Mr Speaker, we are not honourable ladies and gentlemen

Mr Speaker, we are not honourable ladies and gentlemen.

Let us look back to the Queen's speech debate on 13 May, concerning the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill. At one point the deputy speaker suggested that the member for Warrington North really intended to insert an "inadvertently" in her claim that the Secretary of State had misled the House. Might I suggest that she should have done no such thing?

*

The shadow education secretary had observed that it was "concerning... that the Minister for Universities was forced to admit on radio yesterday that this flawed legislation could have dangerous and troubling consequences, including potentially protecting holocaust deniers", to which the secretary of state responded rather histrionically in an intervention that "The Universities Minister never said that this would protect holocaust deniers".

But, as the shadow secretary of state was able to demonstrate by quoting a transcript of the programme, she did.

"The Universities Minister says: 'What this bill is designed to do is to protect and promote free speech which is lawful so any free speech which is lawful...'

The interviewer, Evan Davis, says: 'It is lawful isn’t it? Holocaust denial in this country is lawful isn’t it?'

The Minister says: 'So what I’m saying, yeah, so that’s...'

Evan Davis asks: 'So holocaust denial is okay, you’d defend a holocaust denier being invited to campus because that is part of the free speech argument?'

The Minister responds: 'Obviously it would depend on exactly what they were saying'."

To which the shadow secretary of state responded, "Madam Deputy Speaker, it never depends on what a holocaust denier is saying".

Mr Speaker, we might have ahead of us a long series of debates in committee, to ensure that holocaust deniers are handled correctly, but the simple fact in dispute here - that the Universities Minister told the Radio 4 audience that the bill would protect such a person - is resolved. She did, the secretary of state was wrong, and therefore he did mislead the house.

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By contrast, there are occasions when the mistake perhaps is inadvertent. In PMQs on 28 April the Prime Minister claimed: "it is this Conservative Government who have built 244,000 homes in the last year, which is a record over 30 years". I can remember several ministers making the same mistake - Lord Pickles when he was a minister in David Cameron's government for example, or the Right Honourable member for Maidenhead when she was Prime Minister.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government publishes a series of documents which allow us to answer these questions quite easily. The figure 244,000 seems to come from the one entitled "Housing supply; net additional dwellings, England: 2019-20". Here we see that the number of net additional dwellings produced during 2019-2020 was 243,770, which is indeed a record for. . . the 29 years for which numbers are given. This number includes homes produced by conversions and change of use - and 9020 demolitions - as well as actual new homes, of which there were 220,600 in the year concerned.

Surely it is an inadvertent mistake that the prime minister - or his researcher - has taken the form of this answer from a series of old speeches and the latest important number from the front page summary of the statistics release. Surely.

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So, Mr Speaker, I would like us to be considered honourable ladies and gentlemen. I would like our voters to remark on it, and I would like not have to use the phrase in every other sentence to assert something that may not be true.

Cry "God for Boris, the Union (but Saint George)!"

For most of us it started with Charlie Stayt "savagely" poking fun at the size of Honest Bob Jenrick's flag on the BBC Breakfast programme. So savage was it that co-host Naga Munchetty had to hold back a giggle. But then, Honest Bob was also amused. Was he enjoying the joke? Did he think it was puerile? Or was something already brewing?

A year ago there would have been no flag there.

Naturally, there was an Outcry, with BBC director-general Tim Davie having to assure us that the Corporation is "proud of being British" and that the Union Jack will still fly over its headquarters. The two presenters were "spoken to" and the strict new BBC social media policy had Ms Munchetty apologising and withdrawing "likes" for tweets about the incident.

The following week, Tim Davie gave evidence to the Commons Public Accounts Committee, which keeps an eye on public spending. James Wild, Conservative MP for Northwest Norfolk (who happens to be married to the Leader of the House of Lords) appeared to be better briefed on one subject than the director-general.

"In your annual report last year…" he asked, "do you know how many Union flags featured in any of the graphics in those glossy pages?" Davie had to admit that he had no idea, at which Wild pounced. "It was zero. Do you find that surprising?".

Davie's response was reasonably accomplished: "No. I think that is a strange metric. One of [the] things I looked at when I came into the building this morning was a Union Jack flying proudly on Broadcasting House, as it does on many days of the year. I have travelled around the world championing the UK. I sit on the private sector council for the GREAT campaign*. I don’t think there is any problem with the BBC in terms of championing the UK and Britain abroad. We are incredibly proud of it. If you wander up Regent Street today, have a look at the Union Jack flying proudly on top of the BBC" but Wild continued with what I took to be a veiled threat: "It is always good to see the Union Jack flying, but in a 268-page report about the BBC - the British Broadcasting Corporation - my constituents would probably expect to see more than one flag appearing".

