Extract from oral answer (Lords) on BBC: Freedom of Information
Legislation Lord Polak (Con): My Lords, if the new team at the BBC
want to return it to the British Broadcasting Corporation we have
been so proud of, and are sincere in their wish to draw a line
under the past, does the Minister agree that they should also
apologise for spending hundreds of thousands of pounds of public
funds keeping the Balen report secret? This report was commissioned
to investigate biased BBC reporting of...Request free trial
Extract from oral answer
(Lords) on BBC: Freedom of Information Legislation
(Con): My Lords, if the new team at the BBC
want to return it to the British Broadcasting Corporation we have
been so proud of, and are sincere in their wish to draw a line
under the past, does the Minister agree that they should also
apologise for spending hundreds of thousands of pounds of public
funds keeping the Balen report secret? This report was commissioned
to investigate biased BBC reporting of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What are they hiding
and what are they afraid of? Will she urge the BBC to be completely
transparent and honest and publish the findings?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Digital, Culture, Media and Sport () (Con):
I absolutely acknowledge my noble friend’s wish to see
transparency in all regards. The Government absolutely agree that
the BBC should be a beacon in setting standards and that the recent
Dyson report, in particular, showed that in some instances it has
fallen far short.
Extract from Commons
debate on UK Defence Spending
(Islington North) (Ind):...The nuclear
non-proliferation treaty was set up with the idea of preventing the
proliferation of nuclear weapons, and it has had some successes in
that through nuclear weapons-free zones in Africa, central Asia,
Latin America and others that are proposed, but it has not been so
successful in persuading the declared nuclear weapons states or the
non-declared, but “no nuclear weapons” states such as India,
Pakistan, North Korea and Israel to take part fully in the
principles of the NPT...
...There was an article yesterday in the i about some of the
survivors of the nuclear tests on Bikini Atoll in 1954. Many died
from cancers as a result of those tests, as indeed did many British
nuclear test veterans as a result of being forced to observe those
particular tests. Can we not instead start looking towards a future
where we play our part in trying to bring about a more peaceful
world? We as a country want to live in a peaceful world. The people
of this country want to live in a peaceful world. The people of
this country do not want to see soldiers underpaid, badly treated,
suffering mental health stress when they come out of the armed
forces and getting inadequate support for it, nor do they want to
see the privatisation of their facilities. They are proud when our
armed forces help to deal with Ebola or save people, desperate
refugees, drowning in seas around the world. They are proud of
that. Can we not move in a slightly different direction and start
looking not just at our own defence policy and the need to
diversify so much of our defence industry while protecting jobs
that are so important in different parts of the country, but also
recognise that when we sell arms to others, they get used? They get
used by Saudi Arabia to kill people in Yemen. They were used
by Israel in the recent bombing of
the Gaza strip. We need to think a bit more carefully and a bit
more seriously about that...
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