Press Regulation (Communications Committee Report)

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, it has been a terribly long time since the report was written and only now are we debating it. That, I think, is a bit of a disgrace to the House, but it does enable me to make a first point. When we read the report today, it is amazing how little has happened in the almost two years that it has been awaiting our attention. Apart from the Government’s consultation on Section 40 and Leveson part 2, which has brought a further spell of inactivity, no doubt to be followed by yet a further spell of inactivity while Ministers mull over the results of that consultation, we are really no further forward in implementing Leveson than we were in March 2015 when this report came out. In fact, in a recent debate on the subject some Back-Benchers in the Commons announced the delay as a reason to go on doing nothing. “The situation has changed. Things have moved on. Leveson is four years out of date and the abuses it identified are for the history books”.

But what has changed? Has press behaviour changed? Think of the persecution of poor Prince Harry and his girlfriend. Has press regulation changed? We have IPSO, a small improvement on the feeble PCC which preceded it, but nevertheless its flaws as a regulator are set out superbly in the evidence produced by the Communications Committee as its first document in the report. Impress has been recognised but it has few members, while the Guardian and the Financial Times have sat firmly and unbudgingly on the fence. Above all, the Government have spat in Parliament’s face by refusing to implement Section 40, which means that the press has little or no incentive to join a regulator.

I worry about this not only from the point of view of press regulation, but from the point of view of Parliament. The Leveson solution as adjusted by Parliament to include the royal charter was supported by all the main political parties and parts of it were voted for in successive Acts of Parliament. This is not the first time in history that Parliament has found itself challenged by the press. One remembers Stanley Baldwin putting down the press with his famous phrase,

“power without responsibility—the prerogative of the harlot through the ages”.

But it is a strange time for the press to be waving two fingers at parliamentary sovereignty. The newspapers which are the most rude about Leveson are those which said that we had to vote for Brexit in order to preserve parliamentary sovereignty. Parliament tried to be sovereign about this issue and so far it has been ignored.

Is the future likely to be as unproductive as the past? The Government are consulting. The Culture Secretary, Karen Bradley, takes every opportunity to promise that the consultation is genuine, and so perhaps on 11 January, the day after it concludes, she will leap to the Dispatch Box, promise Parliament that its will shall prevail, implement Section 40 and set part 2 going. Perhaps the same day will see pigs taking off from their sties throughout Britain and Donald Trump converting to the supreme virtue of telling the truth. I do not think that it is going to happen and I do not like the consequences when it does not. The press is on relatively its best behaviour at the moment because it knows that there could still be a Section 40, but I do not think it is likely that that better behaviour will last if it succeeds in seeing off the Government and Parliament and continuing with its flawed self-regulatory system.

It may be that there is no way forward from this. It may be that Leveson is yet another in the long list of false starts set out by the noble Lord, Lord Best—those like Younger, the third royal commission in 1974 and Calcutt in 1983 and 1990. It may be that the supposed power of the Daily Express and the Daily Mail leaves Ministers paralysed into inaction, and it may be that we have to go into another crisis such as that which overwhelmed us all last time.

But before coming to such a pessimistic conclusion, is it worth asking if there is a better way? At the moment both sides are completely unmoving. The press is unyielding, and why not? Kicking the ball into the long grass has worked very well so far. Sir Alan Moses, who showed such promise when he arrived at IPSO as a reformer, has now become the defender of the indefensible, and he is good at it because he is a lawyer. The leading players during the last drama, the Camerons, Milibands and Letwins, have moved on. Meanwhile the spokespeople for the victims, dignified and restrained people as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, reminds us, have nevertheless adopted an absoluteness about Leveson’s solutions—Leveson, the full Leveson and nothing less than Leveson. It makes me wonder what has happened to the great British talent for compromise.

In the long run, and this has been a long game already, in all the verdant meadows of England there is not enough long grass to bury this issue in. We have to do better. We owe it to the security of a truly free and responsible press to do better. We owe it to the victims to do better, and ultimately we owe it to our duty to uphold the sovereignty of this Parliament. The report of the noble Lord, Lord Best, need not be history. It can serve as a reminder of the unfinished business which in honour should be finished to the satisfaction of Parliament and our people.