Media Regulation

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on securing this debate. The issue is important, and as ever he made an excellent speech and a compelling case. I want to make an undeclaration, and to make it absolutely clear that I am not related to Clive Goodman.

Her Majesty’s Opposition are basing their perspective of the issue on two principles. The first is the importance of free speech, which is guaranteed in the European convention on human rights, and the Human Rights Act. From that flows the free press, which is essential in our open democracy.

The second critical perspective is that of the ordinary citizen. The phone hacking of the abducted and subsequently murdered schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, led to public horror and was why the Leader of the Opposition called for a public inquiry. We were pleased to support the Prime Minister in establishing the Leveson inquiry and agreeing the terms of reference. My hon. Friend described the horrors of the phone hacking that have emerged before the Leveson inquiry, but I suggest, as everybody in the Chamber will know, that the issues run wider than that.

I have heard from a number of ordinary constituents who have been abused by the press. Such cases seem to have become a common occurrence, and I want to tell one story—although I have others—about a woman who had a double-page spread written about her and photographs taken inside her home. She was described as a person who could not keep a house—in truth, her house was a tip; the Aggie programme would have had a field day—or control her children. The newspaper did not say, however, that the woman was a victim of domestic violence, which was crucial to understanding her situation. This woman was extremely alarmed, hurt and upset by the coverage that she received, but she was the sort of person who did not know that she had any rights and would not begin to understand the notion of redress. We want a system that works for people like her: we do not have such a system at the moment.

The press is already subject to a vast number of laws. For example, on matters of content such as racial incitement, the press is subject to the same laws as everybody else, and as my hon. Friend said, there are also laws that relate to the process by which stories are acquired. The big issue currently under discussion around the country is whether the press should have any special legal privileges.

Before Christmas, the managing editor of The Sun argued that the press should have an exemption from the Bribery Act 2010. Following yesterday’s evidence to the Leveson inquiry, however, we are bound to think that such an argument may have something to do with The Sun’s business model. I do not think that the press should have special legal exemptions. I agree with the Lord Chancellor: everybody should be subject to the law. The Attorney-General has made a number of sensible statements to say that although a free press and free speech are vital, the press must respect people’s other rights, such as the right to a fair trial.

My hon. Friend raised the issue of whether the press should have a public interest defence when acquiring stories, and we look forward with interest to the guidance that the Director of Public Prosecutions has promised to produce. At the moment, the public interest test is applied by the DPP when deciding whether to prosecute a journalist.

[Zac Goldsmith]

Does the hon. Lady agree that a legal definition of the public interest would provide the flexibility that commentators in the press are asking for? Most of the corruption and the abuses that we heard about yesterday, and over the past few months, do not amount to the noble pursuit of truth but are actually pretty squalid. There are exceptions, however; Watergate, which was cited by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), is an example in which laws may have been broken in the pursuit of something valuable. A legal definition of the public interest would provide the flexibility that we need to ensure proper, genuine and useful journalism, and help to weed out the rubbish and abuse that we have seen over the past few years.

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and we must distinguish between occasions when the press pursues the public interest or public good, and occasions when it does not. When the DPP produces his guidance, however, I do not think that he will define the public interest. If, for example, I were to say that the public interest includes uncovering crime and corruption, or demonstrating hypocrisy by people in high office, the problem is that it would be difficult to encapsulate everything. Therefore, if we were to go down that path, we would have to think about including everything else as well. I am not convinced that the public interest itself needs to be defined, although we do need greater clarity in the way that the test is applied.

The problem is that the press has ignored the law and the police have not enforced it. Another major problem concerns the inequity that exists in this country when people deal with the press. A person on a low income can go to the Press Complaints Commission, but it can offer them only a published apology or perhaps a letter. Wealthy people, however, can go to court, which is why we have seen them receiving big payouts. People have said, “There seem to be an awful lot of celebs at the Leveson inquiry”, but that is because celebs can afford to pursue their cases, and those are the stories that we know about. We do not know about the victim of domestic violence whom I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, or about the child involved in the criminal justice system, because they have not been able to pursue their cases.

