Leveson Inquiry

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Harman]

The inquiry was set up—I congratulate the Prime Minister on setting it up, and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition on demanding it—not only because the criminal and civil law were broken, but because the press demonstrably had not abided by their own standards that they set out in their code of conduct. To stop that happening again, we must decide who overseas the regulator, because currently no one does.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

I am sure the right hon. and learned Lady remembers that the inquiry was established because of a number of smears from Opposition Members against the former Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport. In view of the fact that the Leveson inquiry cleared my right hon. Friend of any such allegation, should she not apologise?

[Ms Harman]

Lord Leveson actually said he was not going to look into whether there had been a breach of the ministerial code. He said that was not a matter for him, and he was right; it is a matter for the independent adviser on ministerial interests, who did not get the chance to investigate because the Prime Minister did not refer the matter to him.

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[George Eustice]

I do not think Lord Leveson does make that clear. The new body that he recommends would have powers of investigation, and that would deal with the culture which led to this criminality.

The central recommendation of Lord Leveson’s report, which we must not lose sight of, is this:

“In order to give effect to the incentives that I have outlined, it is essential”—

not preferable or helpful but essential—

“that there should be legislation to underpin the independent self-regulatory system”.

I agree with Lord Leveson on that, because throughout his inquiry one question simply would not go away: how do we make a reality of independent self-regulation without some kind of underpinning in statute? In other words, “How do you create the incentives to be part of a body that can fine you and deliver stiff penalties against you?” There was no question but that Lord Hunt and Lord Black failed to answer that test. At one point, Lord Black was suggesting that we could perhaps restrict membership of the Press Association and that people who did not sign up to this new body could be denied access to Government briefings or to accreditation for events. That would be very much a closed shop system, which Lord Leveson completely rejects.

The truth is that to make this work we will need some kind of statute, because the contract system outlined by Lord Hunt would be inherently unstable. It was suggested that the contracts should last for no more than five years, but such contracts, which require what the legal profession calls a constant supervision, are very difficult to enforce in a court. After five years, newspapers would walk away from that system and we would be in the same boat as we are in now.

If the industry has failed to come up with an answer that does not require statute after 18 months of thinking about it, what does the Secretary of State think that it will come up with in the next six weeks? I am deeply sceptical that it will come up with an answer.

[Alun Cairns]

My hon. Friend and other colleagues have made much about the need for a change of culture, but does he not accept that we cannot legislate for that? Culture must be dealt with by agreement from all parties.

[George Eustice]

I agree and I am coming on to that point. We will deal with the culture by having a credible regulator, not by saying that the police should be kicking down the doors of newsrooms as a matter of routine.

Let me tackle some of the myths. The Prime Minister said that by introducing such legislation, we would be crossing a Rubicon. As many other Members have pointed out, that argument is incorrect. We already have a Defamation Bill going through this Parliament that has cross-party support and even the support of the press. If the principle of legislation is in itself inimical to liberty and freedom, where were the freedom fighters when that Bill was going through? It was passed on Second Reading without even a Division.

Section 12 of the Human Rights Act 1998 refers to freedom of speech so, as the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) pointed out, such a provision has already been accepted. Some say that mentioning the idea of freedom of speech in a Bill compromises it because a future statute could take it away, but we already have it in the Human Rights Act. The US has the first amendment, which is a statute that protects freedom of speech. The Government rejected the same argument when they introduced the Bill that became the European Union Act 2011, when many Government Members said that a sovereignty clause meant losing one’s sovereignty. The argument was not accepted at that time and we should not accept it now.

Some say introducing legislation would be too difficult and far too complicated. I had a look back at the original private Member’s Bill introduced by C. J. Simmons, the Labour MP and journalist, and it is just six pages long. It is very simple and merely sets up a body, which is broadly what we are suggesting now. A couple of weeks ago, we had the Second Reading of the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill, which is just 16 pages long and performs a similar function—in fact, it is a more statutory Bill than we would need in this case. I shall be on the Public Bill Committee and I am told that it will be very short. The Defamation Bill, which is very complicated, was no more than 32 pages long. I do not accept that introducing legislation is too difficult.

