Angry with Jeremy Hunt's views on abortion? Here's something constructive you can do...

There's been a bit of a drama this morning about the fact that Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, has expressed his views that there should be a 12 week time limit on abortions. The Independent reports that in a Times interview he said:

Everyone looks at the evidence and comes to a view about when that moment is and my own view is that 12 weeks is the right point for it

Adding, rather scarily:

There are some issues that cut across health and morality, a bit like capital punishment does for crime.

Actually, I think capital punishment doesn't cut across anything. It's just plain wrong and should never happen. End of.

I tend to agree with Stephen Tall, who says that although he might disagree with Jeremy Hunt, he should be able to give his view. I'd rather know what I was dealing with and the last thing I'd want is to find out that Parliament had been filled by stealth with pro-lifers.

The drama this morning is probably unnecessary. We know fine what Jeremy Hunt thinks about abortion. His Commons voting record shows us that he voted for a 12 week limit 4 years ago when the matter was last debated. This is not a surprise. It's also not a surprise that new Culture Secretary Maria Miller favours a limit of 20 weeks. The difference between 2008 and now is that these three individuals are in a position of power and have more of a profile to shape the debate.

This is where Jennie is right to be concerned. That's what comes from having an early night last night and a lie in this norning. All the points I would have made have already been said. It does seem to be like a concerted push by Conservative ministers to get this issue on to the agenda - and to try to build a consensus around a cut in the time limit. They don't have that far to go to get a parliamentary majority to cut the limit to 22 weeks and I believe that would be a disaster.

In 2008, the Commons voted against a cut to 22 weeks by 304 votes to 233. A mere 36 votes are required to change hands. That's bloody scary. And let's have a wee look at who voted for 22 weeks. There's a fair old clutch of Lib Dems and Labour in there as well as Conservatives. A good whack of the Cabinet, including the Prime Minister, also voted for that change.

I am as pro-choice on this matter as they come. Let's nail those colours to the mast straight away. I do not believe a woman should be forced to carry on with a pregnancy against her wishes. I do not want to see any decrease in the current time limit, nor do I want Nadine Dorries' silly ideas about enforced counselling finding their way into law. Women know their own minds and their wishes should be paramount in this process.

Very few abortions take place after 13 weeks. Less than 1 in 10, in fact. And nobody would ever want to be in that situation, because it's a hellish thing to go through. Some birth defects and conditions are not discovered until the 20 week scan. I know people who have been in that situation so I understand the shock and horror of it. They need to be given time and space to make an informed decision about what they do. It's not something you want to rush into with the clock ticking.

Nothing new has happened today. Jeremy Hunt's views were never going to have changed and I don't think there's anything he can do without the approval of Parliament to restrict women's access to abortion.

We Liberal Democrats need to win the battle in our own party and try to persuade all our MPs on to the side of keeping the limit as it is.

If, however, pro-life camp is wanting to re-open the 1967 Act, then the pro-choice side should get in there too. A few months ago, the excellent Sophie Bridger used an article on Lib Dem Voice to launch her Your Choice campaign to get rid of the requirement for two doctors to agree before a woman can have her pregnancy terminated. She said:

Abortion is often a difficult decision, and certainly not one you forget making. But this shouldn’t be a debate about the ethics of abortion itself, but who should be given the power to make that decision. The state, the church and doctors all have claims, but as Sally Sheldon pointed out last week in the Guardian, women ‘are far better placed to understand the implications for themselves and their families’. So let’s start treating them like the autonomous individuals they are.

I find this requirement both patronising and paternalistic and I want it to be repealed. No other procedures require two doctors to agree - and often in practice it's meaningless anyway.

Let's just hope that the debate on abortion over here never degenerates into the basket case that exists in the States, where women who miscarry are arrested and charged with murder and those who die rather than have the abortion which would have saved their lives are exalted. Except that second example comes from the Catholic Herald here in the UK.

Those who care about the rights of women to have control over their own bodies must be vigilant.

So, David Cameron does know Sir Alex Allan's phone number then

One of the non jubilee items of the last few days has been the news that Sayeeda Warsi has been referred by David Cameron to the Independent Adviser on the Ministerial Code, Sir Alex Allan. She took her brother in law, with whom she has business interests, on a government trip to Pakistan. Despite her apology, it's absolutely right that this should be investigated.

