Leveson Inquiry

Lord Bishop of Norwich Excerpts

Friday 11th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords, the 2,000 pages of the Leveson report make the New Testament seem a lightweight document, at least in terms of bulk. But it is important to remember why the report came to be written: it was the consequence of national, moral outrage. Anyone who believes that Britain’s moral conscience is duller than it was might do well to reflect on our collective response to the phone hacking scandal. That conscience was animated when the victims of phone hacking were a murdered child and her family.

Public moral indignation may still prove to be enough to reshape our culture—about which the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, was just speaking—especially when it is in defence of the weak. The worst revelations of the Leveson report show the casual and callous disregard of the feelings and well-being of the targets of sensational press stories, especially in relation to families who have experienced the murder or abduction of one of their members. Some elements of our national press have made the terrible suffering of such families almost unendurable.

In another age, there might have been calls for public acts of penitence. The sad thing is that there has been surprisingly little public repentance and a great deal of self-justification and lapses of memory. That alone should make us wary of the claims of editors that they can clean up their act without the independence of their regulator being guaranteed by statute or in some other way. Let us remember that we are debating this at all only because there is a deep instinct in the people of our nation that the weak should be protected from the powerful and the invasion of family privacy should not be an inevitable consequence of family tragedy. That is something to be celebrated.

Our newspapers have been very good at defending themselves from independent statutory regulation while calling for it in almost every other walk of life. We need a fully independent body which is able to investigate the practices of the press without the trigger of a complaint bringing it into action. To ensure that the independence of such a body is guaranteed by statute is a long way from state control of the press.

While all that is very important, it is a pity that the debate following the Leveson report has been so narrowly focused on this one matter. So much else in the report has failed to gain sufficient attention; for example, legal protection for journalists who become whistleblowers when asked to do things against their conscience and against any existing code of practice.

It has been noticeable, too, that our national newspapers have given very little coverage to the very different judgment on ethics and culture that the Leveson report makes about regional and local newspapers, which, of course, is hardly surprising. Lord Justice Leveson says that local and regional newspapers are “truly without parallel” in their contribution to community life, which is an astounding statement. He states:

“It is clear to me that local, high-quality and trusted newspapers are good for our communities, our identity and our democracy and play an important social role”.

He calls for urgent action by the Government to safeguard the future of regional newspapers suffering because of the declines in advertising revenue that they have faced in recent years. But he does not specify what action this should be and in this he shares the general perplexity about finding a new funding model for institutions of such social worth.

Occasionally, local newspapers have been accused of being too close to those with power and influence in the areas they serve and there have been some disturbing examples over the years. But Leveson shows vividly how this has been more characteristic of some of our national titles in relation to leading politicians and senior police officers. By contrast, regional and local newspapers are part of the communities they serve. They strengthen our sense of belonging, provide information and exchange of ideas, celebrate what is good and report on what is disturbing. Occasionally, people say that newspapers report only bad news but that is not true of our local and regional press.

Total newspaper circulation is falling by 5% a year and is now 30% less than it was a decade ago. The print media, despite the success and continuing profitability of a few national titles, is in crisis. Our regional newspapers are shedding journalists rapidly and there are now more people working in the public relations industry in Britain than there are in journalism. The press gallery in our courts is too often empty. Frequently, there is no one to report on local council meetings and we are served up with free newspapers and magazines in which councils report on themselves. It is the print media, for all its faults, which has often held our public institutions to account, especially locally and regionally. It is hard to see social media replacing the function, and it leaves us with a potential democratic deficit.

This is likely to become a much greater problem over the next decade or more. So despite the bulk of the Leveson report, there is a good deal more work to be done. Safeguarding what Leveson describes as the unparalleled value of local and regional newspapers is, I believe, just as important as the establishment of a just and fair system of regulation.