Tag: Harriet Harman

Below is the text of the speech made by Harriet Harman, the Shadow Culture, Media and Sports Secretary, to the Oxford Media Convention on 23rd January 2013.

This time last year when we met:

Lord Justice Leveson was conducting his Inquiry.

Mark Thompson was Director-General of the BBC.

Jimmy Savile was a national treasure.

Jeremy Hunt was Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, and;

We were eagerly discussing what might be in the Communications Bill.

Today,

We’ve got the landmark Leveson Report.

Mark Thompson is no longer the Director-General of the BBC – and nor is the man who replaced him.

Jimmy Savile is now a national monster.

Following my calls for the sacking of Jeremy Hunt he’s been promoted – Maria Miller is now our Secretary of State.

And it looks as if the Communications Bill is never going to materialise.

What hasn’t changed

But some things haven’t changed.

We still need to tackle the longstanding problems of wrongdoing in the press.

We still need to support the BBC, one of our most important national institutions.

We still need a strong DCMS. The department must not be weakened: if anything, its voice needs to be even stronger at the Cabinet table.

Leveson: the victims

The families who suffered press intrusion and gross violations of their privacy are still pressing for the changes that will protect people in the future from what happened to them.

The harassment, the character assassinations – laid bare before the Leveson Inquiry. These were not mere technical breaches of the rules, victimless crimes.

Just think for a moment about what those victims have been through.

Can you imagine anything worse than your three year-old daughter going missing – you pour your heart out into your diary as you struggle to live your life day to day – and then the most intimate contents of that diary are spread over a national newspaper?

Can you imagine anything worse than to be at your daughter’s bedside as she fights for her life and struggles to cope with paralysis – only to have newspapers reveal she was pregnant?

Can you imagine anything worse than fearing your missing teenage daughter has been murdered – your hopes rise that she might still be alive. But she wasn’t. And you then discover that the News of the World was hacking her voicemail?

These victims have gone through and are still going through unimaginable suffering. But despite that, they were prepared to relive those experiences in the full glare of publicity at the Leveson Inquiry, because they want change.

We often talk of walking a mile in someone’s shoes; none of us would want to walk even one step in theirs.

They remind us why the status quo, unsatisfactory for decades, can no longer be an option.

They want the implementation of the Leveson Report – and so do we.

We must act on Leveson’s proposals for substantial and lasting change.

Importance of a free press

Another thing that hasn’t changed is our strong belief in, and commitment to, freedom of speech and a free press.

Leveson’s proposals are not a threat to the press. They strengthen, not weaken, our press.

For the press can only be strong if it is clean.

How can the press hold to account those who abuse power if they are abusing their own?

How can they have the legitimacy and moral authority, necessary for the press in a free democracy, if they are breaking their own rules and breaking the law?

Leveson’s proposals

Lord Justice Leveson proposes a framework which provides for the continuation of self-regulation by the press, but – and this is the key difference – with a legal guarantee that that self-regulation will be effective, independent and continue to meet high standards.

The role of the law – the legal underpinning – would be limited to setting up a body whose task would be to recognise the self-regulatory system and to check it once every 3 years.

Leveson said this was essential to ensure that, despite all the protestations of change and good intentions, the press did not once again slip back into their old ways – as they have always done after all the other inquiries and reports.

Labour’s support

We strongly support that.

It cannot be just the good faith of the press that ensures the new system remains independent and effective. There was good faith after previous Royal Commissions and after the Calcutt Reports, but they have always slipped back.

The new system must be guaranteed by law.

Arguments in favour of statute

The press have strongly opposed the key recommendation that recognition should be underpinned by law – that statute should set up the recognition body. They say it would cross the Rubicon and pose a fundamental threat to our democracy.

Let me address each of their arguments in turn.

The first is that any statute affecting the press automatically ends a free press. But there are already statutes affecting the press.

The press themselves asked to be included in section 12 of the Human Rights Act 1998.

The press themselves asked for a Defamation Act.

The first argument—that any law mentioning the press undermines freedom—therefore does not and cannot hold.

Secondly, the press argues that the statute Leveson proposes would be the regulation of the press by a ministerially appointed quango. But this is not what Leveson recommends. It does not set up the self-regulatory system. It would be limited to guaranteeing the system of self-regulation. No newspaper would be required by law to join. It would remain voluntary to join, on the basis of incentives.

In that, what it proposes is similar to the Irish system, which has been in place since 2009. That covers all the newspapers operating in Ireland, which volunteer to be part of the Irish Press Council, which includes the Irish editions of the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Daily Star, The Sun, The Sunday Times, The Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Mirror.

Why have those newspapers signed up to the Irish system? Why, if as they say, any press law would end freedom of speech, have British editors not chained themselves to the house of the Taoiseach? Why, if they are so worried that any press law crosses the Rubicon, has our Government not summoned the Irish ambassador for a dressing down?

If the Irish system really posed a threat to the freedom of the press, where were the protests in Ireland, a country known for its passionate commitment to human rights?

Thirdly, there is the argument about a press law being the thin end of the wedge, the start of a slippery slope, the beginning of our descent into Zimbabwe.

A central feature of our democracy is that it is the responsibility of elected representatives to make and change laws, and we can do that at any time.

If that is a slippery slope, so is the very existence of Parliament. The only way to address that concern is to abolish Parliament, and we have yet to hear anyone proposing that.

Fourthly, there is the argument that the legislation proposed would inevitably be complicated and cumbersome. But that is simply not the case. We have drafted and published a short bill. Hacked Off have published a short bill. The Government has drawn up two draft bills.

All of these show that a Bill can be drafted in a way to give effect to what Lord Justice Leveson recommended.

Finally, there is the civil liberties argument. I do not believe that Lord Justice Leveson’s central recommendations, for an independent system of press self-regulation guaranteed by law, would undermine freedom of speech.

This is not about politicians determining what journalists do or do not write. The freedom of the press is essential.

But so is that other freedom: the freedom of a private citizen to go about their business without harassment, intrusion or the gross invasion of their grief and trauma. Those two freedoms are not incompatible.

Royal Charter

Since the publication of the Leveson Report, we have been engaged in cross party talks with the Tories and the Lib Dems.

And into those talks Oliver Letwin has brought the proposal that the legal underpinning of the recognition body should be provided not by a single statute, as suggested by Leveson and as agreed by us, but through a combination of a Royal Charter and accompanying statutory provisions.

The most straightforward way of implementing Leveson is to have a single statute.

While the statutory route is straightforward the Royal Charter route is anything but. It is untried and untested and we are unpersuaded that it can do the job that Leveson proposes.

Government has never before sought to legislate through a combination of statute and Royal Charter rather than through a bill in Parliament.

It is as yet unclear how the body established by Charter could be funded.

It would clearly need statute to stop ministers on some future occasion toughening or weakening its provisions by edict of the Privy Council.

There would need to be statute to provide for the exemplary damages regime which would incentivise newspapers to join the self-regulator.

Perhaps the most fundamental concern is whether the recognition body established by Royal Charter would survive the inevitable legal challenge.

As we entered the cross party talks we set the government a deadline of the end of January to publish Leveson-compliant measures.

While the Government has shared their Royal Charter and accompanying clauses with us in the talks, and with the newspaper industry, most MPs, peers, lawyers and others with an interest have yet to see them.

It is now time for the Government to have the courage of its convictions. We have – and have drafted and published our bill.

I now challenge the Government to publish their Royal Charter and accompanying draft clauses by the end of this month, and let them be subjected to public scrutiny.

And while the talks have been useful and will continue, the elephant in the room – statute alone or statute and charter – must be discussed openly and agreed on by parliament.

The public must be able to scrutinise the proposals.

And Parliament – to whom Lord Justice Leveson trusted a key role in setting up the new system – must be able to decide.

That’s why we will ensure that this will come back to Parliament – with, if necessary, a debate and vote at on one of our Opposition Days in February.

Ownership

We all know that it wasn’t just the impunity from the lack of a proper press complaints system that led to phone-hacking and media intrusion.

It was a sense of invincibility arising from the power of the concentration of media ownership.

Monopoly ownership inhibits a diversity of views, and competition. It is bad for our democracy and bad for the consumer.

Above all, it places too much power in the hands of one man.

Rupert Murdoch owns too many newspapers. 34 per cent of national circulation – two of our biggest daily papers, and two of our biggest Sunday papers – is too much.

Despite the financial pressures facing newspapers and people now getting their news online, newspapers are still powerful, still wield significant political influence, and still set the news agenda.

The failed News Corp bid for the whole of BSkyB focused attention on cross-media monopoly. But owning too much within one sector – owning too many newspapers, for example – is also a problem.

The Leveson Report made recommendations on media ownership and plurality. And it is a key issue which we must address.

Work needs to be done. Much important work has already been done. We propose that the Government returns to previous work and builds on it.

A notable example of that is the Joint Committee of Both Houses, chaired by Lord Puttnam, which scrutinised the Communications Bill in 2002. That report made a number of recommendations about the role of Ofcom, about ensuring plurality was a consideration in mergers, and about the level of ownership that should be permitted.

Their expertise must be put to work on the Leveson recommendations on ownership.

BBC

The future of the BBC remains of critical importance.

It is impossible to overstate its importance to us at home, and abroad.

It is an essential part of our national life and our media landscape.

It is a source of national pride, and one of our most trusted and valued institutions, with its unparalleled breadth, depth, reach, and appeal, from Saturday night entertainment to sport, from world-class drama to top-drawer comedy, and of course its news.

