Telephone Hacking

Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am answering this Question for the Home Office; that question strays rather a long way towards the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. I stress simply that the specialist crimes unit of the Metropolitan Police, which is conducting the new inquiry, is a different unit from the previous one. I understand that Deputy Assistant Commissioner Akers has met the noble Lord, Lord Prescott. This is intended to be a very thorough inquiry, which will also include relations between the Metropolitan Police and the press.

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury]

My Lords, my first question for the Minister is more of a riddle than a question, so I do not expect him to answer: which came first, the scoop or the journalist? Speaking as someone who has been a journalist, trained by the BBC, I know that the means are as important as the ends. Is my noble friend not very concerned that it has taken five years for this fact to be properly recognised by both proprietors and the police? I hope that I am not being too clever by half, but I end by citing Evelyn Waugh. Has there not been too much of:

“Up to a point, Lord Copper”?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this is one of a number of questionable practices used by members of the press in obtaining information. When I spoke to the Information Office yesterday, the information officer told me that blagging is as important a problem as hacking. “Blagging” means receiving information through deception but not necessarily by hacking phones. I will read the relevant clause 10 of the Press Complaints Commission’s Editors’ Code of Practice:

“The press must not seek to obtain or publish material acquired by using hidden cameras or clandestine listening devices; or by intercepting private or mobile telephone calls, messages or emails; or by the unauthorised removal of documents”.

That is very much what the current Press Complaints Commission inquiry, which has a majority of lay members, intends to look at.