Press Regulation (Communications Committee Report)

Baroness D'Souza Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness D'Souza (CB)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Best on his masterly introduction to this debate.

I have the utmost sympathy for those who have suffered such appalling abuse from the press in recent years—abuse that has affected their lives. I do not believe that there should be no limits to press freedom. As we know, the United Nations Convention on Human Rights itself makes it clear that there are limits—among them incitement to hatred. Nor, in today’s climate of press abuse, should there be no sanctions. As we have heard, there are already many sanctions on the press in this country today. However, there is a principle at stake here; there is a difference in kind between an agreement by the majority of the press to abide by certain rules of practice and implementation of Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act, because it would effectively censor the press due to a justifiable fear of unsustainable costs.

The principle, of course, is that a free press is one of the most fundamental institutions of democracy, along with free and fair elections, an independent judiciary, trade unions and a whole raft of other bodies, including civil society organisations. I have lived and worked in many countries, some of them as undemocratic as they come and some transitional democracies. What is singular about these nations is that press freedom or the lack of it is a measure of the democratic health of a given country. Whenever challenges to existing power arise, inevitably the very first action a threatened Government will take is to restrict the media and, as a consequence, access to information. This is dangerous, as we see today in Turkey.

I know that the victims of press abuse here in the UK believe that “something must be done” and that “enough is enough”; they say that they are,

“not talking about censorship but only of enforcing codes towards a more responsible and balanced press”.

But what does “responsible” mean? Who decides what is responsible or balanced? If it is the Government or an agent of the Government, it will too often be that which discomforts the Government. The imposition of Section 40, while on the surface hedged with safety walls—such as allowing the judge to deny costs in certain cases—is in fact a press regulation and censorship law because it is government-inspired, because it has the power to levy arbitrary costs, and because it is the threat by which the state wishes to enforce membership of a preferred regulator.

We have heard from many contributors to today’s debate that IPSO is weak in its dealings with complaints. That may well be true, but it is new and finding its way. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Lester, that there has been encouraging progress in very recent times. Let us not glance over the fact that its complaints procedures do not differ significantly from those put forward by the state-approved Impress. Above all, it is a body which is accepted by the press themselves and thus falls into the category of voluntary self-regulation. It needs time and the opportunity to demonstrate the willingness of some of the press to clean up their act.

Finally, we cannot take democracy and its institutions for granted. This may seem obvious, but although we have a long history of freedom in the UK these institutions—including, most importantly, the freedom of the press—are fragile things, so fragile that they need reaffirming almost daily. The tendencies of all Governments the world over is to accrue power, often with the best of intentions: “We know what is good for you”. But unless there are strong and effective mechanisms to enforce accountability, that power will erode our democratic rights. A free and unfettered press is the best possible defence, albeit one that will, from time to time, abuse that freedom; I am afraid that it is the price that we pay.