Wanted: P45 for Mrs Brooks

I spent probably too much of yesterday following PMQs, David Cameron's statement on the phone hacking enquiry and the Hacked Off Campaign's press conference outside 10 Downing Street.

By the end of the day, we had been assured of a wide ranging judge led enquiry, and News International had withdrawn their bid for BSkyB. However, what I can't understand is why Rebekah Brooks still has a job. She was in a very powerful position at a time when, as we know now, heartless, dishonest, unethical things were not just happening but hard wired into the organisational culture. And she claims to have been completely ignorant of it.

Scotland's transport minister Stewart Stevenson resigned last year for shortcomings in the response to particularly severe weather. At the time I felt a bit sorry for him, to be honest and I certainly didn't think he should have to go. Compare and contrast with Mrs Brooks not just clinging on, but, nauseatingly, being feted by the Murdochs.  I asked on Twitter why she hadn't been handed her P45 and Olly Grender said that she's being kept in place as padding:
 because she is the buffer zone, once she goes the next in the firing line is James Murdoch
Her continued presence at News International is nothing more than a two fingered salute to all those who had their privacy invaded.

And on to the events of the rest of the day in a bit more detail.....................

PMQs was a strange affair. Liberal Democrat MP Duncan Hames kicked off proceedings with a well phrased question:

Secretly deleting voicemails left for a missing teenager, buying the silence of public figures who would incriminate your business, and publishing the confidential medical details of a disabled child who just happens to have a famous father: I ask the Prime Minister—are any of these the actions of a fit and proper person?

 Cameron's answer was not quite as high quality - but Duncan received praise on Twitter from Politics Home's Paul Waugh who described him as "one to watch."

There then followed an awkwardly choreographed series of exchanges between David Cameron and Ed Miliband in which they tried to outdo each other condemnation of News International, while both knowing fine they and most of their front benches, unlike the Liberal Democrats, had until very recently worshipped at their altar.

Ed Miliband had a good go at Cameron on Andy Coulson. Now, Cameron has absolutely no defence on his decision to hire him, and I think he knows it. He was well and truly warned, but pressed on regardless. Trouble with Miliband's line is that he's hired Tom Baldwin, a former Times journalist about whom questions are being raised.

Despite the new found political consensus on the way forward, it was clear that Tory and Labour MPs were more interested in knocking lumps out of each other than actually discussing the issues.

Liberal Democrat MPs Malcolm Bruce and David Ward brought some sensible questions into the febrile atmosphere - Malcolm on sign language trials and David on ridiculously high car insurance premiums for young people.

I was, however, gutted that nobody asked about the implications of the demise of the Immigration Advisory Service that I wrote about the other day.

After PMQs, Cameron made his statement on the enquiry and took some much more sensible questions from all sides of the House. I wish people could behave like this during the weekly pantomime. I do worry that John Bercow is going to spontaneously combust with rage as he tries to get people to behave themselves.

Simon Hughes asked:

I thank the Prime Minister for his decisive announcement and for the work that he and the Deputy Prime Minister have done to ensure that the concerns that my colleagues have been expressing for 17 years, and the calls for an inquiry that we have been making for two years, have at last been accepted.

Will the inquiry look into the Information Commissioner’s reports of 2006, and why his confirmation that 31 media titles and 305 journalists were involved in illegal activities in relation to personal information were not the subject of implementation of recommendations by the Labour party in government, whose leadership continued, even as late as last December, to accuse my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary of being too critical of Murdoch?

Credit where it's due, Cameron took this one on the chin, saying his opposition was blame too.

 To be fair to my right hon. Friend, the issue of the Information Commissioner’s reports—particularly the two reports he mentions—really is a rebuke not just to the previous Government but to the then Opposition. We too should have made more of those reports, which included some very important detail about what was going wrong in data handling, data theft and the rest of it. We must ensure that the inquiry asks the question, “Why were they ignored, and what are we going to do about it now?”

I was particularly pleased to see Jo Swinson tackle the issue of publication of private details about children, even if it was legal to do so. I had earlier been horrified to see the front page of yesterday's Sun, which ripped Gordon Brown to shreds, accusing him of smearing them. I can only imagine how horrendous it must have been for Sarah and Gordon Brown to get a call from Rebekah Brooks saying she knew that Fraser had Cystic Fibrosis and they were going to publish.We already know that ethics, compassion and decency were in short supply, but how cruel is it to publish details when parents are trying to come to terms with a diagnosis and its implication? Jo asked:

 Even if private medical details are obtained without breaking the law, it does not mean that it is right to publish them, especially when they relate to a child and no possible public interest case can be made. Will the Prime Minister confirm that the inquiry will consider and recommend what meaningful sanctions can be imposed in cases where media outlets might not have acted against the law but have certainly acted against common standards of decency and ethics?

Cameron showed a fair bit of understanding in his answer on that point:

we must still have people at the top of newspapers and media organisations who take responsibility and recognise that it is not right to reveal that someone is pregnant, for instance, when there is no certainty that they will keep that baby. 

 Don Foster raised the issue of whether News International were a "fit and proper person" to hold its current 39% of BSkyB, Tessa Munt wanted an assurance that police officers wouldn't receive taxpayer funded pensions if they were found to be corrupt and Julian Huppert asked about whether Cameron would take Hacked Off's concerns on board.

As if that wasn't excitement enough, we then had the announcement that News Corp was abandoning its attempt to buy BSkyB. Ed Miliband was quick to hail this as a victory for the British people. I felt that was hopelessly naive. All the Murdochs care about is saving their own financial skin. I suspect they took the decision because they wanted to find the quickest way of accessing BSkyB's profits - which will involve getting rid of their newspapers.

And just as I was about to pick myself up off the sofa, former Liberal Democrat MP Dr Evan Harris, now with the Hacked Off Campaign, appeared outside Downing Street with former mayoral candidate and hacking victim Brian Paddick and the Dowler family to hold a press conference. I was particularly touched to later read our Alistair Carmichael's Facebook status:

One of the great things about my job is the people I get to meet. From The Dalai Lama to Dolly Parton I have met some truly remarkable people. Today was one of the best in this regard when I looked after the family of Milly Dowler for a short time. I have never met such strong, graceful and inspiring people.I shall never forget them.

I came over a bit tearful as Evan Harris paid tribute to the Dowlers' efforts, saying that they had been instrumental in getting the terms of reference of the enquiry widened. Losing a child is bad enough but Mrs Dowler's comments the other day that the deletion of the voicemail messages gave her hope just shows how damaging, cruel and distressing the News of the World's actions were.

It was a dramatic day - but is only the start of a process which will hopefully see the inter-relationships between Britain's powerful vested interests properly tackled. This will be the work of years - and it's really important that public anger does not disperse and keeps driving through real, meaningful and lasting change.

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.