We all think we raise our own children, but it’s in partnership with Auntie.

And that’s why the sexual crimes committed by Jimmy Savile were so shocking.

It was so horrifying above all because of what Savile’s victims had suffered and what they still suffer.

But also it was so shocking because the public trusts and values the BBC so much.

No doubt the enemies of the BBC will take this as an opportunity to pounce. Question its funding. Challenge its independence.

We must protect the BBC. This is a time for cool heads and for the BBC to take the steps to restore confidence.

Tony Hall was an excellent choice as the new Director-General, bringing experience from working within the BBC but also from outside it.

He is the right person to bring stability to the BBC, and I hope that he will lead the change mapped out by George Entwistle in his short stint as Director-General, about there being too many executives. Too many at the top and at the expense of a focus on content and output.

I also hope he will address the executive pay situation at the BBC.

Working for the BBC is prestigious, professionally satisfying and it is public service.

When you work for the BBC – paid for by the licence fee payer – you are making a choice not to work in the private sector and to get the huge benefits of working at the BBC.

Tony Hall will have to address the high pay for executives, and especially how much they are paid compared to front line producers.

As the Public Accounts Committee has shown, there must be transparency about BBC pay and pay offs. And if the public object – which they do – then the current system is simply not sustainable.

Communications Bill

Finally, the Communications Bill. Or rather, the lack of the Communications Bill.

We haven’t had a Bill – or even a White Paper – or even a Green Paper – since we met last year.

Just a series of roundtables.

This leaves individuals and our creative industries in a state of uncertainty.

And it is bad news for swathes of our country – particularly rural areas – who still don’t have access to decent speed broadband.

Labour made a pledge – which all judged to be reasonable and achievable – that everyone would have access to 2 megabits per second broadband by the end of 2012.

The Government abandoned that target and instead promised to deliver superfast broadband to 90 per cent of premises by the end of 2015.

But having abandoned our target, the Government looks set to fail to achieve their own.

Too many people across the country are losing out, particularly rural communities.

2.6 million households, 10 per cent of UK broadband connections, still don’t receive basic 2 Megabits per second broadband.

Had Labour been in power almost all of those 2.6 million households would have had access to basic broadband.

Rural areas are almost 50 per cent less likely to receive broadband of at least 2 Megabits per second.

In Ceredigion in Wales, a quarter of premises have no fixed line broadband.

In Teesdale, some farmers have to make a fifty minute round trip to an internet centre to file their online cattle returns.

Conclusion

The Culture, Media and Sport brief is a wide-ranging one.

But we need to keep in mind the common themes.

The need to support innovation and nurture creativity.

The need to make sure that opportunities are available to everyone.

The need to protect people from abuse of power and to hold vested interests to account.

The need to build One Nation, where everyone has a stake, whether that’s giving everyone the opportunity to work in the creative industries or making sure everyone has broadband.

Where prosperity is shared fairly, and the powerful – like Murdoch – are held to account.

Where we protect the institutions – like the BBC – that bind us together as One Nation.

Below is the text of the speech made by Harriet Harman, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and the Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, to the TUC Conference on 17th March 2012.

Good morning. And I’m very happy to be here this morning, with so many of you who have long worked in the press and broadcasting, campaigned for press freedom, against media monopoly and for higher press standards. Particularly the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, the National Union of Journalists and here at the TUC.

This is an important moment and an opportunity for long overdue change. And your insight into what needs to change and your pressure for that change is vital.

You have the concerns of those who care about the public interest and you have the knowledge that comes with working in the media.

The profession of journalism is very much in the dock because o f phone hacking and the evidence that has come before the Leveson Inquiry. But it is important that we all remember that good journalism is vital for our democracy and despite the drama round phone hacking most journalists are highly professional doing vital work and often in dangerous conditions to get to the truth. The death of Marie Colvin reminded everyone that without fearless journalists the truth of suffering and oppression will remain hidden from view.

I believe that most journalists – like most politicians – go into the profession to do good and serve the public interest.

So, although journalism feels under attack at present we must not lose sight of the huge professional commitment in journalism and the amazing work that is done.

But I know that you also have concerns about employment and trade unionism in the media.

Journalists have always worked under pressure – the pressure of deadlines, the pressure of being the first to the story – or the sc oop… But now, that pressure is exacerbated by people not buying newspapers and instead, getting their news online which creates a very difficult commercial climate.

Employment in the media – particularly in newspapers – has become much harder over the last few years. Jobs have been lost. In just one week this year, 75 jobs went at Trinity Mirror’s national papers, and 30 jobs went at the Telegraph.

The competition for market share in a shrinking market has created pressure on journalistic professional standards – some feel under pressure to cut corners to get a story. And the right to challenge that is undermined by job insecurity. There is a fear that, if you object, then you will be the first out the door and into a world where it’s hard to get another job.

But the fact that newspapers are under pressure does not justify any undermining of employment rights.

And I want to pay tribute to Michelle Stanistreet and the NUJ for standing up for journalists.

And the truth is that if journalists, with the backing of the NUJ, had more power to protect their professional integrity, some of the worst problems that have now come to light may have been avoided.

So trade unionism is good for the individual in the media and is good for press standards.

We support a free press as a basic human right. And there’s another human right which we support which is freedom of association – trade unionism. And though it does not seem to have been documented, we all have the sense that when it comes to news reporting of trade unions, the press is not fair. Depiction of trade unions in the press rarely highlights the life changing work of local representatives – protecting their members from discrimination and unfairness. When did you last see reports of trade unions working patiently on behalf of their members with the management to secure a sustainable future for the business? Instead, the depiction is of extremism and perversity.

Women’s groups have made a submission about stereotyped treatment of women by the press.

It’s not right for some sections of the press to abuse their right to free speech in a way that undermines another fundamental right – freedom of association.

I think it would enhance Lord Justice Leveson’s work if evidence on that was presented to him.

This conference has been called at an historic time – with the media under scrutiny like never before.

The central issue is that we all want a free press which is able to report without fear or favour, but we have all been revolted at the unfairness and corruption revealed by Leveson. And we all want change. Business as usual is not an option.

I’ve thought long and hard about how we ended up in this position and I think there are two deep-rooted problems which led us into this mess and which we must confront: the concentration of media power and the lack of redress for press complaints.

Because of the evidence at the Leveson inquiry – and the harrowing testimony of the victims such as the Dowlers – most of the discussion about change has focused on press complaints.

But the wrongdoing in the Murdoch empire was due not only to the absence of any proper complaints system which led to a sense of impunity. But also from too great a concentration of power which led to a sense of invincibility. And it is this combination of impunity and invincibility which lies at the heart of the problem and must be addressed

Let me start with that concentration of media ownership.

The malpractice and illegality exposed by the Leveson inquiry was never just “one rogue reporter” or a few bent policemen. It is a symptom of an underlying structural problem.

Murdoch owns too many newspapers. 37% of national circulation – owning two of our most influential dailies and two of our most influential Sunday papers, was too much. And had it not been for the hacking scandal and Murdoch dropping his bid, the Government would have waived through his bid for the whole of BSkyB. As well as the DCMS select committee, both Ofcom and Leveson are looking at ownership, and it is clear that there needs to be change.

We must make sure that opportunity is not wasted.

There needs to be agreement on:

– a trigger for intervention – action cannot be confined just to an event such as a takeover

– the maximum percentage of ownership permitted

– a methodology for how ownership is measured

– the mechanisms for enforcing – for example, divesting

– and a strong Ofcom, which must be powerful in practice as well as on paper.

And the issue is not just ownership across newspapers, broadcasting and other media but also how we address monopolistic ownership within those sectors.

Of course substantive change will need to be informed by the outcome of the Leveson Inquiry and the Ofcom review. But there are thing s the government can and should do now to strengthen the law which was clearly revealed as inadequate by the Murdoch/BskyB bid.

Over the course of that bid, it became clear that it was not only political unwillingness of the government to act, but legal inhibitions on action too.

We are proposing that the law be changed so that in cross media cases like this…

– The person making the application must prove to Ofcom that they are a “fit and proper person” at the start of the process – before the applicant notifies the European Commission that they intend to buy another company.

– That the “fit and proper person” test should be broadened to include not just criminal convictions but also any previous history of impropriety, failure in good governance, or investigation or prosecution for tax fraud.

– If it’s discovered that they not have been open and transparent in the information they have given in proving they are “fit and proper” the applicat ion should be struck out.

– That an applicant would have to accept the jurisdiction of the UK court. That if your bid is successful, and your company is involved in a court case, you can’t avoid a court summons by being abroad.

The BskyB bid stress tested the existing legal framework and showed clearly were the cracks.

Despite widespread and serious concern about Murdoch’s business practices, Ofcom did not initiate the “fit and proper person” test until after the Miller Dowler hacking revelations.

Under the changes we propose Murdoch would have to have full disclosure and had to prove himself a fit and proper person before he was even able to formally start the process of the takeover.

We don’t have to wait to do this. My colleague in the Lords, Baroness Scotland, has been telling the government since last July that they can change the law under the powers that they have in the Enterprise Act. And they should do this.

The situation is different for local newspapers. And the biggest danger at local level is not having a newspaper at all.

Revenue is declining as fewer people are buying local newspapers and classified advertising is moving online. Local newspapers are closing or moving to regional hubs, with the loss of local news reporting and the loss of journalists’ jobs. Claire Enders estimates that 40% of jobs in the regional press have been lost in the last 5 years.

Local newspapers are important to local communities.