(* GREAT is "the UK government's most ambitious international promotional campaign, uniting the efforts of the public and private sector to generate jobs and growth for Britain and Northern Ireland".)

I mentioned pouncing above. Scientist and presenter Adam Rutherford was one of many who were quick to point out that James Wild wasn't exactly practising what he preached. There are no Union flags in the 2019 Conservative manifesto, which must be a surprise mustn't it Mr Wild?

What's more, he seemed to have forgotten to include any flags on his website, or his Facebook page (this could all have changed by now of course). Broadening out a little, Boris Johnson had forgotten to request any flags on his website, as had Prince Charles, Prince William, Visit Britain, the Houses of Parliament, the RAF, Brexit Party Ltd (now reborn as the collection bucket for Reform UK), the British Lions, the British Museum. . .

There were a few on the Great British Bake Off though (look for the bunting).

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Two days later an announcement came from the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The Union flag is now to be flown from government buildings every day "unless another flag is being flown" rather than just on special days. They told us exactly why, in case we had any doubt (spot the difference).

The Culture Secretary said: "The Union flag unites us as a nation and people rightly expect it to be flown above UK Government buildings. This guidance will ensure that happens every day, unless another flag is being flown, as a proud reminder of our history and the ties that bind us."

The Housing Secretary said "Our nation’s flag is a symbol of liberty, unity and freedom that creates a shared sense of civic pride. People rightly expect to see the Union Flag flying high on civic and Government buildings up and down the country, as a sign of our local and national identity."

The people expect this, apparently, and they are right to do so. Pretty heavy stuff, and there's more to come. There is also a dense paragraph laying out rules for flying more than one flag at once, which manages both to give the Middlesex county flag and the Scottish saltire equal status and to suggest that the EU flag needn't ever be flown, even if - say - the Council president Charles Michel is visiting.

****

That afternoon along came John Hayes (Conservative MP for South Holland and the Deepings in Lincolnshire) to explain it all on Radio 4's PM programme (available for 19 days as I write - the item begins at around 16 minutes and the interview around 19 minutes).

Hayes told the host, Evan Davis: "We had a meeting with the Common Sense Group of Conservative MPs, with Oliver Dowden, and asked for exactly this… You know, people would look at government buildings and think, why on earth aren't they flying the flag?"

Davis asked whether he was really convinced that "people" noticed that, but Hayes was in full flow: "I think we just don't fly our flag enough actually. If you go to other countries, to the capitals of other countries - not that we can do that at the moment of course - if you went to the capitals of other countries, around the heart of those capitals, particularly on government buildings, you routinely see the flag of that country flying." [slight logical leap] "So it does seem to be something that unifies the country, that brings us together, that allows us to share in our national pride. What's wrong with that?"

Davis pushed again: "I guess I'm interested in why we're doing this now. 'Cause there is an interpretation that there's a little bit of politics in this, as opposed to just national unity and a bit of patriotism. Which is, you know there are lots of people who are less into the flag waving than you are Sir John and that this is really designed to put Labour on the back foot and to make it an argument in which Keir Starmer's forced to kind of say 'we support flying the flag' or to say 'this is a silly thing', and that it's really about creating an argument in a culture war that we don't need to have." 

A gift to Hayes! "So you're suggesting - I just want to be clear about the question - you're suggesting that Labour aren't as patriotic, Labour aren't as proud of their country. That's quite a bold charge."

"No…" protested Davis, "I'm suggesting that they don't measure their patriotism as much around the flag as you do and that that is why - there's definitely a difference in flag values, isn't there? - …there are many people reacting to this very badly on social media for example, you can find people saying this is just a distraction, it's game-playing, it's kind of forcing it on people when it doesn't need… and I'm just trying to work out whether there's a bit of politics as well as your desire to see the flag flying more."

"Patriotism, you could argue, is a political thing, so you're right of course," admitted Hayes. "If you don't share my faith in the nation then you perhaps wouldn't take such a clear view about it. But totems and emblems matter, don't they? In every civilisation and every society. Totems and emblems, being symbols of unity matter. And so flying the flag is of course an aesthetic thing, but it's more than that. It's what it says about us as a people, and it is unifying, and it is a matter of pride and purpose, and I see that as a positive thing. It's interesting isn't it? In my lifetime, many more people display flags in their own homes, display flags outside the home, in the home. I think that's probably a good thing, not a bad thing."

