Press Regulation

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Deech]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they expect the new system of press regulation set out in the royal charter agreed on 30 October to be implemented.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

The appointments process for the chair and initial board members of the recognition panel can begin following the sealing of the charter, which we expect to occur shortly. The panel will be formally established from the date on which the chair and the initial members of the board of the recognition panel have been appointed. It is for the newspaper industry to design its own new self-regulator.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

Is the Minister not concerned that, more than a year after the Leveson report, we seem no nearer an improved system of redress and apology? Does he agree that the Government are presiding over an impasse? We have the worst of both worlds: there is no effective press regulation at the moment and, because of the undemocratic use of the royal charter as a tool, input and scrutiny into the system by this House have been blocked.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

The noble Baroness made a number of points. To start with the last one, the royal charter was felt in the end to be the appropriate route by all the parties, and by others more widely, precisely so that there was not seen to be any intrusion into the very valuable tenet that we should have a free press and freedom of expression. The architecture of Lord Justice Leveson was designed to have a new, independent, self-regulatory body and a recognition panel to oversee that body and to make sure that it adheres. It is for the self-regulatory body to apply or not—it will be voluntary. However, I do not think there is an impasse because there is an understanding that what we had before must never return.