[Chris Bryant]

People who do not have a lot of money—I do not have a lot of money—have been helped by the conditional fee agreement, which many would refer to as the no win, no fee arrangement. Such agreements worked particularly in cases of privacy and defamation because the amount that a person might eventually receive would be so low—£60,000 at most, and in many cases £20,000, £25,000 or £30,000—that they could not possibly pay all their legal fees. The danger with the Government’s changes to conditional fee agreements is that it will be the poor who are unable to get justice. Would it not make sense to have an exemption for privacy and libel cases?

[Helen Goodman]

I was going to ask the Minister whether he will go back to his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice and address the clauses in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, which is currently before Parliament. It would be good if Ministers from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport took seriously their responsibilities and got Ministers from the Ministry of Justice to shift their position.

We have briefly discussed the fact that we need a free press that pursues the public interest. Just like books and magazines, newspapers have a VAT exemption which, I understand from questions that I have asked of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, is worth £150 million. It seems to me that the public expect to get something for their £150 million—namely a responsible newspaper industry.

Everybody who contributes to this morning’s debate will say that they favour press freedom. There is, however, sometimes confusion about what we mean by that. I just want to tease out some distinctions in relation to that small phrase. Of course, everyone agrees that we need freedom of expression in a free society. If, after this debate is over, people want to say, “The Member for Bishop Auckland made a terrible speech and I didn’t agree with a word of it,” that is fine by me; they are free to do that. However, I do not think that that freedom of expression extends to a licence to ride roughshod over both the law and ethical considerations in order to pursue stories.

We need to be very clear about the distinction between freedom with respect to the content of what is written and freedom in terms of the process that the media use to acquire stories. If we take seriously that distinction between process and content—Onora O’Neill wrote a very interesting essay on this before Christmas—we will find it very helpful. I say that because when we look at the systems that apply—the PCC and whatever we would like to succeed the PCC—we are looking at systems that address the processes, not at systems that control what people write. No Opposition Member and, I am sure, no Government Member has any interest in standing in a newsroom with a big red pen. That is not what we are talking about.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

indicated assent.

[Helen Goodman]

I am glad that the Minister is nodding; we clearly have a consensus on that. However, if there is to be more discipline in relation to processes, that obviously requires the institutions, organisations and corporations themselves to have some proper internal management control.

[Sandra Osborne in the Chair]

I am pleased to welcome you to the Chair, Ms Osborne.

I have to say that it was pathetic to hear James Murdoch before the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport saying that he did not know in answer to all the questions that the Committee was putting to him. I am leaving to one side the question whether all those answers were, strictly speaking, accurate and truthful. He seemed to think that not knowing was some kind of excuse, but in a well run organisation, the people at the top should know what is going on. It is not an excuse not to know. I have written about that in more detail, and people can see what I have written on my website. I now want to talk about the move to a new system and the criteria that a new system must fulfil.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) made a speech in Oxford last month, in which she highlighted three criteria. A new system must be independent, must be citizen-centric and must have 100% coverage of all newspapers. At the same conference shortly afterwards, and very helpfully, Ed Richards, the head of Ofcom, spelt out the meaning of independence. Independence means independent of political influence and independent of those who are regulated. The system needs to be independent of those who are regulated with respect to the decisions that are taken, the governance and the budgetary control.

Mr Richards went on to set out other qualities that a good system should have. He mentioned clear objectives, an investigative capacity, transparency of process, power to sanction and public accountability—something that we have not looked at enough in relation to the PCC, which is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act or all the usual accountability mechanisms of bodies that are pursuing public interests. The system must also be accessible to complainants.

In the light of what has happened, I would like to add four further points. No one should be above the law. The financial compensation that people receive should be related to the wrong that they have suffered, not the depth of their own back pocket. We need to see competent management systems and proper audit trails in the media industries. As the hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) said, we need to look across to the new media as well, because otherwise we could simply set up a system or see a system set up that made traditional newspapers completely uneconomic, with everything migrating to the net. We would then have the wild west on the net, which would not be acceptable, so the hon. Lady was right to raise that point.

Obviously, this is a difficult and complex area, and it would be good if the industry could produce some solutions that met the criteria that have been outlined. So far, we have seen some very positive and interesting ideas put forward to Lord Justice Leveson by Alan Rusbridger in relation to the Reynolds defence and the Omand principles, which show what The Guardian has done and how it has kept ahead of the PCC code.

