Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl Attlee and Lord Black of Brentwood

Report: 3rd sitting Hansard: House of Lords
Wednesday 10th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I hope that for the last time on this Bill I declare my interest as executive director of the Telegraph Media Group, and I draw attention to my other media interests in the register.

Amendment 127A, which I shall speak to first, is, as we have heard, an attempt to bring in by statute part 2 of the Leveson inquiry, but of course it is not quite Leveson 2 because this time there is no inconvenient mention of the role in the events of the past of some politicians and the police, who are noticeably absent from the scope of this amendment. So the target is four-square the press, and I believe that those who back the amendment are happy cynically to sweep everything else under the carpet.

I have four points to make. First, another inquiry is completely unnecessary because there genuinely is nothing left to unearth which has not been gone into in microscopic and comprehensive detail and been covered during the years of inquiries and investigations, as my noble friend Lord Hailsham said. Yes, bad things went on in a small number of places, but the full force of the criminal and civil law leading to prosecutions and often eye-watering amounts of compensation, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, along with rigorous judicial and parliamentary inquiry, has been brought to bear on them.

We had Leveson part 1, which cost taxpayers £5.4 million at the height of austerity and cost the core participants many tens of millions of pounds in legal costs. We should remember that Leveson had judicial powers of inquiry greater than those given even to Chilcot, who was investigating an illegal war in which hundreds of thousands of people died. We have had three exhaustive police investigations, with more people working on them than investigated the bombing at Lockerbie, in which over 200 souls died, costing the same taxpayer another £43 million. We have had three parliamentary inquiries by Select Committees in another place, one into press regulation by our own Communications Committee and one by a Joint Committee. There was a forensic investigation by the United States Department of Justice into voicemail interceptions and payments by public officials, after which it declined to prosecute. There has also been an investigation here into corporate liability in relation to data offences. After detailed consideration of that, the DPP said that no action was to be taken.

I cannot think of a comparable situation where so much has been done to get to the truth. So it is little wonder that Sir Brian Leveson himself, in concluding a ruling in the course of part 1 on 1 May 2012, questioned its value, saying that it would,

“involve yet more enormous cost (both to the public purse and the participants); it will trawl over material then more years out of date and is likely to take longer”,

to complete. I agree with that.

It was said in Committee, and has been hinted at here, that one of the issues that needed to be looked at again was Operation Motorman, despite the fact that Leveson took evidence on it and made recommendations. However—this goes to the heart of the matter—that concerned journalistic activity prior to 2003, 15 years ago. Does anyone believe that going over all that material again will be in any way fruitful, especially when many of the people involved will have left the industry? Some of them have died, and at least some will have forgotten the circumstances around actions that took place at the turn of the century.

My second point is that since the events that were at the centre of Leveson 1 took place, there genuinely has been a sea change in the regulatory framework surrounding journalism and publishing, which makes an inquiry unnecessary. In the past five years, the Press Complaints Commission, of which I was once director, has been closed and IPSO put in its place. I do not think that this is the time for a debate about IPSO, but it is an organisation with real powers based in civil law, which means that it is a regulator able to extract real penalties, far removed from the conciliation service that the PCC offered. Perhaps not visible to the naked eye, IPSO has also brought about, as I know from personal experience, a huge transformation of the internal complaints handling and governance procedures of newspapers.

My noble friend Lord Attlee mentioned the arbitration scheme. He should know from checking his facts that IPSO does now offer a low-cost arbitration scheme. The claimant fee for an initial ruling is just £50—I do not think you can get much more low-cost than that—and a maximum of £100 if the full process is used.

[Earl Attlee]

And how many cases has it arbitrated?

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

The scheme has only just come in following a pilot, so we need to give it a bit of time to see whether it will take effect.

Building on the issue of public interest, my third point is that I do not believe the industry can afford the distraction of such a huge inquiry at a time when many parts of it are struggling for survival. On one level, there is the sheer cost. Leveson 1 cost the industry many tens of millions of pounds in legal fees and management time. Any follow-up inquiry of this sort would, as Sir Brian himself intimated, be even longer, even more complex in view of the time that has elapsed and even more expensive. Under the terms of the amendment, it would impact on every part of the media, including the local press and the magazine sector, which were completely cleared in Leveson 1. The amendment puts those proved innocent back in the dock. Indeed, its terms are so wide that it would even draw in the international media, such as Buzzfeed, Reuters and the Huffington Post, as well as broadcasters including the BBC. Quite apart from the cost, there is the profound distraction that it would entail for those who are seeking with great speed to change their business so that they can survive in the digital age.

