Leveson Inquiry

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

Friday 11th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield]

My Lords, I declare an interest: I was a journalist for 20 years and still turn out an occasional column, as reflected in the register. I was also asked by Lord Justice Leveson to submit written evidence, which I duly did.

Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry scored a line across the country’s psyche like no other Government-sponsored investigation in recent times. It pieced together in raw, stark detail a story of systematic failings on the part of a significant portion of the press to adhere to even the most rough and ready ethics, of newspapers and journalists casting aside seemingly all restraint and decency when gifted by technological advances with means of intrusion into public and private lives that only very secret sections of the British state possessed when I ceased to be a daily journalist in 1984.

The events and behaviour Lord Justice Leveson investigated were searing and in some instances scarcely believable. He wielded a vivid pen in reporting. His analysis is powerful and convincing. His prescriptions have commanded wide assent and approval, bar one crucial and problematic recommendation that any new arrangements for press regulation must be tipped by the metal of statute if they are to be capable of sharp and sustained application where what has gone before was blunt and ineffectual.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, I will quote Lord Justice Leveson. He acknowledges:

“By far the best option would be for all publishers to choose to sign up to a satisfactory self-regulatory regime”.

For that I think there exists a wide consensus, but the great divide in the post-Leveson debate is, to use his words again, what kind of “convincing incentives are required” for this to happen.

I admit that I may be suffering from a degree of déformation professionnelle from my journalistic days but I remain deeply uneasy about Parliament allowing the tread of statute to touch this particular terrain of our national life. The key definition of an open society is a country in which the state has an ever-present sense of its own boundaries and limits. If, as a Parliament, we place a piece of primary legislation here, even as a backstop, will we not be propelling our country through a valve, through which we will be most unlikely to return?

The Prime Minister has told the editors that “the clock is ticking”. So it is. Public as well as political concern is quickening that clockwork and I recognise that in being wary of statute, I am out of kilter with three-quarters of the population, individuals whom I greatly respect, such as the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, and the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, who has direct journalistic experience, and more seasoned journalists than myself such as Professor Brian Cathcart of Hacked Off. If I was a statute man, I would be happy with the crisp Independent Press Council Bill drafted by the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill.

My worry is that if we reach for statute, all future developments are likely to be one-way. Think a decade or so beyond a Leveson law. Imagine a Government irritated, as Governments usually are, with a coarse and wilful press that refuses to acknowledge the wisdom, beauty and subtlety of their political programme. There is bound to be a rogue newspaper or two in operation—like rogue states, rogue newspapers will always be with us—behaving extremely badly. It will be all too easy for the aggrieved Government to argue that the first light-touch law was all right for 2013-14 and that the press behaved more carefully for a while in the shadow of the Leveson report, but that Government could argue that those lessons have been unlearnt and it is time to tighten up.

The self-dissolution of the Press Complaints Commission creates a real opportunity for improved regulation. The proposals of its chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, for a new system of contracts, with the civil law in the background to give them bite, offers the publishers the chance to bind themselves in to a tougher, tighter and more sanctions-laden system of self-regulation. I know that this can be dismissed as promising “a better yesterday”—to borrow the rather unkind description of the old Social Democratic Party from the late and much missed Lord Dahrendorf. But I hold out a real hope for that approach and for the idea of respected figures—non- governmental and non-Ofcom figures—as the validators and overseers of the new arrangements and those appointed to operate them.

I do not think that a replica of the BBC-style royal charter is at all the way to do this. The BBC charter is reviewed roughly every 10 years and the merest glance at the 2006 charter shows just how intrusive this allows Governments to be in the institutional structures of the corporation’s governance.

At the risk of sounding Pollyanna-ish, to my mind, the events reported on by Lord Justice Leveson and the clarity of his analysis have proved to be no end of a lesson to the British media. There is at least a chance of Lord Justice Leveson’s “best option” of a self-regulation that works finally coming to pass amid the ruins of the Press Complaints Commission and the old Press Council that preceded it. However, I am the reverse of Pollyanna when it comes to Lord Justice Leveson’s wish for more restraint and greater transparency between the respective commanders of our political and media classes. That story has long been one of fluctuating combat and collusion, as captured by David Lloyd George, when he said of the press:

“What you can’t square, you squash; what you can’t squash, you square”.

It will take the second coming to put an end to that.

Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

Tuesday 14th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby]

My Lords, as the 58th Chairman of Ways and Means, I have to say to the noble Lord opposite, who is a great historian, that the point of being appointed Chairman of Ways and Means was created by that Act in the 17th century, because the then Members of Parliament did not trust the then Speaker with ways and means—in other words, with money. That is why, even today, the budget of this nation is taken by the Chairman of Ways and Means. Therefore the historical analysis that the Leader of the House gave us is absolutely correct, and that is the situation as of this moment. I would just say that the points made by my noble friend Lord Fowler are two additional points that the House may well wish to reflect on as we move forward in the future.

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield]

My Lords, I have immense respect for the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. Would he accept that bicameral legislatures work best in conditions of respectful mutual restraint? If one or the other Chamber pushes its powers to the maximum, it tends to produce a spiral of escalation that leads to Parliament becoming much less than the sum of its parts. It would be impossible for your Lordships’ House to serve as a Chamber of what Walter Bagehot called “respected revisers” if the other place pushed its undoubted financial privilege to the maximum in anything but the most exceptional circumstances. We have, very neatly, great wisdom from the past on this from a remarkable Liberal Prime Minister, Mr Gladstone, who said of the British constitution that nowhere in the wide world does a constitution presume,

“more boldly than any other the good sense and the good faith of those who work it”,

and I underline the verb “work”.

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords, it is extremely helpful of the Leader of the House to set out the position so clearly, and it is what I have always understood it to be. May I make one practical point? The amendment comes back from the other place, privilege having been claimed. The convention is that one does not send back an amendment which is likely to invite the same response. The trouble is that the simple point which is made when they claim privilege is “We can’t afford it”, and one might send back an amendment which costs somewhat less. We do not know whether they “can’t afford it” to the extent that such an amendment would be acceptable. Therefore, it may be quite reasonable for this House, if it gets back an amendment that has been rejected on grounds of financial privilege, which effectively says that we cannot afford it, to send an amendment back that would cost less than the one that was originally proposed.