We have also seen proposals from the current chair of the PCC, Lord Hunt of Wirral, who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda reminded the Chamber, takes the Tory Whip in the House of Lords. Lord Hunt seems to be putting forward a convoluted construction of commercial contracts between press and regulator. I would like to ask a number of questions about that proposal. First, is it not the institutionalisation of agency capture? Secondly, if it is based on contracts between the regulator and the regulated, how can the regulator be truly independent? Will not the regulator always be looking over his or her shoulder to see whether membership or income might be lost? That does not seem to meet the criteria for independence set out by Ed Richards in his speech.

My next question is how the proposal can guarantee 100% coverage. Of course, it might guarantee 100% coverage in the short term. It might be that Lord Hunt, who is an extremely persuasive and plausible man, can get people to sign up now, but what guarantee is there that people will not subsequently want to leave such a system? Is it not really designed to maintain the existing “cosy club” style of regulation? Do other hon. Members really believe that those commercial contracts will satisfy the public, given everything that they have seen come out in the Leveson inquiry?

On Sunday, on the television, Lord Hunt claimed that he had the support of political parties for the proposal. I have to say that he does not have the support of Her Majesty’s Opposition for the proposal. Has the Minister met Lord Hunt? Has the Minister agreed the proposal? I believe that we should wait for Lord Justice Leveson to fulfil the inquiry that the whole House agreed it wanted him to undertake. We all agreed that that was important—that we needed the independence of a senior judge. I hope that the Minister will say that he, too, agrees that we should wait for Lord Justice Leveson to report, and that he does not accept the hysterical criticisms that were made of Lord Justice Leveson by the Secretary of State for Education.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Vaizey]

The hon. Gentleman is referring to the fact that my remark, albeit in shorthand, echoed the Secretary of State. My right hon. Friend said:

“I don’t know whether legislation would form part of the solution or not…I would love the industry to come to me with their proposed solution, but what I would say to them is that whatever you propose must have the confidence of the public, because the public are not happy with what’s been going on.”

We all agree that we do not want statutory regulation of the content of the press. We want to hear what proposals the press have for regulation, and we have not ruled out statutory backing for a regulatory system.

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State recently noted in the same interview, there is more agreement than expected on the tougher form of newspaper regulation that will emerge in the light of the phone hacking scandal. It is no secret that we would like a regime for regulating the press that is independent, but which has credible sanctions to deal with transgressors, to pick up on the points made by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland. It must also cover all the press.

Our preference is that there should be no direct statutory regulation of press content and that the press should be able to come forward with a new regime that is credible to the public. The press have already begun that process with the appointment of a new chair of the Press Complaints Commission—Lord Hunt. We wish him well in tackling the challenges he and the industry face. However, we have ruled nothing out at this stage, and we are certainly not in the business of pre-empting Lord Justice Leveson’s report.

[Helen Goodman]

I am pleased the Minister has said he does not intend to prejudge Lord Leveson’s inquiry, and that is helpful, but does he have any thoughts about the ideas put forward by Lord Hunt?

[Mr Vaizey]

I hear what Lord Hunt has to say, and my understanding is that he wants everyone to be members of the new body. He wants credible sanctions, he wants the body to be independent of the Government and the industry, and he wants the industry to come forward with credible proposals. As I say, however, it would be wrong for me to comment on the specific elements he is putting forward for debate ahead of the Leveson inquiry’s findings.

Let me talk a little about the Leveson process before I make the other point I was about to make. The inquiry will have two parts. As everyone knows, the first part looks at media ethics and will make recommendations for a regulatory regime to ensure we have ethical media. It is important to note that that part of the inquiry will report in October 2012. The second part will look at the extent of illegal behaviour by News International and other media organisations and at the police inquiry into that behaviour. That part of the inquiry is necessarily longer because of the difficulties of operating around live criminal investigations, as the hon. Member for Rhondda mentioned.

The first part of the inquiry is made up of four modules. Module 1 dealt with the press and the public, and the hon. Gentleman will have seen the extensive media coverage of the witness hearings at the royal courts of justice. The evidence given has helped to raise the inquiry’s profile, and the continued coverage serves only to highlight the intense importance the public attach to the regulation of the press and to the inquiry’s outcome.

Hon. Members may have noticed that the hearings for module 2, which focuses on the press and the police, started yesterday. They will be followed by module 3, which focuses on the press and politicians. It is obvious, therefore, that media interest will continue right up until Lord Justice Leveson reports and that there is still a huge amount of evidence to be gathered and considered. Let me therefore repeat—I have said this almost ad nauseam—that it is important to wait for Lord Justice Leveson’s report.

