Leveson Inquiry

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Friday 11th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, on this rather dismal day in your Lordships’ House, I would like to cheer us up a bit by reflecting on the admirable maiden speech given some time ago by the noble Lord, Lord Trees. It combined wit and lucidity to our great advantage and I hope very much that we will hear from him on many future occasions.

I should also like to cheer up your Lordships with what I thought was the huge joke in the central part of the Leveson report. I do not know whether Lord Justice Leveson intended it as such. He assured us all that he had found no evidence whatever of a conspiracy between Her Majesty’s Government and the Murdoch press to do anything that either of them wanted. Who on earth thought that there would need to be a conspiracy between them? Everyone knew what Murdoch wanted and everyone knew what the Prime Minister wanted. They did not have to get together to discuss it. The fact that Lord Justice Leveson assures us that he found no evidence of any such meeting must be hugely reassuring.

As usual, I shall turn to a certain unpopular theme—the Press Complaints Commission. I had a very short dealing with the Press Complaints Commission and found it hugely supportive and very effective. I had some dealings with a rather slippery individual who was then the editor of the Financial Times. He had published a report in his newspaper which was—I will not say fraudulent—totally inaccurate and totally contrary to the truth. I communicated with him in a gentle way, as I usually do, one December and I got no acknowledgement or reply. I communicated with him a second time, in January, and again I got no acknowledgment or any reply. I sent him a third note saying, “It is now February and I am today getting in touch with the Press Complaints Commission”. Within about 20 minutes my telephone apparently rang and my secretary said, “It is the editor of the Financial Times”. I am afraid that I would shock your Lordships if I told you the reply I told her to give him but I instructed her to tell him that if he was going to communicate with me to do it in writing and that I was not going to speak to the gentleman. I got a full correction and an apology because that individual—still the editor of the Financial Times—was so concerned about having his behaviour exposed to the Press Complaints Commission. So the Press Complaints Commission can work. We have had such a culture change and such a tidal wave of anger over what happened in the scandals of the past few months that I believe it has every possibility of being effective again in the future.

I turn now to the more serious matters. Lord Justice Leveson said when he started his inquiry that the whole report would come down to one question—Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? He did not answer that question and did not deal with it very much himself. The Prime Minister said that “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” is, God help us, Ofcom and the chairman of Ofcom. I could frighten your Lordships by telling you a fantasy tale about what a Prime Minister who had lost his marbles or one of his Secretaries of State who had equally lost his marbles might do by appointing a chairman of Ofcom. He might appoint a chairman who lied to the press; he might appoint a chairman who was in breach of the Official Secrets Act; he might appoint a chairman who, unbelievably, would disclose the facts of legal advice being given to a department; he might appoint a chairman who would intervene in a domestic political dispute between one government department and another and alter the press position in order to damage another Cabinet Minister. It is unthinkable, unbelievable, but that is what happened—and that is who we have got as chairman of Ofcom.

If anyone cares to challenge me, the behaviour of the head of the Department of Information in the DTI, going back 15 or more years, is in the fourth report from the Defence Committee, Session 1985-86. The behaviour of the current chairman of Ofcom was described in terms as tendentious, improper and disreputable. Before any of us look too smug about this, I regret to have to say that it was Labour appointment. I tackled the Minister concerned and asked him if he had gone mad when he made that appointment. He said, “Oh, that was many years ago”. It was like inviting Mr Dillinger to come on to your bank board because he has not robbed any banks over the past few years.

I pointed all this out to the Conservative Secretary of State, a man called Hunt. I said, “You did not make the appointment, but you are responsible for keeping her after it was disclosed to you what sort of individual you have here”. He relied on two flimsy bits of evidence, one from Select Committee hearings confirming this woman in her position. It was the most extraordinary set of Select Committee hearings you have ever heard. I read every single word of the oral hearings and I went through the written evidence as well. In all of that, not a single reference was made to the fact that Colette Bowe had been involved in the Westland scandal up to her neck. In fact, the chairman of that Select Committee, a rather weak young man called Whittingdale, who ought of course to have resiled from the hearings, held her hand, told her what a splendid lady she was and wished her good luck. That is what we are stuck with at the moment.

If anyone thinks this is irrelevant or unimportant, let me put this to your Lordships. Let us assume that Ofcom decides that Mr Murdoch is not a suitable person to be controlling a large chunk of our media and tries to disqualify him from so doing. What if Mr Murdoch then says, “Who the hell are you to speak to me like that? I have not been censured by a Select Committee of the House of Commons. My behaviour has not been called disreputable. I have not been behaving in a tendentious way. How dare you?”. That is where Ministers are likely to find themselves unless something is done quickly about this awful mess. I hope very much that we can have an assurance from the Minister, who has only just inherited this brief, that he will seek to take to the Prime Minister the request that all references to Ofcom are out and that Ofcom has no business whatever being involved in these matters. I personally support Leveson.