Leveson Inquiry

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and Baroness Bray of Coln

Monday 3rd December 2012 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Angie Bray]

Is it also possible that the Prime Minister was simply saying that it is far too complicated to rush into something and say that we need to adopt it in its entirety within about two hours of having seen it? If we are to be responsible about this, it needs to be considered very carefully. Might it be possible that rather than playing politics, the Prime Minister was trying to do something statesmanlike and responsible?

[Mr Bradshaw]

I was in the House when the Prime Minister made his statement. He was categorical in his opposition to statutory underpinning. If he had had an open mind, or if he had felt he needed a few more days or weeks to consider the recommendations, he would not have been so categorical in his rejection of the central tenet of what Lord Leveson says will be essential for the new system to work. That is why I question the Prime Minister’s motives.

As the former Prime Minister, John Major, put it in his evidence to Lord Leveson, when he was stressing the importance of all-party support for whatever Lord Leveson’s inquiry recommended,

“if one party breaks off and decides it’s going to seek future favour with powerful proprietors and press barons by opposing it”—

that is, Lord Leveson’s report—

“then it will be very difficult for it to be carried into law . . . So I think there is an especial responsibility on the leaders of the three major parties. . . on this occasion it’s the politicians who are in the last-chance saloon.”

I could not have put it better myself.