Child Trust Funds: Children with Learning Disabilities

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, with respect, I agree. No fees are in my bailiwick; we have done that. Simpler forms are in the judiciary’s bailiwick; I am working with the judiciary to encourage it to put simpler forms in place. Ultimately, there is a constitutional position here. The courts are run by the judiciary, not by government Ministers, and that is how it should be.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed. We now come to the third Oral Question.

Independent Office for Police Conduct

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Tuesday 16th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

The noble Lord raises a critical point. Both my department and the CPS are focused on ensuring that we improve the number of rape allegations which come to court, where there is sufficient evidence to do so, and that the conviction rate improves as well. That is a huge amount of work and outside the ambit of a particular answer, but he will know that the Government are particularly focused on that area.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

I call the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater. No? I call the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, in my activist world I hear a lot of complaints against the IOPC and its previous incarnation. I am curious about the fact that a lot of former police officers work there as investigators. It has been suggested that the IOPC does not investigate as thoroughly as it might because it has too many former police officers. Has the Home Office paid any attention to that?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, one must have a balance. If you are going to investigate the police, you need some people in your organisation who have the skill set to know how the police operate. The figures are these. Overall, 23% of IOPC staff are former police officers—that is 28% in operations. However, first, they do not investigate their former force; and secondly, most senior decision-makers are not former police officers. By law, the director-general cannot be a former police officer, and the current director-general has put in place a practice that the two deputies are also not former police officers.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

My Lords, I regret that the time allowed for this Question has elapsed—not least because supplementaries and answers were too long.

Prisons: Self-harm Among Women Prisoners

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Monday 15th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, on the noble Lord’s first question, we remain committed to the strategy set out in the Female Offender Strategy: that is, fewer women offending and reoffending, with a greater proportion of women managed in the community successfully, and therefore fewer women in custody and better conditions for those in custody. Through the community sentence treatment requirement programme, health and justice partners are working together to ensure that greater use is made of mental health, alcohol and drug treatment requirements as part of community sentences. On the second part of the question, on probation, given the pandemic, probation areas are working on their recovery plans and will gradually be recovering their service in line with the staged approach that is being taken by Her Majesty’s Government generally.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed, and that brings Question Time to an end.

Learning Disabilities: Child Trust Funds

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I regret that my noble friend is already talking about my legacy when I have only been in this House about six weeks—in future, I will make longer answers. My noble friend raises an important point. I emphasise that the constitutional position is that court procedures and rules are a matter for the courts. So far as I am concerned, we need to make sure that the response of the justice system, over the whole gamut of civil justice, is proportionate to the sum in issue and the issues which are being argued about. To that extent, I agree with the point made by my noble friend.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

My Lords, all supplementary questions have been asked—congratulations. We now come to the second Oral Question.

Sexual Offences: False Accusations

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

The noble Lord makes an important point. But of course, he will know only too well that someone who has had a false complaint made against them is vulnerable to prosecution for perjury, perverting the course of justice or wasting police time, and that an individual has the right to sue for malicious prosecution or defamation. So remedies do exist.

[Lord Fowler (Con)]

My Lords, is not the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, absolutely right in what he said? Is it not quite clear that the present system of protecting the innocent from having their names plastered all over the media has broken down? Does justice not require that the Government take a fresh look at this whole issue and not just leave it to the police?

[Lord Faulks]

At the moment, as my noble friend will appreciate, this is a matter for the police, who consider that only in exceptional circumstances will it be appropriate to name suspects. Sometimes it is true that naming a suspect provokes people to come forward who they have kept quiet about allegations for fear that they will not be believed when they accuse prominent members of the so-called establishment. However, I accept my noble friend’s point. Clearly it is a matter to which any Government will give anxious consideration in weighing up these very difficult, conflicting issues.

Prison Reform

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Fowler]

That this House takes note of Her Majesty’s Government’s proposals for prison reform.

[Lord Fowler (Con)]

My Lords, I asked for this debate because it seems to me that the statements being made and the policies being introduced by the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, give more hope for advance in prison policy than anything I have heard for many years. My hope is that this debate, with the experience there is in this House, might contribute to that process.