So now we know that Cameron's failure to refer Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt to Allan is not just because he's lost his phone number. The Prime Minister was very quick to turn Sayeeda Warsi over, so why will he not do the same for Hunt, whose clear bias in favour of the News Corp bid for BSkyB, as shown in a series of contacts with the Murdochs and others, casts doubt on his adherence to the Code.

For Cameron to be the sole arbiter on this does not seem to me to be right. He's hardly an unbiased bystander. In fact, he has a clear interest in Hunt remaining in office, because the next stop after Hunt is Cameron himself.

I might be doing the man a disservice, but being seen to do the right thing is really important. Particularly when the foreword to the Ministerial Code says:

In everything we do – the policies we develop and how we implement them, the speeches we give, the meetings we hold – we must remember that we are not masters but servants. Though the British people have been disappointed in their politicians, they still expect the highest standards of conduct. We must not let themdown.

We must be different in how we think and how we behave. We must be different from what has gone before us. Careful with public money. Transparent about what we do and how we do it. Determined to act in the national interest, above improper influence. Mindful of our duty. Above all, grateful for our chance to change our country.

And who wrote that? One David Cameron.

It makes you wonder whether cases where impropriety is suspected should automatically be referred to the Independent Adviser. There would have to be some evidence, or there would be something on the internet every day that would merit investigation. It certainly should not be the call of the Prime Minister.You can't leave it up to the Opposition either or you could end up with a farcical, politically motivated situation like you had with Clinton in the 1990s but the current situation is not satisfactory at all.

I'm glad that our lot have not been anywhere near defending Hunt. In fact some of them have been actively calling for an investigation. It's the right and proper thing to do and the longer this lingers, the worse it's going to get.

Back from holiday. Have I missed anything............?

So, I'm back from my week's break in the highlands refreshed and  relaxed. It's normally quite quiet this time of year so I expect nothing much to have happened.  Just off out to buy a News of the World to check out what's been going on in the world.

Ok, ok, I may have had slow to rubbish to non existent internet access for the last week, but I haven't had my head completely in the sand. I have been itching to write about the scandals which have led to the closure of the News of the World newspaper which publishes its final edition today. 

I watched the nightly news bulletins last week horrified at every passing revelation. People should feel confident that messages left on their voicemail are to be heard only by them. In very rare cases, sanctioned by a judge, the State may have the right to intercept or listen to stuff, but the circumstances in which that power is used must be very limited, exceptional and regulated within an inch of its life. This is not a practice which should ever be carried out in the name of journalism, to give a newspaper competitive advantage in a crowded marketplace. What's become clear over the last few years is that there was a time early in this century when the News of the World were using agents to hack people's voicemails.  Quality journalism, as carried out by most members of that profession, is rooted in ethical behaviour. To tarnish every reporter, even every tabloid reporter, as a result of what we've seen over the past week would be wrong. Those who were involved in such activity were not journalists. They were criminals, pure and simple.

Within the truly sickening revelations this week that those criminals had hacked into the voicemails of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and the families of those murdered in terrorist attacks or service personnel killed in Afghanistan lay another unpalatable insult. The evidence on which they were based is not brand new. A proper investigation in early 2007 when the then NOTW royal correspondent Clive Goodman was jailed should have elicited most of these facts and the people responsible should then have been identified and brought to justice. We should not have had to wait another 4 years to for this information to be dragged to light.

This week has shone a very strong light into the murky world of inter-relationships between police, press and politician. There are suggestions of payments to the police for information, authorised at senior levels. We all know that virtually every senior Labour and Conservative politician over the past couple of decades  has worshipped at the altar of News International, desperate for the electoral endorsement of its powerful tabloids.

Way back in the eighties, every self respecting Labour politician took to the picket lines at Wapping, urging us all to boycott the Murdoch publications. When Tony Blair took over, he decided on a different strategy - that of, to put it bluntly, what Carville and Begala would call "kissing ass". He went after, and won, the endorsement of the Murdoch Empire in 1997 and held it until the General Election last year. 

At News International Chief Executive Rebekah Brooks' wedding in 2009 saw Labour and Tory frontbenchers mingle with the Murdoch family and other Murdoch high fliers.  David Cameron even employed Andy Coulson after his resignation as editor of the NOTW, a decision which always highlighted flawed judgement to me. His subsequent resignation as Downing Street Director of Communications earlier this year was almost inevitable.