Some say that such questions are for the birds in the age of the internet and things are difficult because blogs can do whatever they like. I fundamentally disagree with that argument. The changes coming from the internet mean that it is vital for this House to revisit the legislation. Just as some internet news sites, such as The Huffington Post, have already opted to be part of the PCC, if we could get the incentives right under a new body, we could get online credible news organisations wanting to be part of the kitemark system because it would give them protection. By enacting legislation, we would create the incentives that would enable internet-only news sites to take part.

As Lord Leveson points out, we should not encourage a system in which the newspapers engage in a race to the bottom with blogs that have no credibility. If newspapers are to survive, they must carve out a new role for themselves—they need a niche and some additional credibility. Just as people expect of broadcasters a different standard and character of journalism from that which they expect of newspapers, we should reach a situation in which people expect a different character and standard of journalism in newspapers from that which they might get on some blog sites. I do not accept the argument about that, either.

Some say that all we really need is for the police to do their job. It is curious that those who say that the statutory underpinning about which I am talking would lead to a chilling effect on journalism go on effectively to advocate a system that requires the police to kick down the doors of newsrooms, launch dawn raids and arrest journalists almost as a matter of routine. We should not be comfortable with the fact that dozens of journalists will face trial next year. We as a House must recognise that there was a culture in the press that enabled those crimes to take place. We should not collude in the argument that it was just a few journalists and that we should just lock up a few people from The Sun; we must recognise that there was a failure in the culture that we must tackle.

Let me finish by recommending a way forward to those on the Government Front Bench. Lord Leveson says that the ball is now in the politicians’ court. My view is that since any Bill would fundamentally be about freedom of speech, we should have a free vote. To use some of the terminology that I have read so often over the past few weeks, I think that it would be wrong for Parliament to be muzzled or gagged. We should have a free vote. I am conscious that many Members of this House have a strong ideological objection to the idea of any form of statute and they should have the right to have their say in a free vote, but Parliament should also be allowed to reach a rational and measured conclusion on the recommendations of Lord Leveson’s report.

I recommend that we accommodate the Prime Minister’s wish to give the industry six weeks to come up with a proposal. After that six weeks, we should have a free vote in Parliament to decide whether to introduce a Bill in the next Session. That motion should be binding and if Parliament as a whole believes we need some kind of new Bill, we should enact one in the next Session. I must stress that that would not necessarily mean taking forward everything in the Leveson report. I know that there are concerns about Ofcom, so let us see whether we can find a way around that. There are concerns about data protection, so we could exclude some of those elements. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) mentioned concerns about the scope for third party complaints, so perhaps we could limit that scope to systemic problems in newspapers rather than individual stories or concepts. There are ways around all the problems, but I am certain that we need statutory underpinning to make self-regulation work.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

It gives me great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) and I commend him for his wise and courageous speech. I suspect that his views, like mine, have been influenced by the evidence he heard as a member of the Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions.

I shall confine my remarks to politics—it might sound like a novel idea, but we are politicians and there is a political context to this question—not least because the merits of Lord Leveson’s report have been well expressed by other hon. Members on both sides of the House. In that context, I was pleased to hear the Secretary of State say in response to a question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) that the Government would legislate if she and the Government felt that the press were dragging their feet and not implementing Leveson. That poses the question of whether that would include the underpinning—that is, whether she would be satisfied if the press were implementing Leveson even without the underpinning—and it might be helpful if the Minister who responds could clarify that as well as the time frame the Government are imagining. The hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth mentioned six weeks and that sounds to me like a very sensible time frame, but it would be helpful for all Members if the Government could provide some clarification about the speed with which they expect the press to move and, failing that, when they would expect to introduce legislation.

I think it is assumed that as a politician I carry with me a fair degree of cynicism, but I admit to having felt surprised and disappointed by the Prime Minister’s response last Thursday to Lord Justice Leveson’s report when the ink was hardly dry on it. I was one of many Members who applauded the Prime Minister when he established the Leveson inquiry. I felt reassured by him when he looked into the eyes of the victims and promised to implement it if it was not bonkers. Four days on from publication of the report, I have not heard any explanation from the Prime Minister or the Secretary of State of what it is about the report that they think is bonkers. That can only lead me to question why the Prime Minister set up the inquiry in the first place, only to reject its central recommendation.