Back in 1970, when I was first elected to the House of Commons, the editor of the Times, William Rees-Mogg, whom we all remember with affection, asked me to write a series of articles on prisons. Like Mr Gove, I had previously worked for the Times—you do not have to have done that, but it obviously helps in the course of penal reform. I went around the country visiting prisons. We called the series “The Prisons Crisis”, on the basis that for the first time the prison population had gone over the 40,000 mark. In those 1970 articles, which I have here, I wrote that already seriously overcrowded prisons were being stretched to bursting point, that there was no hope of replacing the string of 19th-century prisons that still remained in operation and that the pressure of numbers was placing in jeopardy the whole concept of training for many prisoners.

So obviously, when I came back to this area almost half a century later, I might have expected the kind of progress that there has been in almost all other areas of government policy, with overcrowding reduced and conditions transformed. Sadly, it has not been quite like that. On the position today, I quote not from the Howard League or the Prison Reform Trust, admirable bodies though they are, but from the Government’s own Chief Inspector of Prisons, Nick Hardwick, the latest in a line of inspectors who have served this country very well. The chief inspector reports that the prison population today is not 40,000 but 85,000, with forecasts that, on present policies, that total will increase by the end of this Parliament to 90,000 or even more. He reports that the overcrowding that has resulted is,

“sometimes exacerbated by extremely poor environments and squalid conditions”—

his words, not mine. He continues:

“At Wormwood Scrubs, staff urged me to look at the cells. ‘I wouldn’t keep a dog in there’, one told me”.

He found:

“Conditions in many cells were unacceptably poor. Many were filthy, covered in graffiti, some of which was offensive, and furniture was broken or missing. Toilets were filthy and inadequately screened. Windows were broken. We found cockroaches in cells on C wing”.

Inside prisons generally, he found increasing violence; assaults have risen to more than 16,000 per year, including 3,600 assaults on staff. He says clearly that overcrowding is not just a question of two prisoners sharing a cell; it means that prisons simply do not have the activity places to support rehabilitation programmes, work training and education.

Perhaps worst of all, the reconviction rates are, by any standards, shaming: 45% of adults are reconvicted within one year of release. For those serving sentences of less than 12 months, that increases to 58%, and for under-18s it is 68%. Yet the cost of a prison place is more than £36,000 per year, more than Eton. Is it cost-effective to spend that amount of money to produce such reconviction rates? Surely it would be better to see whether there are better alternatives that we could introduce.

I do not wish to exaggerate my description of the lamentable state of our prisons—which in any event, frankly, would be difficult—and I pay tribute to the advances that have been made in some areas, such as some of the policies regarding women’s prisons and with young people. It should be said that, were it not for the work of the prison staff, hard-pressed as they are, we would be in far more serious and public difficulty than we are. One of the better figures in the report was that 70% of prisoners feel that they are treated with respect by the staff.

Nevertheless, the position remains that much of our prison system is a disgrace to a civilised country. Prisoners should not be locked up in their cells for most of the night and day, yet about one-fifth of prisoners spend 22 hours out of 24 in their cells. We should be retraining and offering education to prisoners, but in all too many cases we are not doing that. We should not be keeping prisoners in cells where you would not keep your dog. This all spells out not years but decades of neglect and, frankly, public uninterest. If this were any other part of the public service, there would have been emergency debates in Parliament and demonstrations all the way down Whitehall.

For someone coming back to this area, the questions are not just about how we got to this position but, above all, what now needs to be done. It is against that background that I propose five actions that need to be taken and which I believe are in line with the Justice Secretary’s approach. I do this with a certain humility, because I am aware that there are far greater experts than me in this House. After writing on Home Office issues for the Times for four or five years, I could once claim some knowledge, which was treated in the way you would expect when I went into government: I was appointed to head the Department for Transport. Finally, in my last Front-Bench post, I was made shadow Home Secretary, a position without power, and at a time when we were being “tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime”. It occurred to me then that if we were half as good with policies as we were with slogans, we would be world-beaters. Sadly, we are not.

