Press Regulation

Lord Lester of Herne Hill Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

We have brought in and implemented the new regulatory framework, and as recently as last November we brought in the wider exemplary damages provisions. There is a Leveson part 2 but that cannot be turned to until the phone-hacking cases are completed in the courts.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that in its first year IPSO, supported by most newspapers, is establishing itself as being independent and effective under the chairmanship of Sir Alan Moses? It deals efficiently with complaints and makes instructions, which the press obey, to publish corrections even on the front pages of their newspapers. Does it therefore not follow that the Government should do nothing to undermine that system while it is being developed and certainly should be very careful, as the Minister has indicated, about introducing sanctions like arbitrary costs or punitive damages that people such as myself believe are likely to fall foul of press freedom and the European Convention on Human Rights?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, I have great sympathy with the noble Lord’s point. The single most important point is freedom of the press, as he says, and I am glad that we have found an independent, self-regulatory system which is now starting to deliver.