Leveson Inquiry

Gerald Howarth Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I can be crystal clear, as indeed was the Prime Minister last week: yes, we will take action along the lines set out in the Leveson report if action is not taken to put together a self-regulatory approach, and that, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, would include legislation.

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend has said that the Government accept Leveson’s proposals and that, in the event that there is not a satisfactory regime, the suggestion of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) would be taken up. However, I remind her that Leveson states in paragraph 76 of the executive summary that he also wants to see a “statutory verification process”. It would be a statutory verification process, not a shackling of the press. Is that part of the Government’s current proposals, because we know that self-regulation has been an abject failure for 70 years?

[Maria Miller]

I will answer that point very briefly, although I am sure that it will be subject to much debate later, but then I really must make some progress. There are two aspects of statutory regulation within Lord Justice Leveson’s proposals: one is verification and the other is how we can put in place incentives for membership. I say simply to my hon. Friend—I know that he understands my point because we have had conversations about this before—that we take a very principled approach to this and have grave concern about the use of statutory legislation to underpin the recommendations. We do not believe that it is necessary. We believe that we should be looking at potential alternatives. Indeed, that is what we are discussing in cross-party talks today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I think I might be permitted to know a little more about that case than my hon. Friend does. As it happens, I have over the past 35 years or so—[Interruption.] Would she stop mumbling?

Over the past 35 years or so, I have acted for and advised both claimants and defendants in more or less equal measure. Unsurprisingly, many of the defendants were newspaper publishers, editors and journalists and their broadcast media equivalents.

The House and the public as a whole owe a huge debt of gratitude to Lord Justice Leveson. His report is long but comprehensive. It is thorough and analytical. It contains opinion and recommendations, but they are based on fact, founded on the evidence he heard and read. Neither he nor his report can be described as “bonkers” and the report does not resort to hyperbole, make hysterical criticisms of the media or demand state control of the press. It is, in my view, a fair and balanced report that has exposed and tackled some difficult, if not entirely novel, questions.

I say that the questions were not entirely novel, because in this House in January 1960, a Mr Leslie Hale, who was then the Member for Oldham West, moved to repeal the Justices of the Peace Act 1361, among whose provisions was one to outlaw eavesdropping. A predecessor of mine as Solicitor-General, Mr Peter Rawlinson, then the Member for Epsom, said:

“Translated into ordinary terms, the Bill which the hon. Member seeks to introduce, dressed up like a radical bird of paradise, is nothing less than a modest charter for peeping Toms and eavesdroppers…It is also a charter for other strange people who pester law-abiding citizens and persons of that kind.”

He went on to say:

“The modern use of the Bill is mainly to prevent the ordinary citizen from being pestered by those unbalanced eccentrics who, with an imagined grudge, patrol the outskirts of houses, terrifying families by constant use of the telephone, or by those people who are unbalanced and usually malevolent but who do not break the law by means of assault or trespass. Therefore, there is no weapon which the law-abiding citizen has against them except the use of these powers which may be the only effective one which rests in the hands of such citizens.”—[Official Report, 26 January 1960; Vol. 616, c. 54.]

So over a period of about 600 years the issue of intrusion into the private lives of others by use of illegal listening devices, be it the human ear or electric surveillance machinery, has been current. This is one of the reasons why the inquiry by Lord Justice Leveson was initiated.

At heart, it seems to me that we are discussing the age-old problem now described as the tension between articles 8 and 10 of the European convention on human rights. Very often, people seem to remember the rights, but they do not seem to remember the exceptions to those rights. Article 8 says:

“Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence”,

but it goes on to say:

“There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others”,

so it is very much a qualified right, as is article 10, which provides the right to freedom of expression. It states:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.”

But paragraph 2 says:

“The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.”

There are the tensions between articles 8 and 10, and there also are the exceptions to those two great rights which nobody in the House or elsewhere would find in the least bit controversial.

The issue that we are confronting—my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), the Chairman of the Select Committee, drew this out, as have other Members this afternoon—is not whether we should have state regulation of the press. We are not talking about state regulation of the press in the sense that Mugabe, Putin or the Chinese politburo control the press. What we are talking about is whether the press needs to have a self-regulated body which is recognised by the state as being a competent authority to regulate the press’s activities.

The distinction is important. Much of the argument that one has seen in the press and elsewhere, and to some extent in discussions in and around the House, has been utterly off the point. It is to traduce the work of Lord Justice Leveson to suggest that he wants state control of the press. He has said on any number of occasions—I shall quote one or two examples—that the ideal that he is looking for is that

“the industry should come together to create, and adequately fund, an independent regulatory body, headed by an independent Board, that would: set standards, both by way of a code and covering governance and compliance; hear individual complaints against its members about breach of its standards and order appropriate redress; take an active role in promoting high standards, including having the power to investigate serious or systemic breaches and impose appropriate sanctions; and provide a fair, quick and inexpensive arbitration service to deal with any civil complaints about its members’ publications.”