My proposals are as follows. First, we should continue to state clearly that the basis of policy is that the punishment of prison is the deprivation of liberty for the prisoner. The aim is not to make life as uncomfortable as possible for the prisoner, although we too often do this accidentally, but to retrain them so that they can become useful members of society and fulfil their own potential. There is no evidence whatever that deliberate discomfort is a policy that works; we should give rehabilitation a chance.

Secondly, we must end the overcrowding of our prisons that is defeating all our best efforts to achieve success. We should see whether the people who are in prison need to be in prison. We might review the number of women being held, as over 80% are in prison for non-violent offences. We might review the position of those being held on indeterminate sentences, not knowing when they will be released. In other words, we should allow prisons to breathe.

Thirdly, if we are to reduce overcrowding, we must reduce the number of people we send to prison. Like everybody else, I want to see professional and violent criminals, such as the Hatton Garden gang, inside prison and no longer a danger to the public. However, I do not believe that prison should be a social dumping ground for those with mental health problems and those with alcohol and drug abuse problems. We must find better ways to deal with these issues.

Fourthly, if we are to send fewer people to prison, we must re-examine sentencing and the power of the courts. One of the reasons overcrowding has taken place is that average sentences have increased. Another reason is that far too many prisoners have short sentences of below 12 months, in some cases serving only a few weeks or months. There is very little chance of doing anything constructive in that time. The better way would be to have sentences in the community that were not simply written off as a soft touch. A judge said to me that sentences must have the confidence of the judges who pass them, notably those sitting in the Crown Courts day after day.

Fifthly, and fundamentally, we should pass down responsibility as far as we possibly can to the governor and the staff of the individual prison. The prison department should lay down the strategy, but governors should be encouraged to develop their own policies. Mistakes will inevitably be made, but that should not invalidate the whole approach and the whole policy.

I started with an example from my days on the Times and I will end with another, which shows what I mean here. In 1967, when I was writing another article on prisons, I visited Dartmoor, built for the Napoleonic Wars and still going. At lunch, I drove out to have my sandwich and parked in front of the entrance to a field, and suddenly noticed, working in the field behind me, an immense man, broad and tall—a rather eerie sight. Going back, I told the governor and his top staff that I had seen this extraordinary sight. “For goodness’ sake don’t report that!” they said, “That’s Frank Mitchell, the mad axeman”, so named after an incident some years before. “You would destroy all our work”. Who was I, a Fleet Street journalist on a day trip to Dartmoor, to challenge that view? So I did not. Ten weeks later, he escaped. It did not take much; all he had to do was to walk to the car that had been provided. As noble Lords will be able to imagine, a great row about prison security followed, only months after the traitor George Blake had escaped from Wormwood Scrubs.

In that case it was very easy to attack the governor, and a dozen editorials did just that. But the fact was that Frank Mitchell had been in one form of institution or another since the age of 12. The prison’s view was that the fires had burnt out and that it was possible to reclaim a man who was not yet 30. Of course, whether that policy would have been successful we shall never know. His escape had been planned by the Kray brothers and carried out by their men and, with a nationwide hunt in operation, the Krays did what they tended to do when cornered: they had him murdered.

My point is that all too often the safe thing for prisons to do from the public point of view is keep the prisoner locked up. The only trouble with that is that if you return a prisoner untouched by any serious attempt at rehabilitation to the same environment outside, you should not be too surprised when, a few months later, he appears in the reconviction figures.

I wish the Justice Secretary well. He has a massive task but he should take encouragement from the fact that our policy over the last 50 years has been a notable failure—not good for the prisoners and certainly not good for the public, who finance this system. We badly need not only new ideas but new ideas followed by action, and that action and that need is urgent. In 1970, we faced a prisons crisis; today, we face a prisons scandal. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fowler]

My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for his reply, which was very constructive and will be well received. There were two significant features of this debate. First, there was vast agreement on the changes that are required. Prison is not remotely the right place to tackle mental health problems or, for that matter, drug abuse, points made by the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, and my noble friend Lord Suri. The central issue remains the overuse of prison and the overcrowding that goes with it. That point was made by my noble friend Lord Cope and the noble Lords, Lord Dholakia, Lord Beith and Lord Ramsbotham, to whom we owe so much. More needs to be done to consider the position of women prisoners, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, and the noble Lord, Lord Judd. There is a range of other issues, not least the roots of crime going way back to life before prison, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and my noble friend Lord Cormack.

