Tony Baldry v. The Daily Telegraph
In the final week before the House of Commons rose for the 2004 summer recess, Tony Baldry MP made his 120th speech in the House of Commons since the General Election, presented a 35,000 signature petition to the Prime Minister on saving full children's services at the Horton General Hospital, and welcomed the Conservative Leader, Michael Howard MP, to Bicester where the Tory leader praised Tony Baldry for his hard fought campaign on the Bicester asylum accommodation centre.
However, as the House of Commons began the first week of summer recess the Daily Telegraph published an article attacking around 30 Conservative Members of Parliament, including backbenchers and Frontbench spokesmen, alleging they were "parliamentary bedblockers" by failing to contribute to Commons debates and harry Ministers at question time, and blaming them for the perceived under performance of the Conservatives.
The article in the Daily Telegraph also attacked a handful of Members of Parliament for making interventions on the parliamentary debate about Lord Butler's report on the intelligence used for the case against war in Iraq.
Of the 58 interventions made by Members of Parliament during the three Party Leaders speeches, the Daily Telegraph alleged that by contributing to this important parliamentary debate three of the MPs were "underperforming". Tony Baldry, who has consistently opposed the reasons for going to war in Iraq, was included on this list after he highlighted the critical remarks on the war made by the Prime Minister's former special envoy to Iraq at a recent select committee meeting chaired by the MP.
His intervention on Michael Howard is set out below in full:
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): Has my right hon. and learned Friend seen the evidence of Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who says: "with hindsight the proper preparations were not made for what evolved on the ground in Iraq . . . relative deficiency in analysis and prediction of what was going to happen created effects in the immediate post-conflict period which allowed a much worse security situation to evolve than should have been the case"? Of course, Sir Jeremy was, at the material time, our ambassador to the United Nations.
Mr. Howard: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding me of that. He is, of course, quite right and so was Sir Jeremy Greenstock.
The Daily Telegraph claimed that it had evidence "according to come Tories" that this was an "unhelpful intervention" for Michael Howard. The newspaper also inferred that Tony Baldry was also a "bedblocker" despite the newspaper admitting that "your [Tony Baldry] activity in the areas we highlighted showed that you were not among the worst performers".
Tony Baldry made a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission about the Daily Telegraph story, which Michael Howard described as nonsense.
In particular, Tony Baldry pointed to a subsequent diary piece in the Daily Telegraph which attributed comments to him that he had never made, and were not his sentiments. The Daily Telegraph later admitted to the PCC that these quotes were not made by Tony Baldry and apologised for its "sloppy piece of cutting and pasting between computer files".
Tony Baldry also outlined how the Daily Telegraph had confused news with opinion, particularly given that the newspaper at one stage admitted that the criticism of Tony Baldry were "in our [the newspaper's] opinion". And not "according to some Tories".
Tony Baldry further noted that when the newspaper had drawn up a table of "bedblockers", he had been deliberately omitted because his record demonstrated his regular contributors to Commons debates and that he is amongst one of the most active MPs in questioning Ministers.
The Daily Telegraph later admitted that the MP’s "activity in the areas we highlighted showed that you were not among the worst performers" and the House of Commons Library confirm that:
- Of 658 MPs, Tony Baldry is the 48th most likely to ask an oral question in Parliament.
- Of 659 MPs, Tony Baldry is the 43rd most likely to make a speech in Parliament.
- Tony Baldry has made over 122 speeches since the start of the 2001 Parliament. The average for all MPs is 21 speeches.
Tony Baldry is also one of a handful of MPs to be a cross-party Select Committee Chairman, for which he won an award last year after a vote of all MPs.
During the PCC's enquiry, the Daily Telegraph offered to consider publishing a letter from Tony Baldry to put the record straight. Tony Baldry declined the offer given that it came almost ten weeks after the original article and, moreover, the Daily Telegraph had refused to publish such a letter by either himself or the Chairman of the North Oxfordshire Constituency Association at the time the article was published.
The PCC criticised the Daily Telegraph for the "significant error" which the newspaper had made on the diary piece, but said that the offer of the letter by the Daily Telegraph over two months after the article was published satisfied its terms of reference.
The PCC also concluded that by omitting Tony Baldry on the table of bedblockers, the Daily Telegraph had not explicitly inferred that Tony Baldry was a "bedblocker" and that on this basis the complaint fell outside its terms of reference.
Tony Baldry has thanked the PCC for the way in which it has speedily dealt with this matter.
