Data Protection Bill [Lords]

Debate between Christine Jardine and Peter Heaton-Jones

Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 5th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

Well, we do not know that. The difficulty is that a lengthy, costly process that in the end might not even achieve what was hoped for is not the answer. The answer, as the Secretary of State rightly said in his statement on Thursday, is to ensure that we shine a light through proper regulation on the practices that have done wrong to a number of people in the country.

I accept the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin). We should absolutely focus on the rights of people in this country—people who cannot afford the voice to stand up for themselves—but Leveson 2 was never going to solve that issue. It was going to be a long-winded inquiry that would not have got there, and the Secretary of State made that point convincingly on Thursday.

[Christine Jardine]

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree with me, a fellow former journalist, that one of the things that has most undermined the reputation of the media in this country in general has been the behaviour of our newspapers, which have seemed to the public to be beyond regulation? Self-regulation has failed and undermined the image of the media. The Press Complaints Commission failed, as the Press Council did. We had an opportunity to put that right, but it has been lost.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

The hon. Lady is right that the Press Complaints Commission did fail, which is why it is rightly no longer there and we now have a new framework. While we are talking in general about regulation, I should say that I have some sympathy with the question marks raised over the regulation of my former employer, the BBC. We got that wrong for many years. There was the bizarre situation in which the BBC board—later, the BBC Trust—was acting as both poacher and gamekeeper, marking its own homework. The Government have rightly sought to put that right and we have moved a long way towards doing so.

I do not believe that the answer to the wrongs that still exist in the regulatory regime for newspapers lies in the amendments that have come our way from the other end of the Palace of Westminster. I do not believe that they would do the job that, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire rightly said, the people outside this place want us to do: to make sure that they have a fair right of reply when something wrong is done to them by newspapers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christine Jardine]

rose—

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

If hon. Members do not mind, I am coming to the end of my remarks.

In my 20 years as a journalist at the BBC, I was passionate about freedom of speech and a right of reply, because that is the desperately important foundation on which our newspaper industry is based. I am also desperately passionate about ensuring that people who are wronged in some way by the media are given an effective response mechanism. Neither amendment that has come our way from the other place would achieve that. I am grateful to hear that the Opposition will support the Bill’s Second Reading, and I hope that we will not accept those two amendments and that we will pass the Bill as it was drafted.