Foster and Heath on Rupert Murdoch and the News Corporation Bid for BSkyB

• [Jul 13] Edward Miliband (Leader of the Opposition; Doncaster North, Labour): I beg to move,

That this House

believes that it is in the public interest for Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation to withdraw their bid for BSkyB.

The motion stands in my name and those of right hon. and hon. Members across the House: the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Menzies Campbell, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, the leader of the Scottish National party, the leader of the Social Democratic and Labour party, the leader of Plaid Cymru and Caroline Lucas. I thank them all for joining me in tabling this motion. I also thank those Conservative Members who have set out their support for the motion in advance of the debate . .

• Don Foster (Bath, Liberal Democrat): The Leader of the Opposition was right to begin his remarks by saying that what has happened today is a victory for the British people. It was the British people who were horrified by the Milly Dowler affair, and by the hacking of the communications of the families of victims of 7/7 and of Afghanistan. The Leader of the Opposition was right to say that the British public forced the political parties to unite in the motion before us, and to put pressure on Rupert Murdoch in relation to the takeover.

I congratulate the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the House on the tone of their speeches and for seeking to avoid partisan remarks. As the whole House knows, for the past 30 years there have been significant failures by Governments of both major parties to stand up to the media in this country. What has happened today as Murdoch has backed down, probably only temporarily, is a victory for the British people. However, the Prime Minister was right to say that it is not the end of the matter: we must continue with the thorough police investigation to root out wrongdoing and bring those who have committed crimes to justice.

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Denis MacShane (Rotherham, Labour): I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, although my intervention will give him injury time. I want to pray in aid a point made by his right hon. Friend Simon Hughes. The Information Commissioner's analysis shows that we should worry more about the Mail newspapers than about Murdoch. Ten years ago, when my mother was recovering from a stroke, a reporter from The Mail on Sunday went into her house without knocking on the door to try to extract information from me.

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• Don Foster: The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The report to which he refers was published in 2006, when his party was in power. It alleged that 305 journalists were acting illegally, and no action was taken.

We could become involved in party political stuff. I could point out that it is amazing that the former Prime Minister, who gave us that list of things that he did as Prime Minister, failed to make any mention of what his party did in government when he was merely the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Critical actions are necessary. The Press Complaints Commission has been drinking in the last chance saloon for far too long. It is ridiculous that papers such as the Daily Express and the Daily Star can walk away from it, and that only people who have been directly affected by a judgment can get it to investigate. That must be changed.

It is also ludicrous that there is so little clarity about how the "fit and proper person" test should be conducted. I asked the Secretary of State about that on Monday, and I asked the Prime Minister about it today. It is true that the British public wanted to know not just whether Murdoch's was a fit and proper organisation to take over yet more shares, but it was not made clear whether the test could take place on the basis of its current 39% shareholding. I am delighted that Ofcom is now investigating that, but the law is still confused about the issue.

The law is also confused about plurality-the issue of who should own our media to ensure that it contains multiple voices. Surely by now the House recognises that, in the modern era of communication, it is not just news and current affairs that determine how we think about ourselves and the world. That can also be done by drama, comedy and many other means.

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Duncan Hames (Chippenham, Liberal Democrat): I suggested to the Secretary of State in March that there was a case for wider application of automatic triggers for referral to the Competition Commission. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should consider that?

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• Don Foster: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is so much that needs to be sorted out.

Rupert Murdoch has dropped his bid for the time being, but who knows when he will return via another bid? The British public will never forgive us if we take our eye off the ball. The inquiries must go ahead, and the revisions to law must go ahead, so that we can have a decent press in this country in which journalists-the majority-who carry out the fearless inquiries that we want, but do it legally, are allowed to continue to do so.

It is a disgrace that when Rupert Murdoch closed the News of the World , a large number of journalists who had done absolutely nothing wrong lost their jobs, while the person in charge, Rebekah Brooks, kept hers. When Rupert Murdoch arrived in this country, she was the person whom he described as the key issue for him. That is the most disgraceful thing that has happened in the last week.

• . . David Heath (Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, House of Commons; Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat): This has been a very important day both for the country and for Parliament. It is important because, for the first time, we have had a very clear indication that the police investigations that were carried out so inadequately before are now going ahead and yielding results.

It is important because we have heard of the establishment of a proper judicial inquiry under a very capable judge, Lord Justice Leveson, that will deal not only with the inadequacies of the previous inquiry and not only with the unacceptable practices in the press and the media. I am wholly unconvinced that those practices were confined to News International, and I am glad that the inquiry will work on a wider spectrum. The inquiry will look at the relationship between some media and some politicians and allow for proper investigation of the perhaps too cosy relationship that has sometimes existed. The decision by the Prime Minister to provide for proper disclosure of meetings between senior politicians and the media-I hope that the Leader of the Opposition will agree to that for his own party-seems to be a great step forward.

The other area that the inquiry will deal with-this is absolutely crucial, and I give credit to Chris Bryant, who has been talking about it for some time-is the potential systemic suborning of police officers by some elements of the media. We must put an end to that.

