set of hands can be against the public interest. I heard what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said in his statement, and I agree completely with him. He made some very valuable contributions, particularly when he referred to the position of the BBC, which is a sensitive matter. I feel—I suppose I would, as a Conservative—that there has at times been a certain amount of bias, or a predisposition, in the editorial line of the BBC, and that certain matters that should have been investigated or highlighted have not been given proper attention. It is to the credit of the BBC that its present director-general has said that, looking back, the BBC did not do full justice to the issue of immigration.

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[Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

My old friend the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) is right in one respect: there are faults in all parties in the House and successive Governments in not tackling this issue early enough. However, I completely reject his criticism of the Mayor of London, because the Mayor’s comments predate the most recent allegations.

[Clive Efford]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Oliver Heald]

No, I will not, because I have so little time. That is the way it is tonight.

I shall make three points. First, people in this country have a fundamental right to live under the rule of law, but Members on both sides of the House must look back on this period and ask themselves this: did we uphold the rule of law? As the hon. Gentleman said, journalists felt that they could break the law willy-nilly, and people felt that they could talk to Select Committees about breaking the law, and nothing would happen. That is a failure of this Parliament over a period of time to uphold one of the basic rights of our people.

That is why it is right that the Prime Minister has agreed to a full, judge-led, independent inquiry, and why it is right that we have a proper police investigation under Sue Akers to go after the evidence. Our Select Committees did a good job yesterday in showing that even the most powerful people in the land, and even the world, can be questioned before a Select Committee just like anyone else. That is how it should be in our country. People should not feel that they can get away with it.

Let us ask how we got into that position. Many hon. Members have said that after 1992, Labour politicians were desperate for the good opinion of the media. They went out to the Canary Islands and all sorts of places—[Interruption.] They went to the Cayman Islands and Australia too. They were out to curry favour with the media regardless. The combination of currying favour with the media and the sofa-style government that we had under Tony Blair meant that we ended up with the sort of situation that was described by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), who said that the Attorney-General was told in a letter from the police that a vast quantity of private information and criminality needed investigation, but nothing happened.

How did that happen? It should not have been possible, and there should have been a report to the Cabinet. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said that no such report ever occurred. That reminds us of what the Butler inquiry said about sofa-style government, when there are no formalities. We ended up going off to war in Iraq without members of the Cabinet seeing all the papers. That same, sloppy approach is not the way to run a country. It is right that we have the inquiries, but the House must get together to ensure the proper rule of law.

My second point is that the separation of the criminal justice system from politicians is very important. I was surprised to hear the Leader of the Opposition say that he expected the Prime Minister to be briefed by an assistant commissioner about an ongoing police inquiry. The assistant commissioner actually offered that service to No. 10, but Edward Llewellyn was absolutely right to say no, because we want that separation. The cosiness of the police and the media, and sofa-style government, blurs the formalities that protect our constitution.

Finally, I want to mention the presumption of innocence. When in opposition, it is easy to cast stones and to rely on bits of gossip and speculation as if they are evidence, but in this country, thank goodness, we have a fair system of trial with the presumption of innocence at its core. I would not want that to change. All those who throw stones and pretend that someone is guilty just because a newspaper says so ought to think about where that leads. Let us stick up for the constitutional principles of the rule of law and the separation of powers, and let us ensure that we continue to have fair trials.