There is, however, another opportunity to look at these issues. We will publish a Green Paper focusing, if I can put this in shorthand, on how to bring the Communications Act 2003 up to date. We hope the Green Paper will lead to a White Paper and then to a communications Bill. I say that in all sincerity because of the work the hon. Member for Rhondda has done on the issue and the position he has taken.

The hon. Gentleman raised a number of issues this morning, and I hope that he does not feel I am being too much of a politician when I say it would be wrong for me to give a view on each of his points about a small claims court or amendments to interception rules, or, indeed, his concerns about the proposed parliamentary privilege Bill, which is still very much in the drafting stage, the fit and proper person test or the need to amend the Communications Act 2003. I hope that he will, perhaps in a personal capacity, submit evidence to the Green Paper.

[Mr Vaizey]

It is sad that our relationship has reached this stage, when the hon. Gentleman deliberately mischaracterises what I have said. If he is honest he will say that the Secretary of State has not reached a conclusion on whether the small claims court is the right way forward. My right hon. Friend said merely that it is an idea that should be considered, which is exactly what I said about two minutes ago: the hon. Gentleman put forward some interesting ideas and I would welcome it if he—I am treating him with a lot more respect than he is giving me—would put those ideas into the Green Paper. Is that all right?

I am sorry, Ms Osborne; I got slightly carried away, but it is a bit unfair when all we are saying is that the arguments being put across are perfectly valid and deserve consideration in a process that is being undertaken by the Leveson inquiry and the Green Paper.

[Helen Goodman]

I am grateful to the Minister, who is being generous with his time. We were expecting the Green Paper to be published before the end of January, and it is now almost March. Does he have any idea about the timetable for the process, for which he is in fact responsible? [Interruption.]

[Mr Vaizey]

My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), who is an experienced politician, says that the conventional answer is “Soon”. As a Minister I have come up with a new conventional answer to any question like that, which is “in the spring”, because I have discovered that in Whitehall the spring season runs from February to November. Therefore, to say that something will be published in the spring covers all the bases. However, to be more accurate, and feeling the vibes of pressure about my performance coming from the hon. Member for Rhondda, I can say that the timing has changed from spring to imminent, which means that we hope to publish the Green Paper in the next few weeks. We wanted to tighten up a number of issues, not related to what we are discussing today, but on a wholly separate matter.

[Helen Goodman]

We know about that.

[Mr Vaizey]

That is the reason for the delay, and I gather that the hon. Lady knows about it.

[Mr Vaizey]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, which is that the document is a Green Paper, not a White Paper. It is not a precursor to the legislation. The Green Paper is a consultation document, and it will raise a number of issues. It will, in some areas, give a clear view of the Government’s direction of travel, and in others it will simply raise an issue and invite comments. However, it is important to emphasise that a Green Paper is a precursor to a White Paper and is therefore not necessarily so detailed. It is designed to invite comment, ideas, thoughts and proposals. In that sense it is much more open minded, and is effectively a call for further evidence.

The hon. Member for Rhondda has raised a number of points during the debate, which although its title is “Media Regulation” focused on the issue that has exercised us for the past few months: the future of press regulation.

[Helen Goodman]

I intuit that the Minister may be about to sit down. Before he does I want to remind him of another issue raised in the debate: whether he has put any further pressure on his Ministry of Justice colleagues to amend the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill.

[Mr Vaizey]

It is worth making the point that the conditional fee arrangements could be interpreted as a restriction on press freedom. I hear what the hon. Lady has said about the Opposition’s case for a clear exemption in the relevant areas; but there is certainly an argument that conditional fee arrangements put the press under undue pressure. I hear what the hon. Member for Rhondda says about the sums of money involved, but there is evidence that newspapers might settle cases that they would otherwise be prepared to fight, on the basis of the legal costs that they are likely to rack up against a litigant. I will happily write to the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Rhondda, setting out the position on that issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Vaizey]

rose—

[Helen Goodman]

I just want to comment on the intervention made by the hon. Member for Worthing West. There are many things in the draft defamation Bill that will free the press, which the Opposition support. However, the Joint Committee report makes the point that the Jackson proposals should have been introduced rather than the things in the Government’s Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill.

[Sandra Osborne (in the Chair)]

Minister?