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Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex, Conservative): Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is extremely important that the inquiry deals in great depth not only with the points that he has made but with the abuses of many other newspapers in illegally procuring personal information?

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• David Heath (Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, House of Commons; Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat): I absolutely agree with that intervention.

I agree with the Leader of the Opposition and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that this is a good day for Parliament. We should avoid being self-congratulatory-we have hardly been a model of good practice over the years-but today, and over recent days, we have been able to demonstrate that we can express the views of the public.

It is also a good day because News International's bid for BSkyB has been withdrawn, as it should have been withdrawn. There was increasing revulsion at the revelations of what were called offences against common decency. I think people would have found it very difficult to understand why the Murdoch empire was carrying on trying to expand its boundaries when there were such clear deficiencies within.

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Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark, Liberal Democrat): Is it also the responsibility of the inquiry to look at the warnings that have been given over 17 years about the accretion of powers by the Murdoch empire, the failure to act on those warnings during those years, and the failure to act on the very clear recommendations to which Nicholas Soames referred, which suggested in 2006 that 31 newspapers and more than 300 journalists had been guilty of illegality. Nothing was done about that in the following five years.

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• David Heath (Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, House of Commons; Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat): I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for saying that. It is absolutely essential that we look at not only the actions but the inactions of very many people during the progress of this scandal. It is extraordinary that so little was done for so long.

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Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras, Labour): rose -

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• David Heath (Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, House of Commons; Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat): This is the last intervention that I will take.

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Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras, Labour): Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the rot set in when, against the advice of the late Michael Foot, Mrs Thatcher set the precedent of refusing to refer the purchase of The Times and The Sunday Times to the then Monopolies and Mergers Commission on the grounds that 40% ownership of newspapers was too much in one pair of hands?

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• David Heath (Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, House of Commons; Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat): We have had abundant evidence since then of what has or has not been done in relationships with the media.

The best contributions to the debate have been the most sober and non-partisan, and I am grateful to colleagues who entered into the debate in that context. I am grateful to the Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Mr Whittingdale, whose Committee has done such a lot of good work. I am grateful, as I have indicated, to the hon. Member for Rhondda for what he has said not just today but on previous occasions. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend Mr Foster, to the hon. Members for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), for Bracknell (Dr Lee) and for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), and to Steve Rotheram for his very brief contribution. They talked not only about the criminal behaviour that has been uncovered over recent days and weeks, but about the concentration of power and ownership and the effect that that has on the media in this country, and about the adequacy of the Press Complaints Commission, which we clearly need to look at. The hon. Member for Bracknell warned that new media and technologies will bring new challenges that we have to address.

There were contributions from members of the previous Government. I think that most of what Mr Bradshaw said had more to do with the competition authorities and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport than with the contents of this debate, but he took this opportunity to raise those issues. There was a long contribution from Mr Brown. May I say that it is genuinely a pleasure to have him contributing to our debates in this House, and he should do so more often? Everybody understands his personal issues concerning the completely inappropriate release of information about his family, and everybody has sympathy for him over that. Everybody will take careful notice of the serious evidence that he produced to the House, which I hope will be properly considered by the inquiry. I hope that he will give full evidence to the inquiry, as he indicated he would in his contribution, as I hope will other members of the previous Government who have a story to tell. I would criticise him because there was a self-exculpatory tone in much of what he said, and I think that that may have grated on some. Nevertheless, it was an important contribution.

Mr Lewis did not quite rise to the occasion. He wanted to take a partisan view, in considerable contrast to the leader of his party. He wanted to resile from the body of law that the Government of whom he was a member put in place. He wanted to say that issues that cannot be clearly linked in law should be linked in law. I remind him of what he said on 10 June, because it is relevant to his contribution:

"The serious admissions of culpability by News International aren't relevant to the News Corp-BSkyB media plurality issue".

Now he is saying that those admissions are intrinsic to it. He cannot have it both ways.

What we have seen is a systemic failure across the institutions of public life to get to grips with a cancer of wrongdoing. There were abundant signs over the years: admissions of criminal behaviour, Select Committee reports that went unheeded, and clear examples of big media organisations wielding too much power, political and commercial. I hope that the inquiries that are being put in place today will deal with that issue. I hope that that chapter is drawing to a close. I believe that we have a unique window of opportunity to get it right. [ Interruption. ] Ian Lucas says that we have barely started yet. He is absolutely right. We have barely started getting to grips with this cancer of wrongdoing, but we will get to grips with it. We now have an inquiry that will set us on the right path and a Government determined to act. That is as it should be. I am grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to contribute to this debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House believes that it is in the public interest for Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation to withdraw their bid for BSkyB.

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• Don Foster: On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. On a lighter note, is there a way in which you can draw to the attention of the House the significant victory by the House of Commons rowing team, by four lengths, over the House of Lords?

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Nigel Evans (Deputy Speaker; Ribble Valley, Conservative): I could not possibly think of a way of making it more widely known than you just have, Mr Foster. Thank you very much for lightening the proceedings.

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