They also provide a route for journalists, especially those outside London, into the national media.

So we should take the particular situation in local newspapers into account when framing protection against monopoly in the future.

As well as preventing monopoly and promoting plurality, we need to give members of the public redress where journalistic professional standards are breached.

The financial pressures which have intensified competition between papers and left some feeling that they are fighting for their lives cannot justify intrusion and illegality, the terrible stories that we’ve all heard at the Leveson Inquiry.

Lord Justice Leveson has presided over a fearless and forensic process, and an emotional one. It has been a decisive moment for free speech – the free speech of the victims often heard for the first time. Even before Leveson has finished hearing the evidence and started writing his report, the Inquiry is emphatically demonstrating the need for change.

Look at what happened to Charlotte Church, a child with a huge talent. But for the News of the World the most important thing was to sell stories. No information – not the most intimate, not the most private and not the most painful personal and family issues – was off limits. In their pursuit of profits they dehumanised Charlotte Church and her mother. To the News of the World they were not a child and her mother. They were no thing more than commodities to sell more papers. She showed real courage in coming to the Inquiry to say how that felt.

You can only admire, too, the remarkable strength of Bob and Sally Dowler. What could be worse than to lose a beloved daughter to murder? But to the News of the World they were not grieving parents deserving the greatest sympathy. They were nothing more than commodities to sell more papers. For the Dowlers to come to the Leveson inquiry and – in public – relive those grim days and weeks, in the full glare of the press that had so abused them, was hugely courageous.

The need for change is clear. The challenge – for Leveson and for all of us – is that this change commands as great a consensus as possible, and that this change is positive and enduring.

There is much heat and justifiable emotion around the debate about the future of press standards, but there is an important need for the response from politicians and the press to be measur ed.

In my role as Shadow Culture and Media Secretary I want to be clear that Labour’s starting point will be a commitment to defend the freedom of the press.

As a lawyer, at the start of my professional life, I fought the cause of press freedom, working at Liberty. Because of my work holding the government to account, I was prosecuted for contempt by the then Attorney General in what became the landmark case of Home Office v Harman.

As a politician, I’ve spent enough time in opposition to dread the thought of the government interfering in the press. I’ve spent enough time in government to recognise that government power is dangerous if not held to account by the press.

Because the press are now in the dock, it looks like special pleading from a vested interest when they make the case for press freedom. That’s why it’s all the more important that politicians must insist on the freedom of the press. Politics cannot operate in a democracy witho ut a free and fearless press. We don’t want a cowed press.

Instead of doing things the usual way – where government and opposition each come up with their own proposals – we do need to do things differently.

I want to see newspaper editors to get together and come forward with their own proposal. I’ve been calling for this since January and I’m very pleased to see Jeremy Hunt echo that this week.

It would be better for the editors to frame the solution rather than have one imposed on them. We have had extensive general discussions. It’s now time for the editors to propose a new system for press complaints which is not just rhetoric.

This new system should deliver on the principles the editors say they actually want.

– A system independent of political interference and also independent of serving editors, who cannot be allowed to go on marking their own homework

– A system that is citizen centric, accessible and straightforward for all and not available only to the rich.

– A system that applies to – and is able to enforce its rulings – against all newspapers.

Last week, the Press Complaints Commission announced it was to close itself down and move to a transitional authority proposed by PCC chair, Lord Hunt. But the new body and Lord Hunt’s proposals fail a fundamental test.

It will apply not to all papers – but only to those who opt in.

So it is nothing more than business as usual. A change of name but not of substance.

And after all the evidence that has come before the Leveson inquiry, the status quo is not an option.

Many people have asked me whether I’ve been shocked by the revelations at the Leveson Inquiry. The sad truth is, it just confirmed what I had always believed.

Many people have also said to me, “But you were in government for 13 years – why didn’t you do something about it? You were too close weren’t you?”

The answer to that lies i n what happened in the past.

In our 1992 manifesto, we put in what we believed was necessary: that we should ‘establish an urgent inquiry’ by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission into media ownership, and – if the press failed to deal with abuses of individuals’ privacy – to implement the statutory protections recommended by the Calcutt report.

Our commitment to tackling media monopoly and introducing a robust press complaints system meant that the Murdoch press was determined to stop us getting into government. Not a day went by without on every issue, his papers battering us.

As we approached 1997, we – as Tony Blair said in his famous ‘feral beasts’ speech – turned to ‘courting, assuaging and persuading the media… after 18 years of Opposition and the, at times, ferocious hostility of parts of the media, it was hard to see any alternative’.

And, it is fair to say, that when we were in government, many senior figures did become too close to News International and Murdoch.

However, we did some things that Murdoch objected to. We strongly supported the BBC and we established Ofcom. But we didn’t sort out media ownership or complaints.

We’ve all got a lot of baggage on this. But we’ve got to leave it behind. This is not a time for press or politicians to settle old scores.

We must have an open debate. It cannot be a debate where the media dictates what we are allowed to discuss and propose about their future.

New ownership rules must address invincibility – it has to protect against monopoly and promote the public interest.

A new complaints system must address impunity and give redress to individuals.

Neither of these are a threat to a free press, but they ensure it’s a fair press.

The financial crisis facing print journalism cannot be used as an excuse to duck reform.

This is a critical time for the media, and for public policy towards the media. The Leveson Inquiry, the Ofcom review of media ownership and the forthcoming Communications Bill green paper – all of these things could have a profound effect on the shape of our media landscape for years to come.

We cannot waste this opportunity. We need free debate and we need judicious reform.

We owe that to the proud tradition of the British press, we owe that to everybody who works in it and we owe it to the public.

Below is the text of the speech made by Harriet Harman, the Shadow Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, at the University of Hertfordshire on 20th February 2012.

Thanks David for that introduction and thanks to the University of Hertfordshire for hosting this event and to UK Music for helping to organise it.

Having just been on a tour of the facilities and having met some of the staff and students, it’s clear to see that Hertfordshire boasts one of the leading music faculties in the UK – from songwriting and composition to recording and production – and the pioneering course in music and entertainment industry management.

Despite the 18% drop in higher education applications across the creative arts sector, applications for music here at Hertfordshire have risen by 50%. That tells us that even with the real concerns about rising tuition fees, music is still an industry that young people want a career in.

So what better place to make my first major speech on music as Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport?

And what better time to make it – on the eve of the Brit Awards and just after Adele scooped so many awards at the Grammys.

This is a really big week for British music. But, music is important in everyone’s lives every day – whatever your age. Even I managed to download Adele onto my iPad – to the astonishment of the young team in my office who often think I’m more facelift generation than facebook.

Important for young people 

But it’s young people who music matters most to – like the young people in my South London constituency of Camberwell and Peckham. It’s a key part of their identity and many have hopes of a future working in the industry.

A public policy imperative

So we, as politicians, must take music seriously – there is a democratic imperative for us to represent what our constituents feel so passionately about – not just for fun, but for their own ambitions for their future.

So, as their representative, I want to ensure that I look to their future both as consumers and as creators so:

– That they can get the music they want from all over the world, as fast and as cheaply as possible

– That they can make the music they want and are able to distribute it – all over the world

– That they can work in the music industry or the many technology industries that support it. Some of you will want to end up working for a record label – and some of you will want to work for Apple, Google, Amazon or Spotify.

Putting the music business at the heart of Government

One of the things that strikes me most from talking to people in the music business is the real sense of frustration that within Government, music is invisible outside of the DCMS. Music is always praised for its importance for our culture but not recognised for its important to our economy. Its broader value in providing jobs and economic growth is still not acknowledged across Whitehall.

And it should be.

The British music industry generates £3.8 bn per year and is the second largest exporter of music in the world with a 12% share of global sales of recorded music.

As well as British performers punching well above their weight in terms of sales across the world, when it comes to jobs, music, visual and performing arts are the largest employers within the creative industries.

Music matters to our nation’s culture and identity but also matters to the economy.

My determination is that we in the Labour Party should have an integrated approach. So that music is not just in a silo at the DCMS. That it will be integrated across our teams in education, business and the treasury so that we put music at the heart of our economic agenda.

I know that many of you might feel that you’ve heard it before – but I believe that we can make that change and that we must. Our economy needs growth and jobs. Music as part of the creative industries is growing faster than the rest of the economy. It’s a no brainer.

Forging a 5 point plan for jobs and growth in the creative industries

So music has to be of equal importance to our treasury team, our business team and our education team as it is to me and our DCMS team. To show how we mean to go about this, later this month, I’m bringing together Ed Balls, Chuka Umunna and Stephen Twigg to forge our 5 point plan for jobs and growth in the creative industries. We want our Creative Summit to take forward a meaningful dialogue between the Labour Party and your industry to ensure that we can both speak up for those issues in Parliament now and, over the coming years, develop the best policies to support jobs and growth in music and in the wider economy.

Through the course of the conversations, I and my colleague Dan Jarvis – Labour’s shadow minister for the arts and creative industries – have been having with people in the industry it’s clear that there are some themes emerging about what our vision should look like and I want to hear from you about what you think. The main areas seem to be: access to finance; exports; a regional strategy for growth; young people and skills; and intellectual property.

Access to finance

Access to finance is clearly a huge issue. The paradox is while London is a global financial capital and Britain’s artists are global success stories – most of the music industry still struggles to get finance. The Government has to play its part in trying to improve the situation – to encourage the city to recognise the creative industries as an important investment for the future.