The spectre of yet another inquiry is a toxic threat to a free and independent press. I have lost count of the number of times during the passage of this Bill I have heard from those who said it was appalling to suggest—which I never have—that they do not believe in press freedom; that they were champions of press freedom through and through. Maybe, but I say to them: if you will the ends, you have to will the means. Setting up this inquiry is absolutely not willing the means for the survival of the free media in this country.

The issue of tumultuous change leads me to my fourth point. This amendment points very much to the past, one long hauled over. I know that bad things went on but we should be desperately trying to point to the future. One problem with the first part of the Leveson inquiry was that it ignored the reality of the new media environment and global competition in news. The world that this amendment seeks to investigate has gone. We should be looking now at how we can support free media by working out how best to regulate the currently completely unregulated online platforms of Google and Facebook, rather than heaping yet more burdens on a part of the media that is more heavily regulated than anywhere in the western world, constantly scrutinised and buckling under serious commercial pressure. It is time to draw a halt to this and look to the challenges of the future.

I turn briefly to Amendments 147 and 148 in the name of my noble friend Lord Attlee, which attempt to bring in a version of Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013. These are deeply pernicious amendments and would, I say to my noble friend, have a destructive impact on our free press, not just national newspapers but the local press, the magazine and periodical business, and the international media. The so-called process of cost shifting, which lies at the heart of this, means that all newspapers and magazines not signed up to a state-approved regulator would be liable to pay for the other side’s costs in an action for a breach of data protection, whether they win or lose the case. Because data touches on virtually every aspect of the news operation—from the genesis of a report to its ultimate archiving—a legal action relating to almost any journalistic activity could be dressed-up in a way that would take advantage of this malignant law. It would open the floodgates to hundreds of baseless claims that would put the very existence of many newspapers, particularly the local press, in grave jeopardy.

The aim of this is to use the law to blackmail—I use the term advisedly—publishers into a system of state-approved regulation. Punishing newspapers for telling the truth as a ruse to impose such controls is wholly inimical to press freedom and alien to democracy. In the current situation, the problem is even worse because the faux regulator “approved” by the Press Recognition Panel is bankrolled by the anti-press campaigner Max Mosley. My noble friend Lord Attlee asked about state control. As he knows—he and I have talked about it—the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 gives this House the power to change the charter by a two-thirds majority. However, in many ways even that is a red herring, because Parliament can vote at any time to overturn that and change the terms of the royal charter in a way that would extend state control of the press.

Given that the publishing sector has made it clear that it will never join an approved regulator, this amendment would have the most profound impact across all journalism, but particularly on investigative reporting. It would give anyone who wanted to suppress a journalist’s inquiries a blank cheque to bring a legal action, knowing that they would not have to pick up the cost. Very few publications would ever let a case get to court because of the crippling costs involved, and would either have to stop investigating the moment that a legal action was threatened or be forced to apologise for printing something that was true. This would be particularly pertinent in investigations where there could be multiple legal actions. For instance, had this provision been in place, it would have been impossible for the Telegraph to conduct its investigation into MPs’ expenses—perhaps some Members of this House would be entirely happy about that.

For all publishers, there would be serious commercial consequences at a time when the vast majority of the industry is struggling. It is inevitable that some newspapers would go out of business as a result of just a handful of cases brought under my noble friend Lord Attlee’s amendment, with disastrous consequences for the plurality of the media. I wonder whether he really wants “Attlee’s Law”—as I have no doubt it would become known—to be responsible for closing newspapers, journalists losing their jobs and investigations being stopped in their tracks?

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl Attlee and Lord Black of Brentwood

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 6th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest in this group of amendments as executive director of Telegraph Media Group and draw attention to my other media interests in the register.

When I saw, not with a great deal of surprise, that this group of interlocking amendments relating to press regulation had been tabled—perhaps their second or third outing in as many years—I was reminded fleetingly of that famous line of President Reagan to Jimmy Carter in a presidential debate: “There you go again”. That is what this feels like. We have another Bill—with only the most tangential link to the media—and yet another attempt to hijack it to bring about some form of statutory press control. As the Times put it last week:

“The Data Protection Bill is meant to enhance protection of personal data. It is not meant to be a press regulation bill by another name”.