The second significant feature of the debate was that it just showed how much good will there is for the new Justice Secretary. I hope that is recognised. It was shown in the powerful speech of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. It was shared by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who agreed—reluctantly, I think, but he agreed nevertheless—with old Tories like me and my noble friend Lord Forsyth. The noble Lord, Lord Beith, also mentioned the rather strange Texan coalition. The message of this debate is that we wish the new Justice Secretary well and now look forward to the action that is so necessary to reform a Prison Service which cries out for change. Above all, we wish him well in this vastly important job.

Motion agreed.

Defamation Bill

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Fowler]

1: Clause 2, page 2, leave out lines 11 and 12

[Lord Fowler]

My Lords, I will be brief in moving this amendment. It has the support of the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, who apologises for not being in his place today. He is in the Far East on a long-arranged trip as one of the Prime Minister’s trade envoys there. He entirely supports my proposals. I also have the support of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, a former Attorney-General; my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, a former Lord Chancellor, and, according to the Times, a “Conservative source” has also given it a grudging approval. I am not entirely sure what a “Conservative source” is, but, of course, I always believe the Times.

As I understand it, it also has the support of the press, which perhaps is most significant of all. During the past months, those of us who have supported Leveson have been subjected to a campaign of vilification, being compared to Mugabe, Castro, Putin and any other dictator that you can think of. When we have spoken or written in favour of Leveson, we have been attacked in reports such as the one that appeared in the Daily Telegraph in November with the neutral headline,

“MPs tainted by scandal among group backing an end to free press”.

I looked down to see, slightly to my surprise, that among the little photographs at the bottom was my own photograph. The caption said:

“Lord Fowler: during 15 years as a government minister, he had plenty of run-ins with the left-wing press, particularly when he announced job losses and spending cuts in the NHS in the 1980s”.

That explains why I have had, according to them, this deep-seated antipathy towards the press, in spite of the fact that I was chairman of two regional newspaper groups after that time. Of course, it is doubtless made particularly painful for me by the fact that all my succeeding Health Secretaries have been carried shoulder high down Whitehall by representatives of the British Medical Association. So, it is not entirely surprising that some of us want to move on from this bitter debate and enter the calmer fields of gay marriage.

The trouble is that when the press have a genuine point, people tend to say, “Here they go again”. Here, as my amendment seeks to make clear, they do have a genuine point. I should make it clear that my amendment in no way challenges or changes my backing for the support generally for Clause 2 and for an arbitration service, as proposed by Lord Justice Leveson. Although a great deal has been written about this particular clause, all too often it has missed out the overall purpose, which is to provide a low-cost remedy for the public and the press without the expense of going to law. That is the essence of what it is saying: for the public to pursue a defamation case, as it stands at the moment, means certain cost and a very uncertain result. My amendment questions whether the two lines at the end of Clause 2 are necessary to bring that aim about. I do not believe that they are and I say that for two reasons.

First, as I made clear, I am a supporter of the Leveson report but it seems to me that the words at the end of Clause 2 go beyond what Leveson himself proposed. Referring to the proposed independent self-regulatory body, Leveson says:

“I also suggest that it considers offering a purely voluntary pre-publication advice service to editors who want support on how the public interest might be interpreted in a specific case before a decision is reached on publication”.

I think that the words at the end of the clause are fairly tentative and certainly go beyond the words in the amendment that,

“the court shall take into account whether a defendant first sought advice”.

Furthermore, as it stands, it gives the impression that we who support Leveson are all concerned with pre-publication controls when that is certainly not the case, and nor has it ever been the case. The authors of this clause might claim quite reasonably that they are also conferring an advantage on newspapers as well as on the public. Nevertheless, the false impression remains, and it would be a vast pity if the beneficial intent of the clause was to be harmed in this way and in so doing give ammunition to those who say that the supporters of Leveson are about statutory control, which I repeat and underline has never been our cause.

