Royal Charter on Press Conduct

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

I note my hon. Friend’s intervention, but I remain concerned about the royal charter. Even changing the royal charter requires the changes to be laid before both Houses and to secure a resolution by two thirds in both Houses. We do not do things by two thirds in this place; we do things by 50% plus one.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

The two-thirds thing is obviously nonsense, because this House cannot bind its successors and a future Parliament can simply delete it.

[Mr Walker]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I agree that the two-thirds provision is nonsense. It first appeared in this House as part of the fixed-term Parliament legislation. It was wrong then and it is wrong now.

I have probably gone on for far too long. Many better speeches than mine will be made today, and already have been. All I would say is that we have to strike a note of caution. I am not sure that today is the wonderful day that everyone is portraying it to be; in fact, I think it is a very sad day. I hope that we do not live to regret this at some stage in the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I think I will leave that to one side, but I did object slightly to the front page of The Sun today, because its hyperbole did it no favours. It did not inform the debate and I think it was unwise.

My interest in this issue started before I was elected as an MP, when the two girls were murdered in Soham. A friend of mine, Tim Alban Jones, was the vicar of Soham and I remember clearly that every door in that village was knocked, not just once but many times, because members of the press—and, sometimes, television and radio crews—were desperate to find some new angle to the story in order to sell their newspapers. Frankly, that community was in complete and utter shock. The press was not doing anything illegal, but it was unethical and immoral and it bullied and hounded the local community, which was deeply distressing, particularly to the families who had lost loved ones.

It took the vicar to stand up for the community and say, “Listen folks: will you please just leave this community alone?” The Press Complaints Commission in that instance was completely and utterly useless. I think the Prime Minister once referred to the PCC as a busted flush and that is exactly what it has proved to be.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The BBC has a royal charter. Will the hon. Gentleman remind me of how well it has behaved in recent years, particularly in relation to Jimmy Savile? Is a royal charter an amazing thing that prevents abuses from ever taking place?

[Chris Bryant]

No, of course not. I think it was Thomas Hughes, who wrote “Tom Brown’s School Days”, who said that simply passing a law will not make everybody obey the law and that making theft illegal did not prevent everybody from being a thief.

I was in the High Court this morning to hear yet more revelations about how a phone belonging to a Member of this House was stolen from her car in 2010 and then, only late last year, its private details accessed by The Sun. Personally, I do not think that the editor of that newspaper should still be in his job. It is incredible that an organisation that had said that it was cleaning out the Augean stables was still, in September and October of last year—long after the Milly Dowler revelations came out—behaving in this extraordinary way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

May I join in the praise of the Prime Minister, which has become commonplace in this debate, although I do so for a different reason—not for this royal charter, but for accepting the constraints of collective responsibility? He has fought a valiant battle for the freedom of the press but, unfortunately, the Liberal Democrats do not believe in it and we therefore have the restriction on the freedom of the press that we find with this royal charter and this debate. Collective responsibility required that the Prime Minister should lead a united Government on this and I think he was right to do so, because the alternative was to have the Lib Dems with us in the Division Lobby one day and with Labour the next, and that is not a Government; it is, as I believe Palmerston put it, a mere coalition of atoms.

Why is a free press important? Why is freedom of speech important? Why is it a right that this House demands as an absolute? Since the Bill of Rights was introduced, we have been free here to say anything that we like. We can cast aspersions upon anyone we want, powerful or weak; we can make them up. The only constraints we have—not to be rude about the royal family, about judges or about ourselves—are those that the House itself has imposed. We have those freedoms because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) said, we recognise that the way to redress grievance is by being free to do so and having no constraint on what we say in this place. As soon as a constraint is imposed, we find that the Crown, as it used to, will use its powers to suppress a free press.

Before the Bill of Rights, what happened? MPs who said the wrong thing got sent to the Tower. The Prime Minister might think that that is an attractive option to have at his command, but freedom increased the power of the people against the Executive. We see that with newspapers: they hold us to account; they expose wrongdoing, corruption and criminality; and as they do it, they upset powerful people. Indeed, many Members of Parliament were upset over the expenses scandal—a scandal that was revealed only because a brave press was willing to use stolen information.

I am concerned about deciding to license the press—and that is what we are doing. If newspapers do not sign up to this agreement, they risk paying a high level of costs on any occasion when they are sued for libel, and that will be introduced by statute. If they do not sign up to the agreement, they risk punitive damages. Members of the House who are interested in their history will know that the law of criminal libel was used to put down the power of those who criticised Governments. Why was John Wilkes arrested? It was for a criminal libel. By increasing such powers and the viciousness of the laws against those newspapers that will not be registered and licensed by the state, we undermine our freedoms.

As for this wonderful charter, I, like the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds), am reluctant to criticise the power of the Crown. The introduction to the charter reads:

“NOW KNOW YE that We by Our Prerogative Royal of Our especial grace, certain knowledge and mere motion do by this Our Charter for Us, Our Heirs and Successors will, ordain and declare as follows”.

By the sovereign’s mere motion, those who regulate the press are to be chosen, appointed and selected. It is the state that is taking on this power, with some minor protections against its being changed—but, oh, how minor those changes are! We hear that there will be three lines of legislation—three lines—to prevent the charter from being changed. Three lines of legislation can be repealed by one line of subsequent legislation; there is little protection in that. The motion of one charter may be created with further charters. It might perhaps be hard to alter it, but there is always the possibility of new charters to come.

We see, therefore, the risk of increasing state power over our media, leading not immediately to direct censorship but to self-censorship, which we are already seeing with the press being reluctant to criticise the great and the good. I am reluctant to disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot, but I think that Hacked Off is a most disreputable body that used the sad tales of a small number of victims whose bad treatment was often against the law as the cover for a campaign for celebrities who had disreputable pasts that they did not like being reported.