But this profoundly dangerous set of amendments seeks to warp the Bill in just that way.

Can we please be crystal clear about the impetus behind these amendments? It is certainly nothing to do with data protection. It is to try, yet again, to force the British press—national papers, regional and local papers, and magazines: in other words, everything from the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph to the Birmingham Mail, the Radio Times and Country Life—into a state-sponsored regulator, with virtually no members and no prospect of any, and almost wholly funded by the anti-press campaigner Max Mosley. Indeed, it is the very same regulator which was recently brought into disrepute when an internal report found that its chief executive and two members of its board had breached internal standards by distributing tweets attacking major national newspapers and journalists. These amendments try to do that by seeking to remove vital journalistic exemptions enshrined in the GDPR from all those who will not, on grounds of principle, be bullied into a system of state-sponsored regulation. Other amendments seek to remove the protection for freedom of expression, which has worked very well in the Data Protection Act 1998, to balance convention rights and make privacy in effect a trump card.

Let us be clear: the amendments would be a body blow to investigative journalism—at a time when, as we have seen in recent days and weeks, it has never been more vital—by giving powerful claimants with something to hide the ammunition to pursue legal claims and shut down legitimate public interest investigations into their activities even before anything is published. All UK news operations, none of which will under any circumstances join Impress or any body recognised by the Press Recognition Panel, would find themselves under incessant legal challenge, with a profound impact not just on investigations but on news, features and even the keeping of archives. In my view, it is no exaggeration to say that that would overturn the principle that has underpinned free speech in Britain for two centuries: that journalists have the right to publish what they believe to be in the public interest and answer for it after publication—a right upheld by the courts here and all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights.

The protections which make investigative journalism possible would in effect be enjoyed by only a handful of hyper-local publishers which have signed up to a state-backed regulator. Are the noble Lords in whose names these amendments stand really content to see the future of investigative journalism in this country invested in The Ferret or insideMoray, rather than in the teams from the Observer, the Liverpool Echo, the Scotsman and the many others which over the years have broken story after story in the public interest? Frankly, if this were not so deadly serious, it would be funny.

If these amendments ever found their way into this legislation, it would be not just a massive blow for investigative journalism and public interest reporting but a further knock to our international reputation as a beacon for press freedom. No other country in the free world has a system such as the one proposed here, where publications are bullied by politicians into some form of state-backed regulation.

It is six years since the Leveson inquiry took place. In those six years, the world has changed—not just in terms of the commercial position of newspapers and magazines, many of which now fight daily battles simply to survive, but also in terms of strong independent regulation. It is time that we moved on too, and I am very pleased that my party has done so by committing itself to the repeal of Section 40.

This Bill is very carefully crafted to balance rights to free expression and rights to privacy, which of course are of huge importance. It recognises the vital importance of free speech in a free society at the same time as protecting individuals. It replicates a system which has worked well for 20 years and can work well for another 20. To unpick it in the way that this set of amendments tries to do, making so much public interest reporting impossible, is grossly irresponsible, and I hope that the Committee will reject it.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, my noble friend has made a very interesting speech, which is very helpful to the Committee, but it would also be helpful to the Committee if we could understand what it is in the requirements of the Press Recognition Panel that makes it impossible, or makes IPSO unwilling, to meet those requirements. What is so difficult about becoming an approved regulator?

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

My Lords, it is not a question of meeting the requirements of the Press Recognition Panel. It is my belief that IPSO probably would meet the requirements. It is a fundamental belief that self-regulation cannot be self-regulation if it is approved by a state-run body. The Press Recognition Panel was set up by royal charter, which is a method of state regulation in all but name, and the press will not and cannot—and in my view absolutely should not—submit itself to something that has state backing in that way.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, that is extremely helpful to the Committee but I still do not understand how the state and government Ministers would be able to influence the work of the Press Recognition Panel.

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

My Lords, the Press Recognition Panel was set up by royal charter, underpinned by legislation in this House, legislation to which I was fundamentally opposed. The Press Recognition Panel was set up—I forget the exact figure—with £3 million of taxpayers’ money. It is a state-run body. To have a state-run body which in some way recognises a system of self-regulation negates the whole concept of self-regulation.

[Earl Attlee]

The noble Lord, Lord Black, is being very helpful. The courts are supposed to be independent and they are, but they are funded by the state as well.

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

My Lords, I am going to give way to judicial friends who are probably waiting to speak and will be able to deal with the question about the courts better than I can.