Phone Hacking

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Alun Michael

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

That was the point I was making. The existing PCC arrangements have not delivered. The press should try to make self-regulation work, and that issue should be dealt with as part of the inquiry, because it is important to restore public confidence across the country in the way in which the media operate, in their independence and in their trustworthiness.

There are questions, too, for the police. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson stated yesterday:

“It is inevitable...that questions will be asked about the parameters of the original investigation but also more widely about the regulatory role of the Press Complaints Commission and others.”

He is right, and there are three questions to answer. First, were payments made by the media to individual officers—which is clearly illegal and corrupt? Secondly, was there a wider relationship between the newspapers and police? Thirdly, why did the first investigation not reach the truth and uncover what was happening?

I spoke to the commissioner today. He told me that he believes that a public inquiry is not only inevitable but it is the right thing to do. He said that the police should be held to account. It is important for the inquiry to cover those issues. Ministers should reflect on the specialist role that police officers, the IPCC and Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary will play in ensuring a proper investigation.

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

Did the Metropolitan Police Commissioner indicate whether he had made a referral to the IPCC, or has that not happened yet?

[Yvette Cooper]

As I understand it from my conversation with the commissioner this morning, the Met has indeed made a referral to the IPCC about the allegations that police officers received payments. That has been discussed with the IPCC, whose conclusion—again, as I understand it from my conversation this morning—is that the current investigation by the Met should continue, but it is keeping that under review. It is important that we have that independent investigation. There is a wider question about safeguards in the system on which we will want to reflect, given that individual investigations may go awry or may not reach the conclusions that they need to reach. I do not think that that role will be fulfilled by the police and crime commissioners proposed by the Government, because that would create greater risks in such cases in future.

The police do vital and excellent work, solving crimes, bringing offenders to justice, and supporting families of murder victims and others. It is important that that work is not undermined or discredited as the result of any lack of transparency over the phone-hacking revelations. We must recognise that any areas where things have gone wrong must be put right.

Before turning to the case for the public inquiry and what it should consider, may I respond briefly to the points made by the Attorney-General about whether a referral should be made to the Competition Commission? He will know that we have continually called for such a referral, as we believe that it is the right thing to do. I hope that the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, who is in the Chamber, and the Attorney-General will reflect carefully on the points that have been made by Members on both sides of the House about the flexibility within the law to look at the issue again, and recognise the importance of the need, for which we have argued from the beginning, for referral to the Competition Commission. I would simply say that judgments must be fair, but it is also important that they are seen to be fair and that the public have confidence in them.

The Prime Minister agreed today that there should be an inquiry or inquiries into these issues. At the end of the Attorney-General’s speech, he referred to a number of inquiries that were already under way and tried to give us some assurance that that meant that these matters were being taken seriously. He knows, however, that the number of inquiries that have taken place or are taking place now gives no such reassurance. Quite the opposite is true because so many inquiries have not got to the truth in the past. Whether those were inquiries by the PCC or by parliamentary Committees, they were not able to get to the bottom of the truth about what had been happening.