Question Time: How May 2011 Stacked Up
I have finally got around to updating the Question Time spreadsheet to include April and May. Now that we are at the end of May I thought I might indulge in another pointless exercise in giving a run-down of the appearances this month.
There were four editions. All four featured a Labour and a Conservative representative. Three featured a Liberal Democrat representative. There were 11 parliamentarians in total, with Paddy Ashdown being the only peer. No “smaller” parties were represented.
Of news organisations, LBC, The Independent and The Daily Mail were all represented, so a nice balance there I guess.
All four editions were in England. One in London.
Since the General Election 2010 (which seems as fair a starting point as any) the May panellists have appeared the following times:
- Four: Vince Cable, Andy Burnham (one previous was Labour leadership special), Douglas Murray.
- Three: Melanie Phillips, Shami Chakrabarti.
- Two: Paddy Ashdown, Ken Clarke, Jack Straw, Philip Hammond, Max Mosley, Christopher Meyer, Jeremy Browne.
- One: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, David Blunkett, Anna Soubry (first ever), James O’Brien (first ever), Charlotte Harris (first ever), Hilary Benn, Louise Bagshawe (first ever).
Diane Abbott still holds the top place in the leaderboard with five appearances in total (though, again, one of those was the Labour leadership special). Vince Cable, Andy Burnham and Douglas Murray join Simon Hughes and Caroline Flint in second place. Lucky them.
JAMH and CTB, by JDL
Yesterday, the Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Birmingham Yardley, John Hemming took it upon himself to name the individual known in court proceedings as “CTB” under the protection of Parliamentary Privilege.
Many, on Twitter and elsewhere, have proclaimed this to be a victory of freedom of expression and for liberalism. The press can print the details of the affair and we can all be richer and wiser for knowing about it. The unelected judiciary has been thwarted in their attempts to make up the rules as they go along.
Except they didn’t make up the rules as they go along. The judiciary, in this case Justice Eady, have worked within the legislative framework that Parliament has passed to them in the form of the Human Rights Act 1998. Parliament was aware of the gap and conflict between Articles 8 (the right to a private life), 10 (freedom of speech) and 12 (freedom of expression) yet passed the bill anyway. Lord Irvine, then Lord Chancellor, stated that he “expected that the judges would develop the law appropriately having regard to the requirements of the Convention.” (583 House of Lords Official Reports (5th Series) col 771 cited in Errera (2009) at 385) Which is what Eady J and other members of the judiciary have done.
The conflict is in the legislation passed by Parliament and the judiciary have fulfilled their role in passing such judgements. If Mr Hemming, or others, wish to change this then they have the means to do so through enacting legislation, which is what John Whittingdale MP has suggested. Nick Clegg, to his credit, has distanced himself from John Hemming in stating that:
I don’t think anyone should be above the rule of law. And if we don’t like the law in this place then we should act as legislators to change the law, not flout it.
If the electorate dislike it then they have the right to make their voices heard and act accordingly at the ballot box. In using Parliamentary Privilege to name CTB John Hemming has indicated that he is not interested in going through the proper procedures to change the law and is therefore not willing to work within the democratic framework that we have in this country.
Furthermore, I do not appreciate the notion that the press should be able to publish whatever information they want. While, yes, we should support freedom of speech and expression that should not come at a cost to and individual’s right to a private life. Freedom of speech is not the only component to liberty and liberalism. What good is being able to publish whatever one wants when others feel as though they are limited in what they can and cannot do for fear of their life being interfered with, as it has been in this case.
Liberalism does not merely exist to promote the existence of positive rights (such as the freedom of speech/expression) but also the equally important negative rights (freedom from intrusion, interference or restraint). The gain that News International has from being able to publish this story is outweighed by the harm to the individual’s right to a private life and to his liberty.
The Human Rights Act is a good thing, in my opinion, and one of the things that I hope the Liberal Democrat leadership never cede to our Conservative colleagues. John Hemming’s speech in the Commons yesterday was an affront to it, to our judiciary, to the democratic process that instituted it and to liberalism itself. He did not act for liberal democracy but for naked self-opportunism. And for Rupert Murdoch.
Question Time and The Myth of Bias
Last week, prompted by a tweet by @graemearcher, I decided to waste my time compiling a spreadsheet of the different panellists BBC’s Question Time have used since the beginning of 2010. @markinreading has already compiled a list of the BBC’s pet panellists. Caroline Lucas, whose presence on the panel last week sparked this exercise, is a close second place with four appearances while being beaten by the frontrunners, UKIP’s on-again/off-again leader, Nigel Farage and former editor of The Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie.
In the spreadsheet I have attempted to make it as comprehensive as possible so that one can try and determine any lurking biases that the programme’s editors have attempted to sneak in. However, so as to (hopefully) avoid any claims on Twitter of my own bias, I have tried to limit the party column to declared and widely known affiliations (such as Alistair Campbell). Easy enough for those who take, or have taken, a whip or salary, but harder in other cases. I did contemplate trying to do a left/right column, but where does one then put the likes of Nick Griffin, Nick Clegg and Tony Blair? Such a silly distinction so I didn’t include it.