The banks have got to start lending to viable music businesses. The music industry is made up of thousands of small businesses – 92% of the UK music businesses employ fewer than 10 people. And they need to be able to get finance – to start up, to go from small to medium and for medium sized firms to grow. So it’s a big concern that the banks are not lending and Operation Merlin figures show banks still failing to meet their lending targets. It’s not good enough. It doesn’t seem too much to ask that in the global capital of banking we should have lending to our global music industry.

Exports

We are a net exporter of music and that’s growing. One in every 10 albums sold around the world is by a UK artist. British music puts us on the world map and helps attract tourists.

Music is a fantastic Great British asset – but the Government has got to better support the industry as an export and respect it as a serious earner of overseas currency for the exchequer. When David Cameron and George Osborne lead British business on trade delegations overseas to bang the drum for UK plc, as well as seeing defence and pharmaceutical companies represented, I want to see music, film and other creative industries at the forefront.

In all the regions

We need to build a more balanced economy for the future – not just less reliant on financial services but also less reliant on London.

Just as our reach needs to be global it needs to be across all regions of the UK. Last week I was in Manchester – with its massive music tradition and now with the new BBC media centre in Salford. Historically Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow have had a massive impact on music. And music has been a key part of economic regeneration in the regions too. The abolition of the Regional Development Agencies – which helped draw in investment and stimulate growth in our regions – including from European funds to our regions – hasn’t helped. Their replacements, the new regional growth funds, in their current form, are not adequate and this must be addressed. There has to be a proper regional strategy for growth in the music industry.

Opportunities for young people

That’s one of the things that will make sure that there are opportunities for young people in the industry – wherever they live.

Unlike politics – the music industry has no problem appealing to young people. But we have to ensure that the music industry has the widest pool of talent to draw on and there is real equality of access. So:

– We must ensure that every child gets a decent music education, the chance to sing, play an instrument, learn to appreciate music and to get the cross-curricula benefits that music brings.

– We must ensure that the industry gets graduates with the right qualifications and skills.

– And we must ensure that a generation who get their music online pay for the music that they use.

Copyright

To sustain the music industry in the digital age as well as encouraging new business models and innovation, we still need effective copyright protection. So if you create something – it is yours – to license for others to use, to sell or give away.

And this is the basis for all the industry including:

– Investors

– Entrepreneurs

– Managers and marketers

– As well as the sound engineers and session musicians.

The collection of royalties makes money available for investing in new talent.

The BPI estimates the record industry reinvests over 20% of its revenue in developing new talent

Copyright infringement makes it difficult to run a business – especially if you are a small to medium sized business – as so many are in the music industry. You can’t run a business effectively if the products you want to sell don’t generate revenue because they are downloaded for free.

Every music company would love to have a success story like Adele. But the reality is that most music businesses are not music giants but are small, independent companies making a living and breach of copyright inhibits their ability to grow especially when it comes to dealing with banks.

Let me give you and example. Music producer Steve Levine took out a bank loan to produce and distribute singer Natalie McCool’s first album. He released her single on iTunes for 99p per download. The week the single was released a website Freedownloadsong.com offered it for free. Her fans believed this to be legitimate and nearly 7,000 downloaded her song. Had Steve been able to sell these songs at 99p per track he would have been able to pay Natalie and the bank loan. The bank accused Steve of giving them inaccurate sales projections and demanded their money back. The paradox is that there was demand but because of the free downloads they generated no returns which meant that he, the artist and the bank all lost out.

And as you’ll all know, this is not just a one-off.

Research by this university and UK Music found that:

– Over 60% of 14 – 24 year olds were downloading music without paying for it.

Research from Harris Interactive found that:

– ¾ of all digital music obtained in 2010 was downloaded illegally.

Of course every illegally downloaded track would not translate into one which was paid for but even taking that into account Jupiter Research estimate:

– That revenue lost to the recorded music industry last year through piracy was £236m.

And despite the success of UK music, piracy has contributed to the fall in revenues of UK record labels – down 1/3 since 2004.

The last Labour Government started doing something about this with the Digital Economy Act.

The Government commissioned the Hargreaves review – which has reported and soon, they are going to publish a Green Paper and then bring forward legislation. So now is the time to take things forward and for the Government to strike the right balance between the content industries, including music, and the technology companies to create a climate where innovation can flourish while copyright is protected. This debate has been going on for long enough and needs to be brought to a conclusion.

I know these two sectors – technology and content – feel pitted against each other when it comes to discussions about piracy.

I’ve had discussions with both, I know the arguments from both sides.

It’s too simplistic to point to one side as the villain of the piece. Because the reality is there a common interest – both need each other and both must be part of the solution.

The rights holders don’t want to be seen as the opponents of the democratisation of culture. The tech companies don’t want to be seen as supporters of piracy. Both need each other and there are big commercial incentives for both sides to come together and get this right.

What the music industry should do

Big strides have been made by the music companies – there are now 70 license services. But they should do more to support innovation and new business models. They could make more of their catalogue available and support simplification of licensing, such as provision for licensing of orphan works and making it easier for more deals to be struck through a Digital Copyright Exchange.

What the technology companies should do

The technology companies need to do more with the content creators to better signpost legitimate search.

And they should do more to tackle piracy including by stifling the income of the pirate websites. There are a relatively small number of very big pirate websites which make a lot of money. When they are based offshore they are hard to reach. But that mustn’t lead us to conclude that nothing can be done. Google, as a major site for advertising, could take a lead to engage the advertising industry in depriving illegal sites of their advertising revenue.

If Google and the ad agencies drain the swamp of piracy by removing their financial incentive – online advertising – then we would have a fertile environment in which paid-for content could flourish.

No-one could imagine how we would survive without Google – most of us use it hundreds of times a day. But it is because they are so effective – and trusted – that Google and other search engines should use their creative energy to help the music industry fight piracy.

What the Government should do

And the Government should:

– implement the Digital Economy Act under a clear timetable including getting on with the notification letters and publishing the code of practice

– lead and set a deadline for agreement in the industry for site blocking, search engine responsibility and digital advertising. The music industry – and other creative industries – say that if the Government got a move-on, they could do this by May this year.

– Make it clear that if there’s no agreement, this will be legislated for in the Communications Bill

– promote London and our hub cities as the melting pot for both creativity and technology. What we offer is the synthesis of these two – while elsewhere in the world there are technology centres or creative centres – our cities offer both.

– lead joint work bringing together the technology industry and the content creators to educate and signpost consumers to legal access to content.

– recognise – like they do in the US – that there is a public policy imperative to protect rights owners. Currently rights holders feel that they are on their own, that the law is not enforced and the Intellectual Property Office is not on their side. So Government must act – gear up enforcement and tackle the fragmentation of the enforcement agencies.

Diversity challenge

In my constituency, the people who are going to be the future of this industry are women as well as men and black as well as white. But like many industries in Britain today there’s a stubborn lack of diversity at the top of both the music industry and technology companies.

Many artists in the industry – like the consumers – are women and ethnic minorities. But the top management of the industry is dominated by white men. The reality is that who you know is still too important in your ability to get into the business. The industry needs to ensure that everyone – including all of you – gets a fair chance based on merit to get into the industry and a fair chance based on merit to rise up the industry. I know that the industry has recently committed to a diversity charter – now it needs to turn words into action.

Conclusion

Music provides the backdrop to our lives. It defines the eras in which we grow up and enriches so many other activities – the movies, TV shows and adverts we watch; the video games we play; the bars and clubs we go to; the smartphones we use.

As we all look forward to the Brits tomorrow this is a time to really celebrate the achievements of the UK’s music industry at home and abroad. And this year is especially important as the Olympics will offer every part of British music – from our recording artists to our world famous orchestras – a platform to showcase our talent to the world.

Thank you for being here today and for listening me.

I look forward to working with the industry on how we can take the right steps now to nurture it make sure that in five, ten or even 50 years we still have a great British success story we can all be proud of.

Below is the text of the speech made by Harriet Harman, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, to the Oxford Media Convention on 25th January 2012.

I’m very pleased to be here today – meeting up with those of you I haven’t met before and with many of you who I have known for years – but in my new capacity as Shadow Culture Secretary.

At the age of 61 it’s exciting to be part of Ed Miliband’s new generation. Not so much the face book generation as the face lift generation.

We meet in historic times:

– Never before have the creative industries been so important to help take us through these difficult economic times

– And never before has the media been under such scrutiny because of the phone hacking scandal

And all of this against the backdrop of astonishing developments in technology.

One of the things that we are most proud of from our time in government is the support we gave to culture, the creative industries and sport.

From free entry to museums and galleries, to boosting the film industry with tax credits, to winning the Olympics.

Labour supported something that is hugely important to people’s lives, something we are good at in this country and something that has a massive importance in the future.

If our politics is to reflect the aspirations and concerns of young people, then culture, media and sport must be at its heart. In my constituency of Camberwell and Peckham – as everywhere else – it is impossible to overstate how central culture, media and sport is in the lives of young people. They are all consumers – and great many of them want their future to be working in your industries.

You, in the creative industries have punched above your weight economically and as well as being the centre of our cultural agenda you must be at the heart of our education, economic and business agenda.

That is why the DCMS must never be seen as the ministry of fun. It is fun – but it’s bread as well as roses. DCMS policy must not stand alone but must be completely integrated with Education, Business and the Treasury.

I am determined to do that and next month, I’ve brought together a summit with our shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, our Shadow Business Secretary, Chuka Umunna, and our Shadow Schools Secretary, Stephen Twigg.