It's worth pointing out that the Murdoch publications and broadcasts rarely if ever have a good word to say about Liberal Democrats. But then you've never seen Liberal Democrats chase after crumbs from their tables. You get an idea of why from Vince Cable's unguarded comments to the undercover Telegraph journalists last Christmas.  At around the same time, David Cameron was socialising with Rebekah Brooks over Christmas and brushing off criticism about it. Was it really right for a serving PM to be seen to be so close to somebody who not only represented a company involved in a media takeover, but about which there were continuing suspicions relating to the phone hacking practices when she was editor of the NOTW?  I don't think so.

And for all Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman telling whoever will listen that they want to see a robust enquiry - as Paul at Liberal Burblings has pointed out often to a ridiculous degree, they need to be accountable for the little they did in Government to ensure that the phone hacking affair was properly investigated.

I think it's clear that Vince Cable would have referred the takeover of B Sky B to the Competition Commission. To me that was the right course of action on principle. To have one company with so much media power across broadcast and print media does raise questions and they should be thoroughly investigated.  He's no longer in charge of the case, because of his comments. Jeremy Hunt, who is in the driving seat and who was known for a much more Murdoch friendly attitude, should now put a stop to the deal that he has looked set to approve.

The fact that Rebekah Brooks remains on the News International payroll after all that's gone on is the chief, but far from the only, sign that even after all that's happened this week, Murdoch continues to stick two fingers up to the British people. He's powerful and he knows it. There's no real humility from him or his son James. How on earth can they have confidence in someone who supposedly had no clue about what was going on at her own paper? I'd certainly think twice about promoting someone like that.  Appointing her to lead an internal investigation in to things she supposedly knew nothing about was a sign of contemptuous attitude to us all. Does Murdoch really think we're stupid?

Even if it transpires that Brooks and Andy Coulson have no legal case to answer, surely the climate they presided over, one in which intense pressure was put on staff to deliver that competitive edge delivered by means of an agressive and abrasive management style, was a contributing factor in what transpired. Yes, people are accountable for their own personal actions, but the environment in which they work, the stress which they suffer as a result of toxic management style has to have some relevance.

My initial reaction when I heard about the closure of the News of the World on Thursday was summed up in this tweet: 

"Just checking the news headlines - I see they've got the cosmetics out at News International & Mrs Brooks appears to still have a job."

You can't just airbrush years of routine criminal behaviour by shutting down the paper and leaving the same people pulling the strings in the organisation. The people with least power as usual suffer most by the loss of their jobs - although, it may well be that they'll be absorbed into a new Murdoch tabloid venture, a Sunday Sun, perhaps?

In terms of political leadership on this, I'm glad to see that traditional liberal instincts of transparency and fairness have led to Nick Clegg pushing within the Coalition for a meaningful public enquiry into this. Left to David Cameron alone, the scrutiny would have been much weaker. This isn't about political advantage - but I do think it is important that people know that all the way through this, my party has kept Murdoch and his companies at an appropriate length and has behaved entirely properly.

In Scotland, our leader Willie Rennie has got his wooden spoon out and brought Alex Salmond into the mix - questioning whether the First Minister, who enjoyed the endorsement of the Murdoch stable in Scotland, had ever raised phone hacking with them. Willie said:

'Alex Salmond is right to say that the full weight of the law must be used to prosecute those responsible for  these dreadful events.

'But Alex Salmond must also come clean about the content of his discussions with News International before he secured the support of the Sun and News of World for the elections in May.

'People will want to know if he raised any concerns about phone hacking when he was negotiating their support.

'Was it a case of no questions asked please just support me? Was he prepared to sacrifice anything to get the endorsement?'

Severin Carrell of the Guardian took a look back in April at the potential reasons for the Murdoch stable's about face on Salmond and the SNP, detailing reports of a closer relationship between the First Minister and News International:

Salmond's advisers deny that the first minister and Murdoch have recently met, but do not deny that conversations have taken place at a senior level between Salmond and senior NI officers. NI executives in Scotland have seen Salmond in private, and were apparently handed internal SNP polling results – documents rarely offered to the media.

I haven't looked very far into this, but I can't find any evidence that Salmond has been particularly bothered by the phone hacking issue prior to this week - when he predictably used the scandal to pick a fight with Westminster on press regulation. Opportunism, much?

For me the best thing that could come out of this scandal is that ordinary people wake up to themselves and take more of an interest in the inter-relationships between the people who  hold power in this country, big business, media and politicians and start to realise the dangerous world we're slipping into. We need to question things more, and not just accept what we're told by major corporations and powerful leaders. And we need to understand that even if the phone being hacked belongs to some non entity of a celebrity as an attempt to find out who they may or may not be sleeping with, it matters. We can take a stand on the ethics of our journalists - by refusing to buy what they produce.  At the heart of this story is a very human element. People at the worst time of their lives having their privacy violated, having some disreputable character listening in to try to find a unique angle on their grief to profit from.

