Leveson Inquiry

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, we are most certainly moving into a new age, but let us be clear: newspapers that publish online are already subject to the same disciplines as the printed versions of those newspapers. As I think we discovered in the Lord McAlpine case, electronic tweeting, e-mails and so on are not protected from the other laws of this land.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords—

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords—

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

My Lords, I think we should hear from the noble Lord, Lord Whitty.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, there seems to be one dimension that the discussion in this House so far has missed. A truly free press requires diversity of opinion and therefore diversity of ownership. A whole chunk of the recommendations in the report relate to that plurality point. The Government have a great chance. There is a Bill already before this House, the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, in which the recommendations made here on media ownership, competition and plurality could be introduced at this stage. Will the noble Lord and, indeed, the Leader of the House prevail upon their colleagues to consider putting them into the Bill?

[Lord McNally]

I will certainly take that suggestion back, and I think that the noble Lord is quite right. Although the Leveson report devotes a relatively small amount of attention to plurality, it throws on our respective Houses and on the Government the responsibility of looking at, monitoring and, if necessary, responding to questions of plurality. I hope that we will take up the challenge posed in the report because, as has been said, this is an industry in technical change and we may find that there are very rapid concentrations of power. We may well need to be able to respond to such concentrations, but whether or not that is done through the noble Lord’s suggestions is above my pay grade.