We want to work with you to develop a comprehensive plan for jobs and growth in the creative industries – and knowing Ed Balls it’s bound to end up being a 5 point plan.

We will be looking at a number of areas that many of you have raised including:

– Access to finance – making the City realise that creative industries are a good investment

– Making sure that the next generation have the right education and skills – to foster the designers, the technicians, and the animator of the future

– Giving proper support for our exports – when the Prime Minister leads a high level business delegation overseas – I want to see the creative industries right in there

– Protection against copyright theft and getting the correct balance for intellectual property rights.

Britain creates some of the best and most sought after content in the world. We’re the world leader in exporting television formats, the second biggest exporter of music and our video games industry is one of the largest in Europe. These industries bring great pleasure to millions of people here in the UK but they are also an engine for jobs and growth across the economy. That’s what we were trying to support with our Digital Economy Act. It is vital that new business models are allowed to flourish as technology advances but we must also support the creators and owners of copyright to have a right for their work not to be stolen. The irony is that many of the kids who are downloading free music want to make a living out of creating too. We need to protect their right to a future in the industry. It’s tough for young people entering the industry today. The force of the internet ripping through age-old business models mean many industries are still searching for new ways to generate revenue.

That’s four points – the fifth one is still up for grabs.

What has been well reflected throughout today’s debates is that there are huge issues across the landscape – from newspapers to broadcasters. And we’ve heard today from BBC Chair – Chris Patten.

It’s impossible to describe – without sounding gushing – the centrality of the BBC in the life of this country. We think we bring up our own children – but Auntie is there alongside us as we do it. The BBC news is most trusted not just here – but around the world. The sheer scale of the BBC – the world’s biggest broadcasting organisation – means that it is able to be – and is – a massive centre of gravity for our creative industries. Under its wings, there flourish an eco-system of trainees and independent production companies. The BBC doesn’t belong to the Government of the day. And when we were in Government we were not always the best of friends. But the BBC doesn’t belong to the Government of the day, it belongs to the people which is why they trust it more than any Government and why my approach as shadow secretary of state is to be an ardent and outspoken supporter of the BBC.

Many who usually come to this conference aren’t here today because they’re in the High Court – at the Leveson Enquiry.

The phone hacking scandal went to the heart of the politics, police and the press and one thing is clear – things will have to change.

Though there was nothing new about public figures complaining about the press, what changed things and where public anger erupted was that it was not just celebrities – the rich and powerful who had been targeted – but ordinary people who had suffered terrible tragedy.

It was because of the revelations about what had been done to the Dowler family that Ed Miliband spoke out against News International and called for a judge-led inquiry. He was right to do that – it was brave – and it led to the Government setting up the Leveson Inquiry.

Leveson has been a painful process as everything has been played out in public. However it has been powerful and cathartic and it should leave no-one in any doubt that it cannot be business as usual.

There is much heat and justifiable emotion in the demand for change. But there is an important need too, for the response from politicians and the press to be balanced.

It is a paradox. The public worry that the relationship between the press and politicians has been far too close. The press worry that politicians will use this scandal to exact revenge on the press and settle old scores for the friction which is inevitable when the press hold government and politicians to account.

It’s fair to say that over 30 years in parliament, I’ve don’t ever remember being described as a “darling of the press”. Harriet Harperson – Hapless Hattie – “she who hates men” – and those are some of the nicer things that have been said.

So it might come as a surprise to some that I am standing up for press freedom.

But I have spent enough time in Opposition to dread the thought of the Government interfering in the press.

And I’ve spent enough time in government to recognise that government power is dangerous if not held to account by the press.

And, indeed, at the start of my professional life, I fought the cause of press freedom – at Liberty. And because of my work there holding the government to account – I was prosecuted for contempt by the then Attorney General who launched a prosecution against me in what became the landmark case of Home Office v Harman.

Those of us who are politicians in a democracy should be the first to understand that politics cannot operate in a democracy without a free press.

In my new role as Shadow Culture Secretary, I want to be very clear Labour’s starting point will be a commitment to defend the freedom of the free press.

Because the press are now in the dock, it looks like special pleading from a vested interest when they make the case for press freedom.

So that’s why its all the more important that politicians must insist on the freedom of the press.

But the press must acknowledge the outrage that was felt by people all round the country. And editors must understand that the status quo is not an option. It will just not be good enough to let the dust settle and then go back to business as usual.

There now needs to be a thoughtful, clear-eyed sober debate that focuses on shaping the future for the British press

There appears to be an emerging consensus around some key principles. That a new system must be:

– Independent – independent of political interference but also independent of serving editors. There needs to be advice and expertise – we can’t have people marking their own homework.

– It must be citizen centric – it must be accessible and straightforward for people. Seeking redress should not work just for the rich and powerful.

– It must apply to all newspapers – there can be no opting out.

These are all clearly sensible principles but we need to see how they could be made to work. And the key question is who is in the best position to do that.

Instead of doing things the usual way – Government and Opposition each coming up with our own proposals and then Leveson coming forward with his – I propose something different.

I think it would help Leveson if newspaper editors got together and came forward with a solution and I challenge them to do that. We have had a good airing of concerns and scoping of the issues but it is time for editors to lay their cards on the table and come up with a solution that guarantee these principles. It cannot just be rhetoric. I would like to see them frame the solution rather than have one imposed upon them

And with regards to the Press Complaints Commission. I know there are attempts to revive it. But I feel strongly that we’ve gone beyond that and it is time for a fresh start.

On the question of media power and cross media ownership, it is important that we have plurality in our media because it allows for competition and prevents obstacles to new entrants in the market which is bad for the consumer.

This is what the plurality framework is for.

But, by the end of the fiasco around the Murdoch/BSkyB takeover bid, it was clear to everyone that change is needed:

– To make clear that the judgments are made independently and not politically

– To make sense of the application of the “fit and proper person” test

– To make sure that we look across the media – not just at the newspapers – or any one siloed sector in a converging world – in a vacuum

– To make sure that, even without an “event” such as a takeover bid, there is the power to stop a monopoly developing

In the end, our plurality laws were intended to ensure that no one person gained unwelcome control over our media and accumulated too much power in our public affairs. In July, Parliament, at the instigation of a small number of MPs, and backed by Ed Miliband and others returned to this original intent. We must now complete that work and Ofcom and the Culture, Media and Sport select committee will have an important role in leading the debate on this.

Finally, can I turn to the press and the police? The police are prohibited from taking money from the press for stories – and the press are not allowed to pay them. But clearly that has been happening and no doubt Leveson will bring forward proposals to address that. We have to be sure that the police investigate without fear or favour.

We, in Labour, embrace the cultural vitality of our media sector. The richness it provides our nation and the opportunities it offers our people. And its appeal to modernity.

A vibrant and flourishing creative and cultural life is a symbol a of modern, progressive society. From Harold Wilson’s “white hot heat of the technological revolution” to, dare I say it, Tony Blair’s “Cool Britannia”, we’ve striven to champion an advanced media sector.

It’s a real privilege to be holding the responsibility of this brief at such an important moment, and I look forward to working with you.

Below is the text of the speech made by Harriet Harman, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and the Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, on 6th March 2012.

INTRODUCTION

Last week started with Sue Akers’ dramatic assertions at the Leveson inquiry. Next we had the resignation of James Murdoch as Chairman of News International. The week then concluded with the Prime Minister having to come clean about his relationship with a former police horse.

The only normal thing about this story was that the horse died of natural causes – or so we’re led to believe.

Although the story about the horse was surreal, these are incredibly serious times for the relationship between the press, politics and the police and a very important time when it comes to public policy in the broader area of communications.

COMMUNICATIONS GREEN PAPER

This conference was called to examine the Communications Green Paper – but as we all know the government has delayed it a number of times.

And with all that’s been going on I can’t say I blame them.

Normally, a Comms Green Paper would be of interest only to a small group of specialists.

At the time this Green Paper was first mooted, the sense was that it would herald a niche bill aiming at aiding growth through infrastructure and technological changes.

But now it is clear the Comms Bill will need to be much more than that. It will deal with the outcome of Leveson – both on press standards and ownership – and it will need to reflect the findings of the Ofcom review.

The next Comms Act will have huge significance. This is the moment at which media and communications policy moves from a technical discussion among a small group of experts to centre stage of the national debate on politics, culture and the economy.

It was a marginal political issue – it is now central.

RAPID CHANGES IN TECHNOLOGY

Communication and media policy is going to affect everyone at a time when everything is changing:

– Broadband is being rolled out and used by all businesses and most homes

– The way we watch TV is being transformed. Catch-up TV is now routine and within a few years the TV in most people’s homes will be connected to the internet. This brings obvious benefits but it will require us to tackle new problems like how we help parents protect children from adult material.

– Technology has changed how news is produced, gathered and transmitted – the news of the riots in my constituency this summer was gathered through people shooting videos on their phones.

– There’s a development of remotely produced national and indeed local news

– The ecology and economics of the media is also changing. Newspaper readership is collapsing with getting their new online; the number of TV channels has gone from five terrestrial ones to over 300 satellite ones and soon there will be digital switchover.

Ten years ago, we couldn’t foresee Facebook, You Tube or Twitter. The 2003 Communications Act made no use of the word ‘internet’. And changes lie ahead that, as yet, we have no idea about.

This is an enormous challenge to policy-makers. While technological change is rapid, democracy has to take its time – to make proposals, to consult on them, to go through all the processes of legislation.