The second reason I tabled the amendment is that the whole idea of some kind of pre-publication check is anathema to most journalists. I emphasise that I am talking about working journalists. Remember that the NUJ, as opposed to the proprietors, is in favour of Leveson; it is not against it. It is against the kind of provision that I am seeking to amend for the good reason that in any story of any controversy there will always be people out there who want to stop the story, or at least take the guts out of it. I learnt that very early on as a young journalist. I had been advised to show a series of articles that I had written to the man who had given me access to the story. When I met him, he was furious about what I had written. Very obviously, so that I could see it clearly, a letter of protest to my editor was set out on his desk. Happily, the editor took no notice, but I have never shown an article in advance to any body or person since.

Defamation Bill

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Lords Chamber

I remain firmly in favour of effective press regulation with only necessary statutory underpinning of the kind envisaged by my little Private Member’s Bill. But these amendments are manifestly excessive and, in my view, manifestly incompatible with the convention and the Human Rights Act. Therefore, I cannot support them.

[Lord Fowler]

My Lords—

[Baroness Boothroyd]

My Lords—

[Lord Fowler]

My Lords, I was going to say “Mr Speaker”, but I will not. I do not intend to follow entirely all the points made by my noble friend Lord Lester, but I agree with him that this does not entirely give effect to the Leveson report, and nor could it, given the confines of the Defamation Bill. The amendments do not deal with the complaints process or, more to the point, the way in which any complaints process is periodically verified. On the other side, it does not set down a legal duty on the Government to protect the freedom of the press.

The questions are whether the amendment can be seen as a building block in implementing Leveson—a kind of stalking horse, although perhaps we have enough stalking horses flocking around just at this moment—and whether it deals with some of the evils or disadvantages, one in particular, that Lord Justice Leveson exposed. My noble friend Lord Lester obviously prefers the solution of his own Private Member’s Bill. I do not entirely disagree. I think it would be an excellent Bill. I just think that the chances of it being passed are practically zero, so I do not regard it as a realistic option. If we reject this proposal, I do not think that the Government are going suddenly to fall over and say, “Well, Lord Lester, you can go ahead now with your Private Member’s Bill and we will put all our effort behind it”. I just do not think that that is realistic. The answer is that this Bill gives many of the advantages that we want.

One of the long-standing complaints about dealings with the press is that a serious complaint to the editor fails, as it often does, and then the only option is legal action. But most of us would take the view that a libel would have to be absolutely fundamental to persuade us to take legal action. The outcome is far too uncertain and the cost is only too certain. That is why legal action is all too often seen as a remedy open only to the rich.

Lord Justice Leveson considered this question and set out quite clearly his view at paragraph 66 of the summary. He said that there was a “need for incentives” to persuade publishers to join the new procedure but that, in addition, there was a need for,

“the equally important imperative of providing an improved route to justice for individuals”.

That had led him,

“to recommend the provision of an arbitration service that is recognised and could be taken into account by the courts as an essential component of the system, not (as suggested by Lord Black) simply something that could be added at a later date”.

He said that it was “an essential component”. That is precisely what it is.

Also, the amendment clearly puts the intention into practice. I do not intend to go into all the detail of it, some of which can doubtless be improved, including by meeting some of the points about drafting made by my noble friend. We can come to those. The important thing is that the principle has been recognised, and the amendment gives us the opportunity to vote on this matter and serve notice on the Government that this is one of the areas where we want progress.

There are two other reasons in favour of the amendment. First, the Leveson report was published at the end of November. Since then, we have waited and waited for action, but, instead, some newspapers, sensing a weakness of intent, have continued to attack Leveson in the most lurid and extreme manner, and often quite inaccurately. Perhaps I may quote from this morning’s Sun editorial, commenting on the Chris Huhne case. It states:

“Those urging a Leveson law to muzzle the Press should reflect hard on yesterday’s … events”,

and adds, “No wonder” the Deputy Prime Minister,

“backs a law to silence newspapers”.

The Sun goes on to say that,

“in the post-Leveson climate, many at Westminster want papers stopped from investigating scandals like this”.

One wonders who these “many” people are. Frankly, I do not know of any people who want to muzzle the press and prevent the exposure of scandals. While I think it is the biggest nonsense to propose that that is the case, I also think that people want some redress when they are the victims of injustice. That is what the public actually want.

