Leveson Inquiry

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

My Lords, clearly Lord Justice Leveson’s report managed to answer the tests that he was set, which were basically how to reconcile freedom of the press with concern for the many victims who have suffered terrible mistreatment at the hands of the media. I think there is consensus in this House and in the other place that he has managed to do that with great aplomb, skill and proportionality.

I listened with care to what the noble Lord, Lord Black, said, and it filled me with concern. Here we are with a report that recommends regulation with the lightest of touch—it really only creates backstop oversight and allows the press themselves to create the independent regulatory system that we would all like to see—yet there is still a sense that somehow the media will not be satisfied and that the press barons and their supporters will rally to prevent anything happening.

There was a wonderful moment in the Leveson inquiry when Stephen Dorrell—who is not much remembered anymore but he was a Minister in the early 1990s in what was then the Department of National Heritage, now the Department for Culture—told how someone working on his team had produced a memo. Calcutt had just reported and the memo said, “We can’t do anything; we’re not going to do anything; we can’t say we are not going to do anything; we therefore have to find something to say that sounds as though we’re not going to be doing nothing”. That is the terrible thing that I feel could easily happen here again. We must not descend again. I would like the Minister—who, as everyone has said, has a great track record on this—to reassure us that he is not going to allow this to become the purview yet again of those masters of the universe who happen to run some sections of our press.