And because technology is fast changing and legislation is slow-moving, it is critical that the regulatory framework is flexible. Policy makers aren’t clairvoyant – but we must do what we can to ensure our regulatory framework takes account not just of what we know, but also of known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

JOBS AND GROWTH IN THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

But what we do know and what should remain the case is that the media and the creative industries are an important sector for jobs and growth in this country and the Green Paper and the Comms Bill need to support that.

I’m working closely with Ed Balls, Chuka Umunna and Stephen Twigg to ensure that the creative industries are at the heart of our whole agenda for business and the economy for the future.

It is already clear that for this sector there needs to be a strategy to address access to finance, education and training which ensures young people have the right skills to go into the creative sector, a regional strategy which ensures that growth in the creative industries is not confined to London and strong support for exports. And also copyright protection. We need a system of regulation which strikes the right balance between technology companies, content users and content owners.

We have heard today from the BPI and Google and I hear both sides of the argument. We need a system of regulation which supports innovation and new business models and also supports creators and respects copyright. The Digital Economy Act was passed with cross party support and we are urging the government to enact it to help underpin new jobs and growth in our creative industries.

PREVENTING MEDIA MONOPOLY

So, while the media situation is fast-changing, that must not be an excuse not to take action. We’ve got an opportunity to take action to deal with difficult, historical problems which have been left unaddressed for too long.

Problems of too much newspaper power in the hands of one man and a lack of redress where journalistic professional standards are breached.

The malpractice and illegality which has been exposed by the Leveson inquiry was never just “one rogue reporter” or a few bent policemen. It is a symptom of an underlying structural problem.

The accumulation of too much power led to a sense of invincibility and impunity. Murdoch owns too many newspapers and had it not been for the hacking scandal the Government would have waived through his bid for the whole of BSkyB. Both Ofcom and Leveson are looking at ownership. It is clear that there needs to be change.

Last week I was asked whether I was shocked by Sue Akers’ revelations. And the sad truth is, far from it. It just confirmed what I had always believed.

PREVIOUS OBSTACLES TO CHANGE

People have also said, “but you were in government for 13 years – why didn’t you do something about it? You were too close weren’t you?”

The answer to that lies in what happened before 1992. We put in our 1992 manifesto what we believed was necessary: that we should ‘establish an urgent inquiry’ by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission into media ownership, and – if the press failed to deal with abuses of individuals’ privacy – to implement the statutory protections recommended by the Calcutt report.

Because we were committed to tackling media monopoly and introducing a robust press complaints system, the Murdoch press was determined to stop us getting into government and not a day went by without on every issue, his papers battering us.

So as we approached 1997, we – in Tony Blair’s words in his famous ‘feral beasts’ speech – turned to ‘courting, assuaging and persuading the media… after 18 years of Opposition and the, at times, ferocious hostility of parts of the media, it was hard to see any alternative’.

When we were in government, it was the case that many senior figures did become too close to New International and Murdoch.

It is worth noting that despite Murdoch’s objections, we supported the BBC and established Ofcom. But we didn’t prevent Murdoch’s growing monopoly and we didn’t deal with the failure of redress of those who have complaints against the press.

And so things went on until the Milly Dowler revelations shocked and disgusted the British people, leading to the establishment of the Leveson Inquiry and creating an opportunity for long overdue change. We must not squander that opportunity.

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR CHANGE

To address the problem of too great a concentration of ownership, there needs to be agreement on:

– a trigger for intervention – action cannot be confined just to an event such as a takeover

– the maximum percentage of ownership permitted –

– agree on a methodology for how ownership is measured

– agree the mechanisms for enforcing – for example, divesting

– and agree on a strong Ofcom, which must be powerful in practice as well as on paper.

The issue is not just ownership across newspapers, broadcasting and other media but also how we address monopolistic ownership within those sectors.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE LEVESON INQUIRY

The Leveson Inquiry is of enormous importance. Lord Justice Leveson has presided over a fearless and forensic process, and an emotional one. It has been a decisive moment for free speech, with victims often heard for the first time – and even before they’ve finished hearing the evidence and started writing their report, the Leveson Inquiry is emphatically demonstrating the need for change.

The challenge for Leveson – and for all of us – is that this should be change which commands as great a consensus as possible, which is positive and enduring.

No-one can fail to recognise the financial pressures piling onto newspapers – financial pressures which have intensified competition between them and left some feeling that they are fighting for their lives – but that cannot be any justification for intrusion and illegality.

Look at what happened to Charlotte Church. Here was a child with a huge talent. But for the News of the World the most important thing was to sell stories. No information – not the most intimate, not the most private and not the most painful personal and family issues – was off limits. In their pursuit of profits they dehumanised Charlotte Church and her mother. To the News of the World they were not a child and her mother but nothing more than commodities to sell more papers. The courage and strength she has shown in coming to the Inquiry to say how that felt is remarkable.

You can only admire, too, the strength of Bob and Sally Dowler. What could be worse than to lose a beloved daughter to murder? But to the News of the World they were not grieving parents deserving the greatest sympathy; they were nothing more than commodities to sell papers. For the Dowlers to come to the Leveson inquiry and – in public – relive those grim days and weeks in the full glare of the press that had so abused them was hugely courageous.

PRINCIPLES FOR REFORM

There is much heat and justifiable emotion around the debate about the future of press standards, but there is an important need for the response from politicians and the press to be measured.

This is not the time for either the press or politicians to settle old scores or exact revenge for the past. Both sides must leave their baggage behind.

In my role as Shadow Culture and Media Secretary I want to be clear that Labour’s starting point will be a commitment to defend the freedom of the press.

Because the press are now in the dock, when they make the case for freedom of the press, it looks like special pleading from a vested interest. But those of us who are politicians in a democracy should be the first to understand that politics cannot operate in a democracy without a free and fearless press. We don’t want a cowed press.

I also think that, with this, instead of doing things the usual way – where Government and opposition each come up with their own proposals – we need to do things differently.

I think newspaper editors should get together and came forward with their proposals and I challenge them to do that. It would be better for them to frame the solution rather than have one imposed on them. We have had extensive general discussions, it’s now time for the editors to propose a new system for press complaints and which is not just rhetoric.

– A system that delivers on the principles the editors say they actually want.

– A system that is independent – independent of political interference but also independent of serving editors, who cannot be allowed to go on marking their own homework.

– A system that is citizen centric – seeking redress must be accessible and straightforward for all, and not available only to the rich.

– And a system that applies to all newspapers.

The proposal being worked up by Lord Hunt, chair of the Press Complaints Commission, does not, as we currently understand it, do that.

It leaves unchanged the basic problem with the current system: that rather than applying to all as a matter of course, it still requires newspapers to opt in. After all the evidence that has come before the Leveson inquiry, the status quo is not an option. We cannot go on with business as usual.

THE IMPORTANCE OF A FREE DEBATE – CONCLUSION 

As I said at the beginning of my speech today, this is a critical time for communications and the media.

The future of our economy needs to harvest the potential of our world class creative industries.

The future of our democracy requires an open debate about press and media reform.

It cannot be a debate where the media dictate what we are allowed to discuss and propose about their future.

We owe it to the proud tradition of the British press; we owe it to those, like Charlotte Church and the Dowlers, who have been the victims of hacking and intrusion who have come forward to tell their stories; and we owe it to the British people, who have been disgusted by the excesses and corruption, to debate freely and reform judiciously.

Below is the text of the speech made by Harriet Harman on media ownership at the 2012 TUC Conference held on the 17th March 2012.

Introduction

Good morning. And it’s great to be here this morning, with so many of you who have long worked in the press and broadcasting, campaigned for press freedom, against media monopoly and for higher press standards. Particularly the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, the NUJ and here at the TUC.

This is an important moment and an opportunity for long overdue change.  And your insight into what needs to change and your pressure for that change is going to be vital.

The press and trade unions

You have the concerns of those who care about the public interest and you have the knowledge that comes with working in the industry.

The profession of journalism is very much in the dock because of phone hacking and the evidence that has come out of the Leveson Inquiry.  But it is important that we all remember that good journalism is vital for democracy and despite the drama round phone hacking most journalists are highly professional doing vital work and sometimes in dangerous conditions to get to the truth. The death of Marie Colvin reminded everyone that without fearless journalists the truth of suffering and oppression will remain hidden from view.

I believe that most journalists – like most politicians – go into the profession because they believe in what they do and to serve the public interest.

So, although journalism feels under attack at present we must not lose sight of the huge professional commitment in journalism and the amazing work that is done.

Pressures on journalists employment rights

But I know that you also have concerns about employment and trade unionism in the media.

Journalists have always worked under pressure – the pressure of deadlines, the pressure of being the first to get the story or the scoop. But now, that pressure is exacerbated by fewer people buying newspapers and instead, getting their news online which creates a very difficult commercial climate.

Employment in the media – particularly in newspapers – has become much harder over the last few years. Jobs have been lost. In just one week this year, 75 jobs went at Trinity Mirror’s national papers, and 30 jobs went at the Telegraph.

The competition for market share in a shrinking market has created pressure on journalistic professional standards – some feel under pressure to cut corners to get a story.  And the right to challenge that is undermined by job insecurity.  There is a fear that, if you object, then you will be the first out the door and into a world where it’s going to be hard to get another job.

But the fact that newspapers are under pressure does not justify any undermining of employment rights.

And I want to pay a really big tribute to Michelle Stanistreet and the NUJ for standing up for journalists. Michelle, you’re doing a great job and it’s always good to see you on the TV doing a great job.