All that said, with the exclusion of the Labour Leadership Special of 16th September, the Conservatives have racked up 30 appearances since the General Election; Labour, 36; the Liberal Democrats, 23; the Scottish Nationalists (always represented by Nicola Sturgeon), 3; Plaid Cymru, 3; UKIP (Nigel Farage), 3; and Greens (Caroline Lucas and the Scottish Green, Patrick Harvie), 4. Labour is most often represented by Caroline Flint or Diane Abbott (though I imagine the whips prefer the former); the Liberal Democrats by their Deputy Leader, Simon Hughes; while the Conservatives have no frontrunner.
The news publication whose columnists/journalists/editors are the most frequent guests are the New Statesman and The Daily Mail, both with 4 appearances (though that does not include Peter Hitchens for The Mail on Sunday) The Telegraph and The Telegraph on Sunday have, combined, 4. The Sun has 3; The Spectator, 2; and The Guardian has 2 (and one of those is Amanda Platell, hardly typical Guardian stock). Kelvin MacKenzie and Mehdi Hassan have both clocked up 3 appearances each. @melonhead999 will no doubt be pleased to hear that Private Eye‘s Ian Hislop has only made one appearance.
In the battle of the Commons versus the Lords, MPs have been featured 70 times, while their Lordships have made 10 appearances. A point to note is based on individuals who are MPs or peers at the time of transmission. Susan Kramer’s appearance after her ejection from the Commons and before her elevation to the Lords means her appearance does not rack up a point for either team. MSPs have a total of 5; AMs, 4; and MEPs, 3 (all Nigel Farage).
Of course, you could just go and read the spreadsheet yourself.
A Lesson from Canada on Drink Pricing
This morning’s stories from Labour and the Conservatives with regard to alcohol pricing and curbing the problem of the drinking culture in our society seems unnecessarily focused entirely on alcohol itself. I have yet to find a mention of soft drink pricing. In bars, clubs and restaurants in both Canada and the United States (and others as well, I presume) soft drinks are offered for free. In those establishments where the initial purchase is not free, one still has access to free refills. The main reason given, at least the one provided while I lived in Canada, was that this was an attempt to curb drink/driving. So why has this not been implemented in the UK and why are there still no moves towards it in this latest set of proposals?
Before I continue any further I should say that I am teetotal, and so these would maybe benefit me more than most, but that doesn’t detract from the following and that I believe it still applies.
For admission into many clubs in Canada, when entering in a group, they will ask who is acting as the designated driver for the evening. Should the group be driving, the individual driving will be given something equivalent to a wristband, denoting their status. This band will, in my experience, get you free soft drinks at the bar, and those wearing the band will be refused alcohol should they ask for it.
Currently, if one wants to have a drink in a pub or club in the UK, the price of things such as lemonade, Coke or orange juice is typically not that much cheaper than purchasing a pint of beer, a glass of wine or some form of alcopop. In Wetherspoons, a pint of Coke will cost £1.60; a pint of Greene King IPA, 99p; a 125ml glass of wine, also 99p; and a measure of Gordon’s gin with mixer, again 99p. When in Paris, it was cheaper to buy glasses of wine than a glass of Coke or Sprite. With pricing such as this, it makes only a slight difference financially to opt for soft drinks over an alcoholic drink, or even incentivises alcohol purchases over soft drinks. If one makes soft drinks free, then the appeal becomes greater. Tap water is, of course, free but varies between tasting awful and merely bland, depending on where one is in the country or even which part of town. By offering a more varied alternative we may see lower consumption of alcohol.
Not only does this help with regard to drink/driving, but can also help curb the problems in bars and nightclubs of making every drink alcoholic. If those going out instead have an option of other drinks for free, then it might see lower consumption of alcohol. It will help rehydrate people, encourage revellers to pace themselves and assist in sobering up those who have maybe had too much.
The problem in instituting such a policy would be getting clubs and pubs to institute it. The actual cost of implementing it is negligible given the price of the syrup used in such drinks. Currently, there is a large profit to be made on soft drinks and so businesses would be understandably hesitant to give that up. One article states that restaurants, pubs and hotels routinely charge up to three times more for soft drinks than supermarkets, whereas the mark-up for beer is much less. Additionally, the wholesale cost of the syrup used in such drinks puts the cost as negligible (I have heard, but cannot find, that it is about 0.1p for each pint in terms of syrup). If the state is happy with raising minimum price on alcohol (which I agree with) then we could mandate free soft drinks with licensing for pubs. The current drinking culture cannot continue, and provides a drain on resources and an unpleasant atmosphere in our town centres around midnight. Implementing this policy would be beneficial to the country and our increasingly anti-social town centres with minimal strain on businesses.
Currently working for Dods and formerly a politics and law student, Jason is an amateur actor, Liberal Democrat, Toastmaster and web developer. He likes tulips and pineapples.
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