Tom Watson « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘Tom Watson’

Saturday News Review

04/09/2010, 08:34:40 AM

Coulson & Cameron under pressure

Ed Miliband, the Labour leadership contender, said: “These are very serious allegations. If I was prime minister and Andy Coulson was working for me I would demand to know from Andy Coulson the truth. I don’t see how he can stay working in Downing Street unless he clears this up and says whether his former colleagues are telling the truth or not.” The News of the World said: “The New York Times story contains no new evidence – it relies on unsubstantiated allegations from unnamed sources or claims from disgruntled former employees that should be treated with extreme scepticism given the reasons for their departures from this newspaper. We reject absolutely any suggestion there was a widespread culture of wrongdoing at the News of the World.” – The Guardian

Alan Johnson said he had felt “uncomfortable” about the investigation into the News of the World by the Metropolitan Police while serving as Gordon Brown’s home secretary. It has been alleged that the Met deliberately chose not to inform MPs, celebrities and public figures, including senior police officers, that their phones may have been hacked. Mr Johnson said the case could now be taken up by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, which oversees the work of the police. “There may now be a case for the Home Secretary to ask the HMIC to investigate,” he said, adding he would use ex-ministers’ privileges to inspect the files. – The Telegraph

Hackers illegally tapped a mobile phone belonging to Tessa Jowell at least 28 times while she was a serving cabinet minister, it emerged last night. Until now, Ms Jowell, the former Culture Secretary, has not spoken publicly about the phone-tapping scandal. The scale of the hacking of a serving Cabinet minister’s telephone was uncovered by detectives who had been looking into the tapping of Prince Harry’s mobile phone. – The Independent

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Tom Watson’s letter to Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson

03/09/2010, 02:20:04 PM

Sir Paul Stephenson

Commissioner

Metropolitan Police Service

New Scotland Yard

Broadway

London

SW1H 0BG

03 September 2010

Dear Mr Stephenson,

I write as a Member of Parliament, a former cabinet office minister and a member of the culture, media and sport select committee which took evidence last year from Andy Coulson and Les Hinton about the News of the World’s illegal phone hacking operations.

The Metropolitan Police’s historic and continued mishandling of this affair is bringing your force, and hence our democracy, into disrepute.

Former assistant commissioner Brian Paddick has requested a judicial review of the Metropolitan Police’s investigation (or lack of it – we do not know) into his phone being hacked by newspapers while he was a serving officer. This is extraordinary.

Indeed, it would appear that the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) may have deliberately withheld from this serving senior officer the information that his phone had been hacked. Please confirm whether this is true.

The phone of a serving Metropolitan Police commissioner was also on a list of numbers intended to be hacked by newspapers. It has been reported that an MPS investigation established that his phone had not been hacked. Please confirm whether this is true.

If it is, please confirm whether the phone of every other name on any list found of numbers intended to be hacked was also investigated.

If not, please confirm who decided, according to what criteria and on what authority which names to investigate and which to ignore.

Today it has emerged that another senior MPS officer, Michael Fuller, was also on Glen Mulcaire’s list. Please confirm how many MPS officers were on lists of names to be illegally hacked, which were investigated and which were notified.

Much anger and concern centres on your force’s failure to inform people that their names had been found on these lists. Please confirm exactly how many names were on Mulcaire’s and any other lists.

Many Members of Parliament were on these lists. The Metropolitan Police has strongly implied that all Members of Parliament so targeted had been informed. This was not true. Please confirm how many Members of Parliament were on the lists.

Please confirm who decided which Members of Parliament to notify, according to what criteria and on what authority.

Please confirm, in all other cases, who selected which victims should be notified, on what criteria, on what authority and who else had any requisite knowledge?

Please confirm who went to seize the materials, where are these materials stored, and what processes do the Met go through when answering letters and enquiries about these materials?

The New York Times allege key evidence was withheld from the Crown Prosecutions Service. Please confirm that all evidence was provided to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Your conduct of this matter is being scrutinised all over the world. So far, it is bringing shame – as has News International – on our country.

I await your early response.