And the truth is that if journalists, with the backing of the NUJ, had had more power to protect their professional integrity, some of the worst problems that have now come to light might, just might, have been avoided.

So trade unionism is good for the individual in the media and is good for press standards.

Portrayal of trade unionism in the media

We support a free press as a basic human right. And there’s another human right which we support which is freedom of association – trade unionism. We all have the sense that when it comes to news reporting of trade unions, the press is not fair. Depiction of trade unions in the press rarely highlights the life changing work of local representatives – protecting their members from discrimination and unfairness.  When did you last see reports of trade unions working patiently on behalf of their members with the management to secure a sustainable future for the business? Instead, the depiction is of extremism and perversity.

Women’s groups have made a submission about stereotyped treatment of women by the press to the Leveson Inquiry.

It’s not right for some sections of the press to abuse their right to free speech in a way that undermines another fundamental right – freedom of association.

And I think it would enhance Lord Justice Leveson’s work if evidence on that was presented to him.

Today’s conference

This conference comes at an historic time – with the media under scrutiny like never before.

The central issue is that we all want a free press which is able to report without fear or favour, but we have all been revolted at the unfairness and corruption exposed at the Leveson Inquiry. And we all want change.  Business as usual is not an option.

Invincibility and impunity

Like all of you, I’ve thought long and hard about how we ended up in this position and I think there are two deep-rooted problems which led us into this mess and which we must confront: the concentration of media ownership and the lack of redress for press complaints.

Because of the evidence at the Leveson inquiry – and the harrowing testimony of the victims such as the Dowlers – most of the discussion about change has focused on press complaints.

But the wrongdoing in the Murdoch empire was due not only to the absence of any proper complaints system which led to a sense of impunity.  But also from too great a concentration of power which led to a sense of invincibility.  And it is this combination of impunity and invincibility which lies at the heart of the problem and must be addressed

Let me start with that concentration of media ownership.

The malpractice and illegality exposed by the Leveson inquiry was never just “one rogue reporter” and a few bent policemen.  It is a symptom of an underlying structural problem.

Murdoch owns too many newspapers. 37% of national circulation before the News of the World closed – owning two of our most influential dailies and two of our most influential Sunday papers, was too much. And had it not been for the hacking scandal and Murdoch dropping his bid, the Government would have waved through his bid for the whole of BSkyB. As well as the culture, media and sport select committee, both Ofcom and Leveson are looking at ownership, and it is clear that there needs to be change.

Ownership: Opportunity for change

We must make sure that opportunity is not wasted.

There needs to be agreement on a trigger for intervention – action cannot be confined just to an event such as a takeover.

There needs to be agreement on the maximum percentage of ownership permitted.

We need to agree a methodology for how ownership is measured.

We need to agree the mechanisms for enforcing – for example, divesting.

And there needs to be agreement on a strong Ofcom, which must be powerful in practice as well as on paper.

And the issue is not just ownership across newspapers, broadcasting and other media but also how we address monopolistic ownership within those sectors.

Ownership: changes we can make now to the Enterprise Act

Of course substantive change will need to be informed by the outcome of the Leveson Inquiry and the Ofcom review. But there are things the government can and should do now to strengthen the law which was clearly revealed as inadequate by the Murdoch/BSkyB bid.

Over the course of that bid, it became clear that it was not only political unwillingness of the government to act, but legal inhibitions on action too.

We are proposing that the law be changed so that in cross media cases like this.

• First, the person making the application must prove to Ofcom that they are a “fit and proper person” at the start of the process – before the applicant notifies the European Commission that they intend to buy another company. As a precondition of entering the process.

• Secondly, that the “fit and proper person” test should be broadened to include not just criminal convictions but also any previous history of impropriety, failure in good governance, or investigation or prosecution for tax fraud.

• Thirdly, if it’s discovered that they not have been open and transparent in the information they have given in showing they are a “fit and proper” person the application should be struck out.

• Fourthly, that an applicant would have to accept the jurisdiction of the UK court.  That if your bid is successful, and your company is subsequently involved in a court case, you can’t avoid a court summons by being abroad.

Why change in the Enterprise Act is necessary

The BSkyB bid stress tested the existing legal framework and showed clearly where the cracks were.

Despite widespread and serious concern about Murdoch’s business practices, Ofcom did not initiate the “fit and proper person” test until after the Milly Dowler hacking revelations.

Under the changes we propose Murdoch would have to have full disclosure and had to prove himself a fit and proper person before he was able even to formally start the process of the takeover.

We don’t have to wait to change the law on this. My colleague in the Lords, Baroness Scotland, former attorney-general, has been telling the government since last July that they can change the law under the powers that they already have in the Enterprise Act, to do all the things I’ve talked about. And they should do this now, without waiting for the select committee, Ofcom or Leveson.

Ownership: Different priorities at local level

The situation is different for local newspapers. And the biggest danger at local level is not having a newspaper at all.

Revenue is declining as fewer people are buying local newspapers and classified advertising is moving online. Local newspapers are closing or moving to regional hubs, with the loss of local news reporting and the loss of journalists’ jobs. Claire Enders estimates that 40% of jobs in the regional press have been lost in the last 5 years.

Local newspapers are important to local communities.

They also provide a route for journalists, especially those outside London, into the national media.

So we should take the particular situation in local newspapers into account when framing protection against monopoly in the future.

Standards: The problem of impunity

As well as preventing monopoly and promoting plurality, we need to give members of the public redress where journalistic professional standards are breached.

The financial pressures which have intensified competition between papers and left some feeling that they are fighting for their lives can never justify intrusion and illegality, the terrible stories that we’ve all heard at the Leveson Inquiry.

Lord Justice Leveson has presided over a fearless and forensic process, and an emotional one, too. It has been a decisive moment for free speech – that is, the free speech of the victims of the press often heard for the first time. Even before Leveson has finished hearing the evidence and started writing his report, the Inquiry is emphatically demonstrating the need for change.

Below is the text of the speech made by Harriet Harman, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, to the party’s women’s conference held on 24th September 2011.

I’m delighted to see you all here today and excited to hear all you’ve got to say.

It is right to remind ourselves why we are meeting as women, as Labour women, today.

It is because we want to meet together as women, party members, MEPs, MPs, councillors, trade union women, Labour women from the Lords, to discuss what women want and what we are going to do about it.

And over the years, Labour women’s conferences have a great track record. Labour women’s conferences were where:

– we formulated the demand for a national childcare strategy.

– decided to make domestic violence and sex offences a priority in the Criminal Justice System.

– built support for all women’s shortlists for parliament.

And those policies delivered results.

We did have a National Childcare Strategy with Sure Start Centres, Childcare tax credits and more nurseries – we still had further to go. The Tories are now cutting that back but our great Labour councillors are fighting to protect them. Labour councillors are more important even than before.

We did – working with the police, the prosecutors, the courts and Women’s Aid and Refuge – transform the response to domestic violence. Again, further action was needed but it made a huge difference. And now the cuts threaten the support programmes for domestic violence, victims and councils will find it harder to support women’s refuges as the cuts bite.

And we did get all women shortlists so that we have more Labour women MPs than all the other parties put together. But we are still outnumbered by men 3 to 1 and we’ve still got further to go on Labour representation of women in councils. And I hope that tomorrow the Labour party will – as part of Refounding Labour – make the historic decision that we will always have a woman in Labour’s leadership.

But today it’s our chance to share what we think the priorities are for women right now.

Women of all ages. Women of all ethnicities. Women from all walks of life. And we need to look from the viewpoint of all the different women.

But it’s our responsibility and our opportunity to speak up for women and to shape demands so that Labour policy and Labour campaigns improve their lives.

I know that today, as well as focussing on domestic violence, women as carers, how to make work more family friendly, and childcare, we’ll focus on what women want in relation to:

– women’s pensions.

– sexualisation of girls.

– pornography and prostitution.

– the portrayal of women in the media.

– women in the developing world.

– how older women – instead of being respected for their experience – face a toxic combination of ageism and sexism.

– and the demands of those women who were part of the Arab Spring and who want to have a say in the future of their country.

We will discuss how we can campaign together, in our local communities and at national level, against the impact of the unfair Tory cuts on women; against the shame of the Tories failing to implement and enforce the Equality Act; and to increase women’s representation throughout our party.

We may be in opposition and we may be, as yet not equally represented in our Party, but we are not powerless. Far from it,

We have exposed and pushed back the Tories on women’s pensions.

We have forced them to drop their proposals to make it harder to prosecute rape by giving rape suspects anonymity.

And even though the Tories and the Lib Dems have dropped a key Equality Act clause on making employers publish what they pay on average to men and what they pay to their women, our sisters in the Trade Union Movement will get the support of their members to put it on the agenda for collective bargaining.

But above all we are powerful because we are here together, we’re determined and because we are speaking up for the concerns of women in this country.

Women’s conference has never been top down, nor is this one. It’s going to be a conference of women speaking from the floor rather than speeches from the platform.

You will decide what our priorities should be and vote on them. That will be reported back and Ed Miliband will hear that report back.

This is going to be a brilliant conference. Let’s get on with it.

Below is the text of the speech made by Harriet Harman, the Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women in 2010.

I’d like to thank ActionAid for providing me with my first opportunity since being appointed as Shadow Secretary of State for International Development to set out why I see this role as so important, and how I and my team will be working with you over the time ahead.

The last 25 years has seen real progress in tackling world poverty – 500 million fewer people living in poverty despite the rapid growth in the world’s population.

