Royal Charter on Press Conduct

George Eustice Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

I start by acknowledging that the discussions and negotiations on this matter have been incredibly difficult and contentious for those of us who have been close to them. It would be fair to say that no love has been lost between the editors on the one hand and the Hacked Off campaign group on the other. It is also no secret that immediately after the Leveson report was published, I found myself in the slightly unusual situation of being closer to the position of the Opposition Front-Bench team than to that of my own Front-Bench team.

[Mr Bradshaw]

At the risk of doing dreadful damage to the hon. Gentleman’s career, may I congratulate him on his courage and attention to detail on this issue? To be perfectly honest, without the work that he and other Government Members did, we would not have produced an agreement today that was compliant with Leveson.

[George Eustice]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for doing that damage. Before I move on, it is important to note that all party leaders have behaved very responsibly in this matter and I would like to give credit to the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), for the way in which she has approached it; she genuinely tried to seek agreement in a very difficult situation. I find myself in the unusual, almost unique, position of agreeing even with the Liberal Democrats. I speak as someone who campaigned against the euro and dislodged a Lib Dem MP to get elected here. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I campaigned against the alternative vote and then voted against Lords reform to boot. On this issue, however, I have been able to work with the Liberal Democrats.

Most of all, I want to thank and congratulate the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and, indeed, the Minister for Government Policy, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin), because it is good to be re-united with my own party on this issue. The Prime Minister told me back in November not to worry, as he had a plan to deliver Leveson, and I think that what is before the House today does deliver the Leveson proposals—perhaps even in a slightly better way than in Leveson’s own plan, as I shall explain in a few moments.

As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) pointed out, the important thing to understand about the Leveson report is that it explicitly said that statutory regulation of the press was not being recommended. Rather, Leveson was recommending a system that was about self-organised, voluntary regulation, to which news publications would be encouraged to subscribe voluntarily. He recommended statute to do two quite simple things. One was to establish the right incentives to join such a body, and that is the protection afforded through exemplary fines and costs; I am delighted that those will be debated later today. The second was simply to establish an independent public body that would judge a regulator—not every week, every month or every year, but every two to three years—on whether it was working effectively and meeting a certain set of criteria.

This may appear a rather ancient device to achieve what we want, but it is undoubtedly the case that a body established by royal charter is an independent public body that can perform the task equally well. There is one important advantage of establishing the body in this way, and that is that the press are more comfortable with it. Before people say, “Well, we should not be doing what the press want,” it is important to realise that in Lord Justice Leveson’s own plan he said that this would be a voluntary system. If we want publications to join something voluntarily and to seek recognition under a system, there will be a benefit in their being comfortable with it—provided, of course, that we get the detail right.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) picked up on some detailed points that I would like to touch on. He said that all the crimes committed related to defamation and breaches of privacy, so that the measures before us will do nothing to address those problems. That is not right, because what we have before us establishes an arbitral arm, which is a new thing, and it will provide affordable or even free adjudication on issues where there is a cause of action that previously only millionaires or celebrities could afford to take up through the courts.

My right hon. Friend also seemed to suggest that it was a bad thing for newspapers to make corrections and put right errors, but in all the difficult negotiations we have had the press did not raise this as a problem; indeed, it is what the PCC already does. There is nothing new about this. The criteria in the charter explicitly say that pre-publication advice is simply that—just advice, with no obligation on anyone to take it. A regulator will not have the explicit power to prevent anyone from publishing anything.

The £1 million fines are reserved for very serious and systematic breaches of the code, after prolonged investigations have taken place. I personally believe that we will not see many people being fined £1 million. Whenever I hear people mention them, I am reminded of the Austin Powers film in which Dr Evil says that he is going to hold the world to ransom for $1 million. What we have is a backstop power if there are really serious breaches, but what we are likely to see—this is a good thing—are more prominent apologies, corrections or perhaps lead page corrections for serious breaches.

[Damian Collins]

On that point, does my hon. Friend agree that there is genuine concern in the advertising industry about the commercial and reputational risks of being found to be non-compliant with the code? Has not one of the problems with the press been that legal managers and news managers have not shared the same respect for the code and have been more than happy to fly in the face of it?

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. The serious problem has not been the code itself, but the fact that it has not been enforced rigorously enough.

Although it has caused us several days of anxious scurrying around to get an agreement, the Prime Minister was right, in my view, to bring the matter to a head, so in some ways that was a relief to us. A number of us have spent week after week in very difficult negotiations trying to reach a conclusion. I remember one particularly dispiriting moment at the end of a meeting with some of the campaign group Hacked Off when we thought that after three and a half hours we had identified the six key things we needed to put right and one of the campaign directors said, “Shall we now move on to the next set of 20 problems that I have?” I am therefore very pleased that we have all been put out of our misery by the Prime Minister’s taking us over the brink and focusing minds in the final few days.