I very much hope that by passing the amendment, which would set up an arbitration service, as proposed by Leveson, it would at once establish the truth of Leveson—that it is to the benefit of the public, and as the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, has said, to the benefit of the press. Indeed, the amendment is quite obviously to the benefit of the press. In other words, it inserts truth for the kind of smears that we have been all too used to over the past months.

The second reason why I support the amendment is because the present way of dealing with the Leveson proposals is woefully inadequate. It has brought nothing forward, although everyone at the time said how urgent it was to make progress. The process itself is open to severe objection. In paragraph 84 of Leveson’s report, he says,

“The suggestions that I have made in the direction of greater transparency about meetings and contacts should be considered not just as a future project but as an immediate need, not least in relation to interactions relevant to any consideration of this Report”.

“Greater transparency” is not exactly how I would describe what has been happening over the past two and a half months since Leveson reported. We hear mutterings about a royal charter, but there has been no attempt whatever to engage the public or, for that matter, very many politicians in this discussion. Doubtless, a magic circle of them has been engaged, while the press itself shows an almost total lack of inquisitiveness about what is going on. It is such a contrast to what happens in almost every other area where the press is for ever trying to find out what is going on. In this case, it does not seem to be trying to find out what is going on at all.

I say simply to my own Front Bench that in the circumstances of this “news blackout”, with no assurance that the Government intend to act sensibly, I can see no objection whatever to this House suggesting to the Commons a sensible path that I think would have the support of the public. The amendment is good for the press. Above all, it is good for the public, and I support it.

[Baroness Boothroyd]

My Lords, I spoke in the debate on the Leveson report, so I shall certainly not weary the House this afternoon. Let me start by saying that I take no pleasure in what has befallen the newspaper industry in the past few years. I am sure that no one wants to see journalists facing criminal charges, but who among us is proud of the way in which newspapers are now perceived? I believe that the amendments before us would help the newspaper industry to re-establish itself as that trusted investigator it once was, bringing the news to the nation fearlessly and accurately and holding us all to account.

I said in my speech during the Leveson debate that many of the transgressions happened because of the culture of some newspapers whereby they grew to believe that they were untouchable. It is that culture that must be changed. It can be done with the establishment of a new complaints procedure for the public which, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, touched on, allows problems and issues with the press to be nipped in the bud at an early stage and dealt with.

We need a system that allows the citizen to raise their complaint in a low-cost and non-adversarial way. Newspapers must be required to meet and hear those with appropriate complaints against them. A robust arbitration service will, I am sure, help to change the culture of newspaper reporting and improve on the current mentality that everything and everyone is fair game for them.

This Government and all previous Governments over the past 60 years should have taken action and never did. Yet after seven royal commissions or parliamentary inquiries and the spending of a lot of public money, it will no longer suffice to be told that there will be an announcement “tomorrow”. It reminds me of the very famous line in “Gone with the Wind”: “Tomorrow is another day”. We have run out of tomorrows— tomorrow never comes.

It is today that we have to deal with, and it is today that your Lordships must take action. This House must step forward and help our leaders to take the action that they themselves have found difficult. Passing these amendments now does not prevent the Government improving on them should they choose to do so—as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said, they are a sort of building block—but the amendments say quite clearly that time has run out and we must take action this very day. I hope that the House will support them.

Leveson Inquiry

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fowler]

My Lords, although I am very touched by the Government’s faith in the independent review—my noble friend might remember that that was not always the view of her department when refusing to set up an independent review—I wonder whether she agrees that not everything should wait for Leveson, particularly in one respect. Is it not a fact that the current way of deciding media bids is, frankly, now bust? Do not politicians need to be taken out of the decision-making process and a demonstrably independent system, with either Ofcom or the Competition Commission deciding, set up, and set up now? If that change requires new legislation and there is no room in the programme, we can all think of a Bill that can be dropped to make way.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

There is one aspect of my noble friend’s question to which I shall resist replying at this stage. He is absolutely right. Under the Enterprise Act 2002, the Secretary of State has the power to intervene in the public interest and in a quasi-judicial capacity. My right honourable friend is on record as stating publicly that there are very strong arguments for politicians to be taken out of discussions on these sorts of matters and for them to be undertaken by the regulators. We will certainly look to be taking that forward.