As a member of the Bar, I would of course like people to litigate—that is how I pay my mortgage—but the short point is that if a system can be devised that has the approval of Parliament and which carries with it public approval and confidence, it seems to me that that mechanism, just as the Financial Services Authority is a body given permission by statute, could allow the press to inhabit a world of free expression, subject to articles 8 and 10, that would not interfere with its rights but would also adequately protect, by self-regulation, the rights of the victims of press intrusion and other forms of activity that are subject to the criminal or civil law. Of course many of the activities that led the Government to set up the Leveson inquiry were already against the criminal law, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) correctly spotted. It is illegal to hack, blag and interfere with other people’s telecommunications under various statutes going right back to the 1361 Act that outlawed eavesdropping.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Did not Lord Justice Leveson say that criminality on an industrial scale was itself part of a persistent culture of abusing private individuals, in particular, who have no recourse unless through my hon. and learned Friend, notwithstanding his modest costs? We in this House at least have a forum, but they have none at all, and that is why the report is so important. It revealed that there was a culture, and the press must deal with that, not just the criminality.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Two questions must be asked of any and every proposal for legislation. The first is what problems it will solve and the second is what problems it will create.

First, the problems that gave rise to the Leveson inquiry were phone hacking, bribing and outrageous criminal libel. Those are already against the law or legal redress exists for them. The problem was a failure to enforce the law. Leveson boldly dismisses those issues in asserting, without adducing any evidence, that

“More rigorous application of the criminal law…does not and will not provide the solution.”

Of course it will. It is now, belatedly, doing so. Scores of people have been arrested and face serious charges. That is a powerful deterrent against any repetition.

The apparatus of independent regulation backed by statute, which Leveson proposes, would have no powers to address the very problems that he was supposed to be dealing with. Indeed, it could not do so, because they are matters for the police and the judiciary. His solution would not have prevented or provided punishment for the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone, the payments to police by the News of the World or the vile libel by the Sunday Express of the McCanns. Indeed, Leveson states in his recommendations that

“The Board should not have the power to prevent publication of any material, by anyone, at any time”.

The board could not, therefore, have stopped that libel.

If Leveson had acknowledged that, it would have truncated his report, so he went ahead and proposed a regulatory structure that, amazingly, does not specify the problems with which it is supposed to deal. It is a solution looking for a problem. That, in my experience, is a dangerous thing to create. It would have powers to draw up a code of practice, but Leveson does not spell out what the contents of the code should be. The independent regulator, with the approval of its statutory minder, but not of this House, would be able to select the problems that it tackled.

The second question is what problems the proposal might create. Leveson was goaded into making complex proposals by the two most dangerous phrases in the political lexicon: “Something must be done” and “The status quo is not an option.” That is the mantra of those in the commentariat who have no idea what should be done, but who want to sound positive. I have little sympathy for the newspapers that invariably demand unspecified Government interference to solve any problem and now find themselves hoist by their own petard. The status quo, however unsatisfactory, is sometimes less bad than all the alternatives. Churchill said that democracy is the worst kind of government except for all the alternatives, and I believe that a free and unregulated press, with all its failings, is the worst kind of media except for all the alternatives, which, by necessity, involve state regulation.

I do not have a rosy view of the press and I suffered from them repeatedly over 20 years. I remember the “back to basics” initiative, when John Major’s use of that phrase was taken by the media as advocating family values, even though he made no reference to that. The press claimed it was their duty to investigate the private life of every Cabinet Minister. They called on all my neighbours, offering them money if they had “any filth about Lilley.” They offered rewards in the local pub opposite my house for people who knew anything about me or could see any “goings on” in our bedroom. Worst of all, the Daily Mirror made its front-page splash a story about me visiting my nephew who was dying of AIDS. It was intended to smear me in some vile way, but it simply caused immense distress to my sister. It was a vile time so I know how horrible a free press can be.

Had the strong, independent regulator underpinned by statute that we are considering existed, would—and should—it have called off the press hounds during “back to basics”? There were no calls from the Opposition Benches for the then regulator to do so. I do not believe that a regulator should have the power to do so, but if it did have such a power, the decision would be intensely political. We would be handing over to the regulatory body a political power of which we need to be aware.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Those of us who have sympathy with Leveson’s case are not seeking to hand over powers. We are seeking to establish—I think there is common ground across the House on this—whether the press should set up a robust self-regulatory body. There is nothing from our experience of the past 70 years that offers any confidence that it is capable of doing that, which is why some of us believe—as Lord Justice Leveson said—that there should be some statutory validation of that self-regulatory body.