Leveson Inquiry

Lord Mandelson Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Mandelson]

My Lords, the Prime Minister said at the beginning of his Statement that above all we should put the interests of the victims first. I am afraid that in his response to Leveson he is doing the very opposite of that: he is putting politics and the perceived power of certain sections of the press before the interests of the victims. Let us be honest, he is not the first Prime Minister to be in that position.

The Leveson report is a very moderate and realistic set of proposals that seeks to achieve two things. First, it seeks to achieve high standards of journalism in this country and the untrammelled ability of journalists to pursue those high standards, while at the same time putting in place a rudimentary protection of the rights and freedoms of individuals. It is perfectly clear that what certain sections of the press—they are by no means unified—want to put forward instead is a variation of the PCC, which, as we know, is and always has been a plaything of the Daily Mail and News International—nothing more or less than that.

Leveson is right: we need a statutory longstop to a genuinely independent system of regulation—a statute that should give privileges to the press because of the unique role that they play in our society, but should make absolutely clear that while they enjoy those unique privileges, they are none the less not above the law in how they behave.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, it is truly astonishing to hear the noble Lord complain about politicians being political. I cannot join him in his accusation that my right honourable friend is afraid of the power of the press; in fact, I think that my right honourable friend has accepted most of the criteria set out in this report. Where I agree with the noble Lord is that we should have uppermost in our minds the interests of the victims, and should judge the criteria and the new system of regulation against that. The new regulatory system, unlike the current one, will be devoid of editors and members of the Government on its governing board. That is an enormous strength to ensure that it can never again become a plaything of any newspaper group.