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7.26 pm
Mr. Robert G. Hughes (Harrow, West): The whole House will have deeply appreciated the thoughtful speech by the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell), which has lifted the tone of the debate. We much appreciate what he had to say about his constituency, much of which is reflected in our constituencies.
This evening, I must make three constituency points. I crave your indulgence, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because the first is not related to the Queen's Speech. There was to
be a by-election in the Ridgeway ward in my constituency on Thursday, following the resignation of a Liberal councillor. Tragically, this morning, the Liberal candidate, Mr. Norman Simmons, died, so it will not take place. I must inform the House and, through it, my constituents, that we are deeply shocked in the constituency and the Conservative party at the death of Mr. Simmons. We pay tribute to his work for the community. The party, our candidate in the by-election, Major Gerry Harsant, and I will of course be doing no campaigning for a period as a mark of respect for Mr. Simmons.
The second matter relates to the asylum Bill. Because of the by-election, I have been doing a lot of canvassing in that ward, which, like the rest of the constituency, is blessed with a rich racial mix. Many of my constituents have either family or first-hand experience of persecution and have come to this country as asylum seekers. Many-- particularly those from Sri Lanka or Somalia--are worried sick about the fate of their families and friends in those countries. That is especially true of Tamils from Sri Lanka, who are worried sick about their relatives in Jaffna and about what I would regard as the campaign of genocide by the Sri Lankan Government against the Tamil people.
What comes through to me when I speak to people from all sorts of communities in my constituency is that they want a fair asylum system where bogus asylum seekers do not get in the way and clog up the system, stopping the genuine people coming. I absolutely support the measure proposed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, because I genuinely think that it will help genuine asylum seekers. I am certain that it will be widely welcomed in my constituency.
My last point relates to the proposed broadcasting Bill and in particular our intention to amend media ownership rules to allow greater cross-holdings among newspapers, television and radio. The question that I wish to pose to the House is: what happens when the press distorts reality, intrudes into private lives or just plain makes up what is happening? I should tell the House that I am not interested in anything that the press has had to say about me; I have never made a complaint and I do not make one now. What confidence can we have in the Press Complaints Commission? If we are to look at cross-media ownership and allow more ownership of television and radio stations by newspapers, can we really rely on the PCC?
I wish to talk about the experience of a constituent of mine, Mr. David Rudnick, who lives in Harrow on the Hill. He is a freelance journalist and wrote an article for the September 1994 edition of the magazine Euromoney, which is part of the Associated Newspapers group, which includes the Daily Mail. His article, about St. Petersburg, was badly mangled by the sub-editor and was subsequently published with serious errors in it. No one disputes that fact or that anyone reading the article as printed would have to conclude that Mr. Rudnick simply did not know what he was talking about. The original article was factual and correct, but as printed it made him look incompetent.
Mr. Rudnick asked for an apology to be printed, but Euromoney refused. On 25 October 1994, he sent a detailed letter to the PCC. He explained in his letter that Euromoney, a financial magazine, had seriously mis-edited material that he had written. The changes included, for instance, a geographical area that wrote off as non-existent Russia's sea ports, which made his article
look a bit silly. The PCC agreed to accept the complaint under article 1 of its code, outlawing inaccuracy by the press. Two months later, it said that it would send the publishers a copy of the complaint to let the editor have the opportunity to settle the matter straight away. The PCC accepted that changes had been made to the copy, resulting in distortions, but rejected Mr. Rudnick's demands for a published apology in the monthly magazine, claiming that the distortions were
The PCC's spokesman, Mr. Christopher Hayes, told my constituent:
Mr. Rudnick then suggested that it would be fairer to make the magazine issue corrections, which resulted in the PCC agreeing to reconsider the case. However, in April of this year, the PCC shifted its ground and pronounced that his complaint was a contractual dispute, which was beyond its competence.
In a letter to Mr. Rudnick, dated 19 April 1995, Mr. Bolland informed my constituent that the PCC saw
The PCC plainly has no clarity of understanding of its role. The membership of the PCC makes it a very suspect body indeed. As the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) once said, there can never really be an independent ombudsman while members of the PCC's jury have a vested interest in "not guilty" verdicts. Rogue editors know that and laugh at it. I absolutely agree.
While the decision was being made by the PCC, Sir David English, whose company owned Euromoney magazine, was present at the meeting. I accept the word of my right hon. Friend Lord Wakeham when he says that Sir David English took no part in the discussion, but the fact is that he was allowed to be there. How can anyone have any confidence in a decision that is made like that?
The commission reconsidered the decision without Sir David English at the meeting, but, surprisingly, reached the same conclusion.
I think that the PCC needs to be judged on the way in which it treats cases involving ordinary people. The case of my constituent is that of an ordinary person who has been wronged by a magazine. That magazine refused to do anything and the PCC was completely unable or unwilling to do anything to help him. It should be judged on how it treats ordinary people, not necessarily on how it treats the reporting of an heir to the throne. Although I do not dismiss that, I remind the House that, even in the case of His Royal Highness Prince William, the judgment of the PCC did not last beyond the first good photo opportunity that presented itself to the press.
Here we have a body that is muddled, toothless, self-interested and, worst of all--
Mr. Clive Soley (Hammersmith):
I have a lot of sympathy with the views of the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) on the Press Complaints Commission, but my comments today are about my disappointment that the Queen's Speech did not contain any significant policy on families and parenting. I shall come back to the proposed family law Bill in a moment.