[Alun Cairns]

That criticism surely also applies to the Leader of the Opposition, who after just three or four hours accepted the almost 2,000-page document in its entirety. Does the right hon. Gentleman not think that that was somewhat political?

[Mr Bradshaw]

No, what my right hon. Friend accepted was the central tenet of Lord Leveson’s recommendations, which was that it was essential that whatever happened had statutory underpinning.

There are only two possible explanations for the Prime Minister’s cursory dismissal of Lord Leveson’s recommendations, having set up that inquiry. One is that he never thought that some sort of statutory underpinning would form part of the learned judge’s recommendations. If that was the case, may I suggest that the Prime Minister was naive, ill-informed or both? It was perfectly clear to anybody following the evidence of the inquiry, particularly that of the victims and expert witnesses, and from the questions that Lord Leveson posed to the industry, that some sort of statutory underwriting, underpinning or oversight—whatever one wants to call it—of a new independent regulatory body was the very likely outcome.

The only other explanation and, I am afraid, in my view the more probable one is that the Prime Minister has been persuaded by representatives of the press—in another example of the very problem that the Leveson report also addresses—that there should be no statutory underpinning, and that the Prime Minister has taken the view that he would rather put up with a few short-lived howls of dismay from the victims and others than with the daily and unforgiving hostility of the newspapers from now until polling day. If that is the case, it is very depressing and exactly what happened after all the previous inquiries into press standards and regulation.

The press have appealed time and again for one more chance, for more time to put their own house in order. They have strung out the process. Most of the politicians and most of the public have lost interest. If this is the calculation made by the Prime Minister and Lord Leveson’s opponents in the press, I believe they are profoundly wrong. First, this time the victims are not going to go away. They are not toe-sucking Ministers, but completely ordinary members of the public—yes, and some celebrities too—whose lives have been trashed. They are numerous, organised and angry, and they enjoy widespread public support.

Secondly, whatever the press do now—we all know that for the next year or so they will behave reasonably well, exactly as they have done after previous inquiries, only to revert sooner or later to their bad old ways—the issue of press standards and regulation is not going to fade from the public eye, because from next year and probably right up until the general election, some of those allegedly responsible for the most egregious abuse will be on criminal trial. Day in and day out we will be reminded by the courts of the behaviour that caused the Prime Minister to establish the inquiry in the first place, and we will be reminded of the repeated failure of the political class to do anything about it. Do the Prime Minister and the Government really want to find themselves in a position where they stand accused by the victims and others of having failed to implement the recommendations of the very inquiry they set up to address these problems?

The Prime Minister may feel that he has had a few supportive headlines and columns in the newspapers since Thursday, but the context may be very different in a year or so. He may think he has been clever now, but he may not look so clever in a year or so. I hope the Secretary of State can persuade the Prime Minister and her sceptical colleagues in the Government to rejoin the consensus. She said that she wanted political consensus, but does she not realise that it was the Prime Minister’s response to Leveson on Thursday that broke the political consensus in the House in support of Leveson’s recommendation of statutory underpinning? I hope she will use her powers of persuasion to bring the Prime Minister back into that political consensus so that we can implement Leveson, and soon.

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[Dr Coffey]

My next point is that Sir Brian insists that there will be no involvement of political parties. My concern is that that reinforces the prejudice that to have ever been involved in politics is somehow to be not interested in public service. I know I am taking a different view from a lot of other people. I am not suggesting that a serving MP or a serving Lord should be on any regulatory body, but I am concerned that politics is again being traduced in an unsatisfactory way. Thatis just an example of some of the minor things to which my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) referred—about trying to change the name of briefings and what they could be called. Frankly, that section of the report did not deserve the ink that was wasted on it.