But we must not take that progress for granted. Not when 1.4 billion people still live on less than .25 a day and 900 million people around the world will go to sleep hungry tonight.

We only have five years l eft to meet the Millennium Development Goals. The global financial crisis, rising food and fuel prices, together with recent natural disasters like the earthquake in Haiti and the floods in Pakistan, make meeting them even more difficult.

We must not let the momentum slide.

Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and it is particularly appropriate for me to be able to be here at ActionAid, because of the work that you have done on this issue and because of the outstanding role that you, Joanna, have played on this.

Next Wednesday is World Aids Day and we are only days away from the start of the Cancun Climate Change Summit.

All these dates are reminders of the development challenges we still face in tackling women’s and girls’ inequality, in fighting disease and in tackling climate change.

International development is of the greatest importance, in practical terms, for the lives it saves, here and now, an d for the future for the peace, prosperity and opportunity throughout the world to which it contributes.

And for Britain and our place in the world. Saving the lives of 50,000 pregnant women and a quarter of a million new born babies. Any set of priorities and values must see that as important.

Some said “but you’re in opposition – just leave the government to get on with it. You should focus on something that matters here in this country.” I thought they were wrong on both counts.

The government cannot just be left to get on with it. They have, indeed, promised to keep to Labour’s pledge to commit 0.7% of Gross National Income to Aid, from 2013. But there are all too many on their backbenches, and no doubt in the Treasury too, as well as people who write in the Daily Mail and the Sun, who regard that promise as wrong, when it was entered into, and even more wrong at a time of drastic cuts in public spending.

So those in the government, inclu ding Secretary of State, Andrew Mitchell, who want to keep that promise – they need our help. Many of our backbenchers are far more committed than theirs to that promise that was in the manifestos of all three parties. So we will strongly support it.

And I would argue, too, that though this is an international department, it is of great importance to a great many people in this country. Not least my constituents.

In this country we have a great tradition of international aid. Oxfam, set up in Oxford, Save the Children, which for a long time was based in my constituency, Cafod, Christian Aid and Action Aid – which are respected world wide. In this country, in churches and community groups up and down the country, people work together to raise money to tackle emergencies and foster development.

And there are many people in this country who came, or whose family come, from Africa, or South Asia, from countries which are still struggling with poverty and who care passionately about the prospects of people in their homeland. It is wrong to think that because the government has embarked on a rash programme of spending cuts, people no longer care about those for whom our aid means life or death.

And I was also motivated to take on this role because I think as a woman, its important to play my part in an agenda which is of such importance to women and girls in the developing world.

So I am proud to be doing this job. I hope that I can play my part, in opposition, to supporting the development agenda and hope before too long I can perform that role from government.

I’m grateful to have the chance today to say how much I look forward to working closely with you, and what I see myself and my team – working closely with you – doing in the months and years ahead.

I see one of our biggest commitments, and I would say major achievements, over 13 years of government was on international development:

We set up the Department of International Development with a Secretary of State at the cabinet table.

We trebled the Aid budget and committed to reach 0.7% from 2013.

We ended the tying of aid to commercial interests.

Through Jubilee 2000, at summits in Gleneagles and in London we put dropping debt and increasing aid at the centre of the international agenda.

We want to see all that progress taken forward… not slip back. My first preference would be to be in government delivering this agenda… But my close second preference is to see this government delivering on that agenda. And we will work with them to help them do that.

We should not be lulled into a false sense of security just because the government are committed to the 0.7%.

We have to campaign in support of it. One cast iron way to reassure ourselves that we have succeeded in securing the commitment to the 0.7% is for the target to be written into law.

When we were in government we prepared a Bill and it had “pre-legislative scrutiny” and attracted cross-party support. It is a small bill – only four clauses, and it is all ready t o be taken forward. The government have said they will bring it forward but so far there is no sign of it in their timetable for government bills. So we will continue to press them on this.

And if they do not bring it forward as a government bill it must surely be one of the top candidates for a Private Members Bill.

With an existing commitment from the government and strong support from the opposition it has every chance of making it to the statute book.

And we need to continue to campaign to show that aid matters and remains a priority. This campaign will need to be in Parliament, and amongst the aid agencies and all those in every community who support our development aid.

The commitment is there in the manifestos of both the Tories and the Lib Dems, and it is in the coalition agreement. But that guarantees nothing.

Hardly a day goes by without their performing a dramatic u-turn. We don’t want to risk this being the next promise abandone d. And we want to make sure that the money spent is genuinely on poverty reduction, and it is not diverted for other purposes. So we will be holding them to account for how development money is spent.

But overseas aid is not just what is done, importantly, by government. It is also what is done by individuals.

We have great heroes of international development – like Bill and Melinda Gates, like Bono and Bob Geldof. The leadership and inspiration they provide cannot be overstated.

But there are also the hundreds of thousands of people up and down this country who send money back to their family or their village, in their country of origin. I call them the “hidden heroes of international development”. People living in my constituency who come from Sierra Leone, Nigeria or Ghana who are living here and working hard. Sometimes doing more than one job, like office cleaning. As well as paying their taxes and providing for their family, they also send money back to their home country.

When we were in government we worked to make that easier – including helping transfers using mobile phone technology.

But I think we can and should do much more to support remittances. It is right that we help those who are giving. Especially as often it is those on low incomes. It is right that we recognise and support what they are doing. And we want to work with you, with the diaspora communities, and with the financial services sector to develop a new policy on remittances.

I think that as Labour’s team on international development, we also have an important role in supporting the development of the new UN Women’s Agency. Gordon Brown played a key part in getting it set up and it is now headed by the brilliant Michelle Bachelet – who was Chile’s first woman president.

The UK was one of the countries that were instrumental in establishing the new agency and it is right that we continue to support it. A key focus o f the Millennium Development Goals is women’s health and girls’ education; and the agenda for women and girls is central to the government’s development agenda.

The new government is committed to the Agency, but with a men-only DFID ministerial team and a men-only Foreign Office ministerial team there is a limit to how they can contribute to women and girls’ empowerment. This is something they really must sort out.

We are challenging them to ensure that they make some changes and ensure that at least one of the DFID ministers is a woman. It really is not good enough for Britain to be sending a men-only team around the world talking about the empowerment of women and girls in developing countries. The government must walk the talk. Patriarchal politics has no place in 21st century Britain.

Hitherto, countries working together has been the responsibility of men. Men leaders, men Finance Ministers, men Foreign Secretaries. There was no alternative – as th ere were only men in government. But now across the world there are strong women everywhere, in parliaments and in governments– and now is a real chance to make progress on supporting women; by women working together internationally.

With the new UN Women’s Agency we have the forum to do that. One of its most important roles is to back up women representatives. Who will fight hardest for the maternal health care of the woman in the village of Northern Nigeria? The woman in the Nigerian state legislature. Who will fight hardest for the woman in the village in Bangladesh to be able to keep her daughter in school? The woman in the Bangladesh Parliament.

When I meet my sisters in the Parliaments of Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania – as I have over the years – I admire their determination, I see their progress and I believe they are they best hope for the women and girls in their countries. The UN Women’s Agency will back them up in their work.

It will be import ant for all women in every country in every continent. But it is essential for the UN too. It will show that the progress and change for women and girls in all our countries is mirrored by progress in change in the UN itself. The creation of UN Women must serve to be testament to the UN’s commitment to women and recognition that empowering women is essential for development. It will send a powerful signal to women struggling against the odds that the UN is indeed on their side.

And in the way it works, it must serve to help the women who are coming forward on international work. It can draw on the involvement of the women who are now there – as they weren’t some years ago – in every country’s UN mission.

And it must show women themselves making the decisions by having an executive board dominated by women. We cannot have succeeded in the struggle to have a new UN Women’s Agency only to discover that its governing board is men. That would be to contradict everything that it stands for. And the executive board should reach out beyond women in the UN missions and women in governments, and include women in civil society organisations.

UN Women also needs the resources to deliver for women and girls on the ground through its own programmes. It cannot work just through influencing other UN agencies. The UK government says it cannot set out its contribution until their aid review is over. That simply isn’t good enough. Decisions are being made now and we must play our part up front.

Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and we are calling on the government to make a ministerial appointment of a woman to carry on the work that Glenys Kinnock was doing when we were in government – a role you campaigned for. She led the UK’s work on tackling violence against women overseas and she did a great job. The first time such an appointment had been made in the UK. That was important leadership and the government must continue it.

This is against a background where the UN Population Fund reported that one in three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or abused; and when in the Democratic Republic of Congo, it is more dangerous to be a woman than to be a soldier.

Violence against women and girls is not only a violation of their human rights but it undermines development when girls fear the journey to school, men won’t let their wives work and women are afraid for their safety if they stand for election.

If we are going to achieve the Millennium Development Goals we need to invest in women and girls.

I am grateful to have had the opportunity today to have spoken of my concern on the fragility of the 0.7% promise, mapped out some of my thoughts on the Women’s Agency and touched on the issue of remittances.

Along with my shadow ministerial team, Mark Lazarowicz MP and Rushanara Ali MP, we will also be focussing on o ur other 3 priorities:

Trade, tax and global growth strategies which help developing countries.

The role of development in conflict prevention and in conflict affected states.

And making sure that the needs of developing countries are at the heart of the battle on climate change.

There is huge commitment, passion and expertise amongst my Labour colleagues in Parliament on these issues. We will be working as a team and with you as we determine to make sure that the UK continues to be an international leader in helping the world’s poorest lift themselves out of poverty.