For the past 16 years, to the best of my knowledge, the Conservative party has often made critical remarks about parents: it has accused them of not being capable of looking after their children when they get into trouble, are truanting or whatever. It also complains about the break-up of the family. Whatever one thinks of the Government's policies--in my view, they have hastened some of the collapses in the family--the reality is that there is no family policy in this country.
The previous Secretary of State for Health took it on herself to be the Government's spokesman for the family. When I took a delegation to see her, from the all-party parenting group, which I chair, we discussed the problem of the lack of co-ordination between Government Departments on family policy. I checked the Government's list of Ministers today, and no Minister is listed as having responsibility for the family. I hope to take another delegation from the all-party group and we shall again discuss that issue. One of the problems is that the Government seem to think that they co-ordinate policy on the family between Departments. Virtually every organisation that works with the family or deals with family matters does not think that the Government co-ordinate policy on the family.
The biggest single point that came up in the hearings that I organised in the House last year was that there was no co-ordination between Government Departments. I shall give a simple example. It is not in the interests of families when people with children are in short-term accommodation, be it bed-and-breakfast or temporary leasing, yet literally hundreds of children are in that position.
If we want to improve family relationships and ensure that families do not break down so easily, one issue that must be addressed is housing. We must address the issue of how children are brought up in temporary accommodation. One of the problems is that families who are just coping can be tipped over into disaster if they suddenly face long-term unemployment, loss of earnings or bad housing. If we really want to help families and promote good parenting, we should--among other things--take on the issues of poverty, poor housing and the prospect of unemployment. Those factors can tip a family that is carrying out what could be described as
"just about good enough" parenting into bad parenting.
The Government thought that they had a nice simple answer to the problem of crime. They believed, rather naively, that increasing punishment would cut crime, but of course it does not work that way. Similarly, the Government believed that there was no connection between crime and unemployment. There is--although it has never been the direct connection suggested by some, and many of us have never argued that such a connection exists. It is not true that an unemployed person is more likely to commit crimes; what is true is that members of a family that was just about coping but has been tipped over into crisis by unemployment, low income and all that
follows from it are more likely to become criminals. The most likely family members are children, which is why no direct link between crime and unemployment shows up in the unemployment figures.
If the Government are not prepared to adopt the economic policies that I consider necessary, they could at least consider the need for parenting and family education in schools. The issue really relates to "social relationship" skills. The Government are making a fundamental mistake; indeed, I would argue that the Conservative party as a whole is making a fundamental mistake--and a very strange one, in a sense. It assumes that marriage equals family and good parenting, but there is no such connection. The fact that a person is married does not necessarily mean that that person's family is a good, happy family, and it certainly does not mean that he or she is a good parent.
Common sense tells us that. A child whose parents are married but are deeply unhappy--perhaps fighting over the father's drinking--will experience bad parenting. The couple next door may not be married, but may get on very well together. I know that every hon. Member would choose to live with that couple.
I emphasise that that does not mean that marriage is unimportant. Marriage is a contract entered into by two people to whom it is important, and if it is important to them it must be important to everyone else. That is why I am happy to support the divorce law Bill, to which I shall return shortly. Marriage is not, however, the answer to the problem of bad parenting and unhappy families.
This is a strange mistake for the Conservative party to make, given that it claims to object to both social engineering and politically correct thinking. From time to time, the left has gone in for politically correct thinking and social engineering, but I must say that the right wing of the political spectrum does it far better: I have never seen such efficient social engineering and politically correct thinking.
Apparently, the policy is now to drive people into marriage. Incidentally, no Government should be involved in such matters: the state should not take a view on the way in which people choose to lead their personal lives. If we are to embark on that dangerous road, however, social engineering suddenly becomes involved. If people can be persuaded to marry and--according to the far right of the Tory party--stay married longer, the problem will automatically be solved. I must tell Conservative Members that that is not the case. It may be politically correct for them to say that people should marry and stay married longer, but that will do far more harm than good if it results in children living in consistently unhappy circumstances, especially when abuse or violence is involved.
If the Government really want to turn the clock back and return to the old days when marriages tended to last, they should change economic policy in a way that would put women back in the home and send men to work. Most of us would object to that, and the Conservative party would not be able to deliver such a change. The woman's role used to be clearly defined; she was locked into that role, and kept subservient to the man. That did not make the children any happier. When families were unhappy and breaking down, everyone--including the children-- was trapped.
Let us stop thinking in terms of political correctness or social engineering, and recognise that people have a right to decide about the relationships in which they want to live. The role of the Government--any Government--is to do everything possible to support good parenting and happy families: if they get that right, we shall make a great deal of progress.
It is time that the Government put over a strong message that they have been reluctant to send in recent years--a message that applies particularly to fathers. They should make it clear that violence towards children in the home--and I do not just mean extreme forms of violence--is counter-productive. Violence begets violence. One of the commonest factors in a child who grows up to be violent is violence towards that child by a parent. Inconsistency and lack of love are two of the most damaging influences on children; if violence is introduced as well, the parents are well on the road to creating a psychopathic personality.
"not significant as to require correction under code"--
the PCC's code.
"The commission does not have a general duty to mediate in disputes between freelance journalists and editors."
Yet in an article published by the UK Press Gazette, the PCC director, Mr. Mark Bolland, said:
"I hope freelancers will be in touch with us if they think their copy has been seriously distorted."
"no special reason for it to adjudicate in this case."
Yet the commission noted that the magazine accepts that the changes made to the copy resulted in some distortion, although it did not accept them as significant as to require correction.
7.36 pm
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