Mr Phillip Whitehead: Would it therefore be acceptable if a child, having opted to take Swahili at a public school, changed to English on arriving there?
Mr Phillip Whitehead: Is there not now a new position? Might not those fears be justified now that the veto has been abolished?
Mr Phillip Whitehead: asked the Secretary of State for Transport what fees have actually been paid to the consultants Travers Morgan Ltd. for their work on the Serpell report.
Mr Phillip Whitehead: As over half the costs of the Serpell inquiry have gone in lucrative fees to the consultants Travers Morgan, would not the right hon. Gentleman consider it unwise to pay any further sums that may be outstanding to the firm, as many Opposition Members and others in the country believe that—inadvertently or not—he breached the guidelines in the code of practice with regard to seeking a...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: Will my hon. Friend tell the House, because it is not clear from the Bill, whether the panel would supersede the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, which is charged with the duty of providing the right of reply and has statutory backing?
Mr Phillip Whitehead: Is not the case made more serious by the fact that the Press Council only discovered the information that it did about the behaviour of the Daily Mail and a number of other newspapers because Mr. Sutcliffe's defence counsel had happened to keep the chits and promissory notes pushed through Mrs. Sutcliffe's door? The newspapers had withheld information about the transactions in many cases.
Mr Phillip Whitehead: Further to the point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May we appeal through you to the Minister to restrain himself until a later stage in the debate?
Mr Phillip Whitehead: Many hon. Members echo the line in the play "Night and Day" by Tom Stoppard, in which one of the characters says to an offensive journalist: I'm with you on the freedom of the press. It is the newspapers I can't stand. The freedom of the press that is enshrined in the serious editorials on the Bill, which I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East (Mr. Allaun) on bringing...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: Of course, there is a right to object to misstatements of fact. I do not believe that that is what the hon. and learned Gentleman wants in British law. I believe that he objects to the Bill in principle. However, if he wants that provision in British law, he should have listened to what his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) said about the...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: I agree with my hon. Friend. The deterrent effects of that would still be extensive.
Mr Phillip Whitehead: My hon. Friend misheard me. I was saying that some people have advanced, as an alternative remedy, the extension of legal aid to defamation cases. My point is that that would be insufficient, especially for the people that he, I and others who support the Bill wish to see helped. I shall now deal with the other route for a remedy that has been suggested by the thoughtful editorials in the...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when dog eats dog it is not always within the sight and hearing of those who followed the first dog? The only newspaper to take up the case that I cited of the black girl in Liverpool and to offer some redress was the Sunday Times—a different paper aimed at a different audience—so there was no redress for the girl in relation to the people who read the...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: The Minister should have quoted the next paragraph of the Royal Commission's report. It said that it recommended that … the Press Council should involve itself actively in obtaining the publication as soon as practicable of counter-statements on behalf of people who have been criticised unfairly on inaccurate information, using the criteria of equal prominence and space, and limiting an...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: Is the Minister aware that 46 per cent. of those who were offered places at the Open University but had to turn them down gave the increase in fees as the reason? Is that not an indictment of the Government's policy on Open University fees?
Mr Phillip Whitehead: The Minister has said that he is reviewing the need for such a body. Has not the work of ACACE in the past five years proved the existence of that need beyond any peradventure? Does he agree that it would have been more appropriate today to have paid tribute to the work of that body in the past five years? Even the Minister's hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway), now...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: I accept that the Second Reading of the Bill is not the appropriate time to make a statement about the remaining Rayner proposals and the Government's attitude to them, but will the Minister accept that it would be inappropriate if the Bill were to go through Committee and pass into law without such a statement being made, as that might materially influence the nature of the amendments that...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that the fact that the entrance charge for Kew gardens, which was for many years a nominal penny, has now increased to 15p is a step in the wrong direction and that there may be further steps in that direction?
Mr Phillip Whitehead: It has been a good and full debate, in which all of the contributions from both sides of the House have materially advanced what we all want to do today. This is a fairly rare occasion, and we must try to improve the Bill that began in another place—perhaps, for once, fairly appropriately given its membership and procedures. It was possible for Lord Avon to come forward more often during...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: The Whips are murmuring "Very good" to encourage the hon. Gentleman, but I have just read out a list of the various dismissals and refusals to reappoint in recent times. The Government have followed a policy of naked patronage in many of their appointments. I do not wish to be partisan as I wish the Bill well, but that is one of our central reservations about the untrammeled exercise of Prime...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: I think that I know the identity of the person to whom my hon. Friend refers. If it is the person who I believe is now actively canvassed as a possible trustee of the Victoria and Albert museum, one would certainly wish to examine closely her record in preserving the national heritage in the stately home into the possession of which she recently came. I say no more than that at this stage....