A free press is an essential part of our democracy - but we as citizens have to play our part in keeping them honest and ethical too.  The same with everyone else who holds power.  There's talk of politicians having to engage with or connect with people - and that's important. But it's also vital that people properly scrutinise the  sort of government, the sort of press, the sort of businesses available to them - and use the power they have to good effect to improve quality and standards within them.

If it's Cable v Murdoch, I'm on Vince's side in the politician being honest shocker

To be fair, there aren't very many people I'd back if they were in a war against Vince Cable. This is the guy who gave this party economic credibility. His message wasn't so different to our long standing principles of delivering a sustainable, green economy, but he was able to articulate a credible, professional response to the economic turmoil of the credit crunch, that was absolutely right for its time. When he was acting leader, I respected his decision not to attend any events surrounding the state visit of the Saudi King on human rights grounds. He is a good man. End of.

I wrote earlier of my annoyance at the way he was duped by two Telegraph reporters posing as constituents who then reported his comments on life in the coalition told to them in confidence to the world.

This afternoon, the plot thickened when Robert Peston, the voice of economic doom at the BBC, announced that the bit the Torygraph hadn't published had been leaked to him. This involved Vince Cable making some rather inflammatory comments about Rupert Murdoch and his various companies:

"I am picking my fights, some of which you may have seen, some of which you may haven't seen.

"And I don't know if you have been following what has been happening with the Murdoch press, where I have declared war on Mr Murdoch and I think we are going to win."

This, apparently is scandalous because Vince, in his role as Business Secretary had responsibility for the decision on whether to allow Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation to take over BSkyB giving the same company unprecedented control over print and broadcast media. Vince had already referred this to OFCOM. Now, to me, that was a total no-brainer. Any Minister with a shred of integrity was going to do that - and refer the whole thing to the Competition Commission as well regardless of what OFCOM said. Murdoch's Fox News in the US presents not so much news, but Tea Party/Republican/big business propaganda from morning until night. Sky News here has shown signs of going the same way. Anyone remember when they were the only news outlet to think Cameron had won the first debate when every single other one had Nick in the lead.


The big shock in all of this is that so few of us are angry about the potential dangers of any one rich, powerful organisation controlling a big chunk of the media. In my view, the very act of wanting to have that sort of domination should disallow you. Such an organisation will only print what they believe in. We are spoiled by having the BBC as a genuine public service impartial broadcaster. It's maybe a bit narrow minded and simplistic about our politics, but it's a million miles away from the iniquities of Fox News. 


A tweet which seemed to sum it up rather perfectly came from Toby Hadoke, about whom, you may remember, I raved when I saw him twice in a week at  the Edinburgh Festival this Summer. He said:

BBC, being impartial (as it is obliged to be) breaks story advantageous to Murdoch (a threat to the BBC). Would he do the same? I think not.

There was a time this afternoon when I was worried that the Government was going to lose this good man but thankfully, he was allowed to stay. Unfortunately, and here's the rub, he loses all power over broadcasting decisions to Tory Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt. It'll be interesting to see if the Today programme has managed to get his name right, at least. Sad thing is, though, he's generally tended to be fairly pro the sort of deregulation that Murdoch wants. And speaking after he took office, he took Sky's side against the BBC.  This is not a good thing.


What was absolutely incredible, though, was the way the Labour Party queued up to prostrate themselves to present Murdoch's case. In the olden days, when the Party had principles of sorts, they were all demonstrating against them and boycotting his publications. One might be forgiven for drawing the conclusion that they were trying to win back the support of the Murdoch tabloids that they lost last year.


The irony is that the Liberal Democrats never either wanted, or had any chance of getting the favour of the Murdoch press and the removal of those powers from Cable takes a minister, who is genuinely not beholden to Murdoch's quest for domination, out of the frame.


Sure, Vince should have toned it down a bit. His remarks had an odour of indiscreet pomposity, but they were also honest. There's little chance of the media giving him an easy ride, but perhaps the public will see that he was acting in their interest and was on their side. He's also on the side of ordinary people and businesses when he takes on the banks - and that's not the instinctive position of the Tories.  That is the reason he is an asset to this Government and needs to stay there.