Yours sincerely

Tom Watson

Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East

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Tom Watson on what the New York Times says Andy Coulson knew

02/09/2010, 05:48:51 PM

A fresh investigation by the New York Times has produced evidence about the News International phone hacking scandal which contradicts that given to the culture, media and sport select committee, of which I am a member, last summer.

Andy Coulson – the former editor of the News of the World who is now David Cameron’s director of communications at 10 Downing Street – told the Parliamentary enquiry that he had no knowledge of phone hacking, which was limited to rogue reporters.

Les Hinton, the former chief executive of News International who now runs Dow Jones, assured Parliament that Coulson was telling the truth; and that he himself knew equally little.

The New York Times found otherwise. “The litigation (between victims of phone hacking and News International) again is beginning to expose just how far the hacking went, something that Scotland Yard did not do. In fact, an examination based on police records, court documents and interviews with investigators and reporters shows that Britain’s revered police agency failed to pursue leads suggesting that one of the country’s most powerful newspapers was routinely listening in on its citizens.” (more…)

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Tuesday News Review

24/08/2010, 08:10:30 AM

Burnham blitz on ‘metropolitan elite’ continues

“Work experience internships, which often serve as a middle-class passport to good jobs, should be restricted to a maximum of three months, be paid the minimum wage and be required by law to be advertised, Andy Burnham says today as he steps up his Labour leadership campaign against self-perpetuating “metropolitan elites”. In his determination to tackle Britain’s stalled social mobility Burnham also promises to explore the options for graduates to get “extended access to student finance” to see them through low-paid work experience that would help them into their chosen careers”. – The Guardian

Ed Miliband doesn’t seem to disagree with Andy

“He also dismisses any suggestion that his backing from the three biggest trade unions risks reviving an impression of a Labour leader in the pocket of Unite. “I’m not defending everything the trade unions do, nor would I as Labour leader. I don’t think we’re about to go back to the 1970s, and I’m not planning to take us there. But I do defend the role of trade unions in our society. And I think it’s surprising that that’s surprising, coming from someone who wants to be leader of the Labour party. Politics has basically become a middle-class pursuit – a London-middle-class pursuit, detached from ordinary people’s lives – and it’s actually the link with the trade unions which helps make us relevant to people’s lives.” – The Guardian

Cameron urged to break holiday to back cup bid

“David Cameron faced calls to return from his holiday today to show the proper level of support for England’s 2018 World Cup bid. Tom Watson, who sits on the Commons Culture, Media and Sport select committee said: “We want to put on a good show for the bid but the government is fielding the B-Team. It’s a very poor show.” – The Daily Mail

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The Week Uncut

22/08/2010, 03:18:59 PM

That most exuberantly brilliant of newspaper prose stylists, Frank Johnson, used to write an annual column arguing that it is not true that nothing ever happens in August.

Well it is certainly not true on Uncut. We have had one of the best weeks of our three month life under the guest editorship of blogger extraordinaire and MP par excellence, Tom Watson.

He attracted such a dizzying array of beltway bigshots and blogosphere behemoths that the acute contributions of star political writers such as John Kampfner and Vincent Moss are not even reproduced below.

We can scarcely thank Bro. Watson enough. He ran the Uncut team ragged, for responding so admirably to which they also deserve appreciative recognition.

More, he broadened and enlivened our offering. For which we restate, one last time, our gratitude on behalf of our readers: thanks Tommy.

Below is a bigger than usual selection of the better-read contributions to an outstanding week on Uncut.

Tom Harris tells it predictably straight

John Underwood on a one-off wealth tax

Pat Kane on playgrounds

Eric Joyce on a new defence review

Aaron Porter on higher education

Billy Bragg on tactical voting

Dan Hodges on immigration

Sally Bercow on fessing up

Paul Bower on his difficult relationship with Labour

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What must the new leader do to win, asks guest editor Tom Watson

16/08/2010, 09:00:35 AM

“To lead a political party you must first establish whether the party wishes to be lead.”

