Phone hacking commons debate: Ed Miliband questions David Cameron. Photograph: PA
MPs have been discussing the phone hacking scandal – and public confidence in the media and police in the fallout – in the Commons after David Cameron's statement on the affair. The debate is scheduled to go on until 7pm on Wednesday. Highlights so far include:
• Cameron refused to deny having discussed BSkyB bid with News International.
• In his statement, Cameron gave more details of the Leveson inquiry.
• A review of the way contacts between Whitehall and the media are regulated and recorded is to be conducted.
Cameron told MPs that the cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, has written to senior civil servants to ask them to review the way contacts between the media and their staff, and other professional groups that work with their departments, are regulated and recorded.
The prime minister said: "We see there is a problem with the police and the media. We need, I think, to get ahead of there possibly being problems with other groups as well."
• Cameron said politicians could be removed from making decisions about media ownership. He also suggested that the media "plurality test" should be a constant issue, rather than arising only when a takeover is considered.
He said Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry should consider whether the maximum size of a media organisation could be capped.
"While plurality is difficult to measure, especially in the modern internet age, we shouldn't rule out the idea of limits and I think it is right the inquiry should look at this issue."
On media ownership, he said: "We need competition policy properly enforced. We need a sensible look at the relevance of plurality and cross-media ownership. Above all we need to ensure that no one voice – not News Corporation, not the BBC – becomes too powerful."
• Cameron warned that over-regulating the media could have "profoundly detrimental effects" on the UK.
He ruled out statutory regulation of the press, but referred to the need for "independent" regulation.
"We must not miss, in the frenzy about the dreadfulness of hacking at this point, [that] without a public interest defence the so-called cod fax that uncovered Jonathan Aitken's wrongdoing would never have emerged.
"Are we seriously going to argue in this House that the expenses scandal should not have come to light because it could have involved some data that was obtained illegally? So we need to step very, very carefully into this area."
• The prime minister said the operational independence of the police should never be compromised and said directly elected police and crime commissioners would bring accountability.
"We mustn't move to a system where you can have politicians stepping [in] to say 'Why haven't you re-run this investigation, why haven't you arrested that person?'," he said.
"We ought to think for a moment about where that would lead. But I think it does make it all the more important why police leadership is strong and they are called to account when they fail. And that's why we're introducing directly elected police and crime commissioners, to bring that sort of accountability to policing."
However, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, Labour's deputy leader in the Lords, said the events of recent days, which have included the resignation of the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Sir Paul Stephenson and his assistant commissioner John Yates, showed the dangers of the "politicisation" of policing.
• Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said a new press regulatory body should be made up of independent figures who are not current editors.
It should have investigatory powers and have the power to make papers pay compensation and to enforce the publication of prominent corrections, he said.
• Miliband said the fall-out from the hacking scandal must not be "an event where the whirlwind blows through and nothing really changes".
He added: "We have to bring about lasting change. That is the duty we owe the victims of phone hacking; it is the duty we owe the people of this country."
• Miliband said he would publish records of his meetings with media executives while he was campaigning for his party's leadership after being criticised by the Conservative benches for not doing so.
"I welcome the prime minister's decision to be more transparent about meetings with executives and editors. I published all my meetings since I have been leader of the Labour party – of course I will go back to the general election."
• Miliband admitted he had "one lunch" with News International.
"It was profoundly unsuccessful, as people will have gathered," he quipped, in reference to being branded "red Ed" by the papers because of trade union support for his leadership.
• Labour's head of press, Tom Baldwin, was targetted by Tory MPs.
Graham Stuart, the Conservative MP for Beverley and Holderness, turned the tables on Labour regarding the vetting of former News International staff by asking the Labour leader what checks he had made about the conduct of Baldwin before appointing him. Miliband fired back that the line manager of Baldwin when he worked at the Times was none other than the current education secretary, Michael Gove.
• Keith Vaz, the chairman of the home affairs committee, told MPs that if the Metropolitan police carry on contacting people named in Glenn Mulcaire's notebooks at the rate they are doing now, it will take them 10 years to get through every one.
الرئيسية 
موضوع: Phone hacking Commons debate highlights: A round-up 
الأربعاء يوليو 20, 2011 11:54 am