Davis hadn't finished: "But Margaret Thatcher never did this, Margaret Thatcher never felt it necessary to kind of spell it out this way, did she? But she was a patriot wasn't she? She was as patriotic as anybody."

"She was indeed," but now Hayes was repeating himself.

"Just finally," Davis was winding up. "Around that issue of unifying, one wonders whether, in the press release, likening the saltire, the Scottish flag, to the Middlesex county flag and saying local flags can hang alongside... I wonder whether that will unify the people of Scotland in the way you intend."

Hayes was running out of energy: "We've just all completed our census haven't we? And I'm proud to be English and British, and I know many Scots feel exactly the same, Scottish and British… So I do think there's a desire for this, we want to illustrate our pride in locality and our pride in nation. And what a good thing that is."

Since Keir Starmer won't say it, may I suggest "this is a silly thing", and that "it's really about creating an argument in a culture war that we don't need to have". It's being set up as a test of patriotism, a test of legitimacy. Rejecting it "rightly" as invalid and unacceptable might mean I've failed the test in Conservative eyes, but I won't take "it is unifying, and it is a matter of pride and purpose" as an order.

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When I saw this one, (2 April) I knew the time was coming to stop. London's Evening Standard published a story which seemed to be about uniform/dress codes but also told us there was doubt about the leadership of the school. The headteacher had announced that the union flag, which "evokes often intense reactions" would not be flown during consultations.

"re-education camps for the insufficiently patriotic"? asked one reply, but Adam Rutherford was there again.

There's no flag on Mr Hunt's website, he pointed out, nothing on the constituency website, or Hunt's election manifesto, or the Ipswich Conservatives' site, or Hunt's Facebook page, or indeed the Ipswich Conservative headquarters.

Very much "do as I say, not what I do" again.

With God on our side

Does the Conservative party now think it has a monopoly of the Union flag? Does it think it needs one? Because now they're going for the Almighty as well.

These tweets have attracted many scornful replies and some truly angry protests at this presumption of morality, tweets about rich men and eyes of needles among them.

Again, this is aimed at Labour - painting them unpatriotic,ungodly and illegitimate - and with Starmer's ineffectual attempts at patriotism it might be enough to hold on to "red wall" voters who've been tempted by Honest Bob's Towns Fund goodies.

 

Happy anniversary?

The Union flag dates back to 1801 but its meaning has changed since then. The country I live in - the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - is 100 years old this year.

When he became Prime Minister in 2019, Boris Johnson gave himself the title Minister for the Union. He also commissioned a report on devolution from Lord Andrew Dunlop. This is now finished but - remind you of anything? - not yet published. One of its recommendations is reported to be the creation of a position titled "Secretary of State for Intergovernmental and Constitutional Affairs", a role which would be fulfilled by a Cabinet "big beast". If Johnson can find one.

If Boris Johnson is really serious about this, he could begin by publishing the Dunlop report, but why are we "looking forward to" a Festival of Brexit next year but not a Festival of the Union in 2021?

Bad information ruins lives - an email sent to BBC Radio 4 Feedback

Yesterday the report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities was published. It was immediately controversial, and the government would have expected that. The media were provided with some material from the report and the chair of the Commission was made available for interview. Was this good enough?

In the early part of the Today programme (around 6:35) the BBC home editor Mark Easton told Nick Robinson and the listeners that it was "slightly odd", and that "we're relying on selected lines which have been provided by the government". I saw two print/online journalists discussing the same thing on Twitter. The report itself was not to be published until 11:00, so all the listeners had to go on was (admittedly very relevant) interviews and several news items and introductions based on these "selected lines", but the "slight oddness" of that information was not mentioned at any other point in the programme.

Later that day, fact checkers FullFact published a comment by their chief executive Will Moy, lamenting this approach by government (and by media). "Will we accept these tactics again when the inquiry into how the coronavirus pandemic was handled is released?" he asked. "A favourable summary given press coverage while some convenient time later the rest of the report comes out?" He went on to propose "a parliamentary inquiry into the oversight of government communications to protect the good they do and the vital importance of good official information" and suggested "the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee [as] one of the possible routes to make that happen".

Former senior civil servant Jill Rutter responded "I also think it's up to journalists to refuse to report until the whole thing is available".

The sceptical audience's perception of government media management must be that information is released to prime the debate, ministers (or other approved speakers) are made available for the "morning shows" and then - far too often - everybody disappears when the report (or whatever) comes out later in the day.

I agree with Mr Moy, and sympathise with Ms Rutter (though which editor will hold back while others are running with the story?) and I would be grateful if you could get some comment from the editor or presenters of Today itself, as Radio 4's prime accomplice in/victim of these particular media management exercises.