These are the alleged words of Neil Kinnock in the bad old days of the 1980s. The reassuring message to the thousands of Labour members who hold our great party together is that the parliamentary Labour party wishes to be lead. This has not been the case after previous election defeats. The party faced extinction in the years after 1979. In 2010 our MPs, the new intake in particular, are murderous in their desire to win.

For every day that the fragmented group of charismatic individualists running the country continue to stumble from one sporadic decision to the next, the more the lust for victory grows amongst the best intake of MPs I’ve known in my lifetime.

Whoever wins the leadership election will inherit a parliamentary party with a killer instinct. They are backed up by a party on the ground that is newly rejuvenated by the audacity of David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

The challenge for our new leader is to harness the energy, focus the attack, build a new vision that challenges the notion of a “big society” and the spurious new politics of the coalition.

So my question to Uncut readers this week is a simple one: what has the new leader got to do to win? If you think you have the answer to this question, or even a partial solution, then I want to hear from you.

Our former general secretary Peter Watt kicks off the discussion. Peter argues that in failing to elect a leader in July, we are already missing out on the opportunity to characterise the opposition as lacking vision. Worse still, we are allowing them to destroy our legacy by besmirching our economic record. Peter carried a heavier load than he deserved for the Labour party. It is to his credit that he still cares enough about the party to worry about our future.

Tom Watson is the MP for West Bromwich East, a blogger and guest editor of Labour Uncut.

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The week Uncut

14/08/2010, 05:31:17 PM

Opposition is almost 100 days old. Fingers and toes are needed to tot up the number of Con/Lib gaffes. Even the summer recess hasn’t slowed down the u-turns. But where are the punches, where are the jabs? The party needs a leader. Roll on September.

It was all about who got what this week. Lots of the little people gave Ed M their hard-earned, some more of Tony’s mates slipped Dave a few, the self titled ‘master storyteller’ wrote a big one for Ed B, a footballer kicked in for Andy’s bus fare, and one little candidate got none.

In case you missed them, here are half a dozen of Uncut’s best read pieces of the last seven days:

How they got here: the leadership candidates Parliamentary selections

Is Vince off to the knacker’s yard?

Dan Hodges asks what happened to the Brownites?

Paul Corby remembers the Clyde-built man

Battling on in opposition: Tom Watson’s report on ministerial cars

John Woodcock argues for radical public service reform

Make sure you tune in next week when Tom Watson takes the helm as guest editor.

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Next week’s guest editor: Tom Watson MP

13/08/2010, 07:00:06 PM

Uncut’s guest editor next week will be former Labour minister and sitting MP for West Bromwich East, Tom Watson.

The second British MP to start blogging (in 2003), he has emerged in the three months since the election as the most vigorous backbench scourge of the Tory-Lib Dem government.

Uncut will not be safe in his hands. But the management team has made a judgment that he is unlikely to break it in a week.

To the limited extent that it is possible to do them simultaneously: pay attention, and run for cover.

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Battling on in opposition: Tom Watson’s report on ministerial cars

09/08/2010, 07:59:21 PM

Leading anti-government aggressor Tom Watson MP’s latest crop of parliamentary questions is ready for harvest. His efficiency report checks up on the promised reductions to the ministerial car service, something the Tory-Liberal government had crowed would be kept to a minimum.

Ministerial cars have always been hard to defend. And in the age of ostensible governmental austerity they are particularly so. Watson has estimated that if the coalition kept their word on reductions, they could be saving the public £6.2 million a year. But if you go by Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan’s interpretation of ‘we’re all in this together’, one of three cars will be waiting outside your house to take you to work tomorrow (even though poor junior minister David Jones will be getting the bus from now on). (more…)

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Tom Watson describes the moment that he lost it with Gove

09/07/2010, 11:30:45 AM

In the Commons chamber on Wednesday, Labour MP Tom Watson denounced Tory education secretary Michael Gove in terms so furious that he was obliged to withdraw them. It is already becoming a celebrated moment. One in which real anger at this government’s arrogance seemed, for the first time, to be articulated on our behalf.

If you haven’t seen it, you should first watch the video here. Then read Tom’s account, below, of how he got into that state.

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