On the problems the report will solve and the problems it will create, we have recently debated, and debated several times, the terrible incident of Hillsborough. There were two other incidents in the late ’80s that forced a change so that we moved away from the Press Council to the creation of the Press Complaints Commission. Not many people will recall that on 9 May 1989, a report from the ombudsman was printed on page 2 of The Sun. Of course, that was not enough. Today, the PCC rules would enable something of equal prominence to be printed, and the ombudsman adjudication at the time indicated that the headline should not have appeared. One concern is that we may start to give false hope to people who have been maligned by the press.

[Alun Cairns]

How does my hon. Friend reconcile the want of victims for solutions with the inconsistencies of the report, which does not extend to digital media?

[Dr Coffey]

My hon. Friend makes a useful point about digital media. I think somebody suggested that we should begin to look at how we regulate the internet. That is a challenge, even if we think only of closing down access to sites.

Returning to the Hillsborough incident, I do not want people to get false hope that all of a sudden journalists will not produce stories that they do not like. The same could be true of the situation in Bridgend. The PCC did good work on that, and the Government at the time said, “Yes, there was some good stuff.” We should have learned a bit more.

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[Mr Hanson]

I respect the way in which the right hon. Gentleman put his case today, but I believe that the debate is about the need for statutory underpinning of a regulatory system. Lord Leveson said clearly in his report that this was the seventh time in 70 years that we had examined the issue. I feel very strongly that we need to have cross-party talks and share what has emerged during today’s necessary debate, but also that we should reach the conclusion which—as the Secretary of State will see when she reads the report of the debate—was reached by the majority of Members on both sides of the House, who have spoken in support of the Leveson recommendations.

[Alun Cairns]

I respect the right hon. Gentleman’s view, although I disagree with the element relating to statutory underpinning. Is he saying that if legislation to that effect is not passed in the present Parliament, it will be a Labour manifesto commitment for the next general election?

[Mr Hanson]

I think that the hon. Gentleman, who has dipped in and out of today’s debate, will know that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has said that he wants action urgently. He wants action by Christmas; he wants action in the next few weeks. I too want to see statutory underpinning of Leveson’s recommendations as a matter of urgency, and I hope that we can achieve consensus. When the hon. Gentleman—who has not been present for the whole debate—reads Hansard, he will see that his hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon, his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough and others have supported some of Leveson’s recommendations.

I accept that there are concerns about state regulation. In a letter to me, the editor of my own regional newspaper, the Daily Post, said:

“I am strongly opposed to statutory regulation of the press.”

However, I say to that newspaper editor, and to others who share her view, that we need to consider what that means. In his summary of recommendations, Lord Leveson says:

“An independent self regulatory body should be governed by an independent Board”.

Is that state regulation of the press? He continues:

“The appointment panel… should be appointed”

in a “fair and open way” with “an independent process”. Is that state regulation? No. He continues:

“Funding for the system should be settled in agreement between the industry and the Board, taking into account the cost”.

Is that state regulation? No. The code and the board should

“subscribe to an adequate and speedy complaint handling mechanism”.

Is that state regulation? No.

“The Board should not have the power to prevent publication of any material, by anyone”.

Is that state regulation or censorship? No, it is not. It is, by statute, the underpinning of a voluntary agreement between the press and the state in relation to regulation of those areas. It is no different, dare I say it, from the legal services body that was set up by statute to look at solicitors, or the Judicial Appointments Commission, which was set up by statute to appoint judges, or the General Medical Council, which was set up by statute to be the independent regulator of doctors, or Ofcom itself, or the Advertising Standards Authority. All those were established by Parliament, and they are all independent of Government and Parliament, but they all fulfil a regulatory role across the board. Those matters are important. We need to have that independence, and we need to underpin it with statutory regulation.

As the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice will be winding up for the Government and I am the shadow Police Minister, it is important to place it on record that Leveson’s recommendations are important in respect of policing. I believe we can do more, but it is right that the term “off the record briefing” should be discontinued. It is right that all senior police officers should record their contacts with the media for the sake of transparency and for audit purposes. It is right that there should be guidance to police officers on who can speak to the press and when. It is right that we should have an audit of who uses the police national computer and when. It is also right in respect of the police that we should examine guidance and spell out the dangers of hospitality, gifts and entertainment.