Leveson Inquiry

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

The noble Lord was clearly wronged by elements of the press. He is right to say that Lord Justice Leveson has comprehensively exposed a failure in the PCC, which cannot continue any more. He largely absolves the police from blame, although he has made some important recommendations on certain changes relating to the relationship between the police and the press.

I know that there are a lot of speakers. I shall try not to make my answers too long so as to get in as many as we possibly can, but I remind noble Lords that there will be another Statement along in a minute.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, I shall try to follow that good example. When Lord Justice Leveson was appointed, I knew that we had an excellent judge to undertake this task. I knew from a certain amount of experience of being in Government in the past that he was dealing with an extremely difficult problem. We had the “last chance saloon” and so on over the time when I was in Government, so I know how difficult it is. Surely we have a unique opportunity at this time to go ahead with an extremely well thought-out system for giving the press the right of self-regulation that is seen to work in the public interest. The only purpose of the statutory arrangement is to ensure that that self-regulation will be properly independent in the sense that Lord Justice Leveson explained. I would have thought that the sooner we can get all-party consent to this, the better. There will be a certain amount of discussion about detail, but the principles and essentials of the legislation can surely be put in place very quickly. We owe it to people like those who have been referred to to do it as quickly as possible to prevent that kind of thing happening again.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My noble and learned friend has a great deal of experience and knowledge on this subject, and I agree with him that what we asked Lord Justice Leveson to do was extremely difficult—yet what he has done is to bring his intellect to bear and publish an extremely impressive report and analysis. I agree with much of what my noble friend said; there is an opportunity for us to work together on a cross-party basis to bring about some extremely good results as quickly and effectively as possible.