It is important to note, too, that the last few days have not been in vain, as some important changes have been made to the charter. The first change is that it is now clear that the board of the regulator will be independent and that there will be no press veto. That is an important step forward. Secondly, it is clear that where the investigations take place, there must be a simple and clear process so that there is no chance of a regulator putting up all sorts of barriers to make sure that it does not happen. The third point is that when the press code is written, there will be a role for working journalists for the first time. It will no longer be just an editor’s code. That is important because we need younger journalists with a stake in the future of their trade or profession—however they choose call it—to have a role in writing the code. It will be an important step forward and breath of fresh air to get working journalists, not just editors, involved in the code.

We should all get behind this compromise solution. I hope the press can overcome the apprehension it has about such a body. I do not think that there is anything for them to fear. I hope, too, that groups such as Hacked Off will be a little less hacked off and feel a little cheered up by today’s agreement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

May I join my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) on the fantastic job that he has done in articulating the concerns that many of us had, particularly on this side of the House, for which we did not get much thanks in the press? He behaved with extraordinary dignity and great tenacity.

[George Eustice]

Did my hon. Friend expect any thanks from the press?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Funnily enough, no, and I am happy to put that on the record. I also wish to congratulate Hacked Off because, whatever else one may say, it did act as a focal point, it did provide a concise briefing and it did help us along a tortuous path. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on having shown serious leadership in this matter; it needed bringing to a head and he has brought it to a head. I also wish to put on the record the fact that he has been here throughout these proceedings, which is more than I have been here for. So I congratulate him on what he has done, as well as the Leader of the Opposition. He has not been able to be here the whole time because he has had other things to do, but the Prime Minister has shown his commitment to trying to resolve this matter.

It is very important that we hold fast for a moment and remember that we did not create this crisis in the first place—it was created by others. It was created by a total failure of self-regulation over decades, by a failure to implement the findings of successive inquiries and by serial criminality in the press. The only point I would make to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) is that although these were criminal offences and they are now going through the courts, this serial criminality betrayed a corruption at the heart of our media—if not condoned, this behaviour was certainly overlooked. So the hysterical response to much of what we have been saying has been out of place. The day after 44 of us signed a letter to The Guardian—this is the only time I have knowingly signed something for The Guardian—The Daily Telegraph had half of its page 2 saying, “Tory MPs tainted by scandal in bid to end free press”. What sort of responsible press is that? I hope that The Daily Telegraph is taking note, but of course I will be denounced for this tomorrow as being “Closetly determined to end a free press.”

I wish to make three brief points. First, it is good that all three main parties, and indeed the minority parties, have agreed this outcome. It would have been bad news if there had not been agreement. We would have seen divide and rule, and acrimony, so those from all parts of the House who participated in bringing this about deserve our congratulations. It is also important to put on the record the fact that it is the historic duty of this House to remedy injustice—that is not the job of the European Court of Human Rights; it is the job of this Parliament and this House—and in seeking to bring about this change, we have sought to do that.

My second point is that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) is absolutely right to say that we should not set too much store by what has been achieved today. A huge amount of detail still has to be worked out and it will require a lot of good will on the part of all the media and the regulators to bring that about. May I just indulge the House for a moment on a slight word of caution to those who wish to see their apologies on page 1? When I sued Private Eye for libel—sadly, my hon. and learned Friend was not my Queen’s counsel at the time—we had agreed the damages, the apology and everything else, but the late Mr Peter Carter-Ruck said that it would not agree to put the apology in a box. Private Eye had agreed to put it on the same page as the offending article had been but would not agree to a box. I insisted that I could not possibly agree without having my apology in a box. Eventually Private Eye agreed, so on the day of publication I went down to the news stand and turned to page 4 or whatever it was. Sure enough there was the apology in the terms agreed—absolutely wonderful—and it was in a box. And so was every other story on the page! So we must beware what we wish for.

My third and final point is that this approach should be seen on all sides as an opportunity. It is an opportunity for a free press to move forward and to act fearlessly but to remedy the wrongs that they have recently perpetrated. It is an opportunity to ensure that ordinary people are given a fair crack of the whip and that we do not see a repetition of the kind of dreadful character assassination and misery caused to ordinary people, who have no remedy and have no voice in this House. If we achieve that, we shall have strengthened the British press and made them an example for the rest of world, and we shall have done a great service to the citizens of these islands.