Leveson Inquiry

Lord Bates Excerpts

Friday 11th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, the debate has been framed as a question between those who prefer some kind of limited statutory regulation and those who wish to resist that. However, I contend that, essentially, the debate is not about the relationship between politicians and the press and the police and the press but about the relationship and the level of trust that exists between the press and the public in whose interests it claims to act. The basis of that relationship has come under strain because of abuses of power by some journalists, resulting in a breach of trust and a sense that inadequate balance of power has been exposed in seeking redress.

It used to be the case that the press would “shine a light”, but all too often it is so strong that it now scorches the lives and the truths upon which it focuses its attention. It used to illuminate but often, as it sensationalises and joins in a voyeuristic celebrity obsession, it now trivialises the news and obscures the truth from view.

The press should not separate that reality from its falling circulation levels as a potential cause and effect. It is a part of the reason why my right honourable friend the Prime Minister set up the Leveson inquiry. On 8 July 2011, he said:

“The Press Complaints Commission has failed. In this case, the hacking case, frankly it was pretty much absent. Therefore we have to conclude that it’s ineffective and lacking rigour. There is a strong case for saying that it is institutionally conflicted because competing newspapers judge each other. As a result it lacks public confidence. I believe we need a new system entirely”.

I would argue that if the Rubicon has been crossed, it was not crossed with a potential Bill but with that statement of intent.

And so Lord Justice Leveson began his work. Not on his own: he conducted his work with six independent assessors, whose contributions should be acknowledged, in Sir David Bell, the former chairman of the Financial Times; Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty; the noble Lord, Lord Currie, a former Ofcom director; Elinor Goodman, former political editor of Channel 4; George Jones, the former political editor of the Daily Telegraph; and Sir Paul Scott-Lee, a former chief constable with the West Midlands Police. The sum of their efforts together was the report we are now considering.

It was a courageous decision by the Prime Minister to set up the inquiry but it enjoyed overwhelming public support at the time. It still merits overwhelming public support if we are to judge by the opinion polls. The public had a sense that there was something fundamentally wrong with the system at the heart of journalism and that something needed to change. If they felt that at the beginning of the inquiry, then as the details emerged of the treatment of Sally Dowler, Kate and Gerry McCann, Margaret Watson and Chris Jefferies, that position was surely strengthened as we were horrified by the evidence it revealed.

What makes the system far worse, and the need for action far more urgent, is that we have never had an inquiry at this level—there have been six or seven—with the strength of the internet in play, an issue to which other noble Lords have referred. It used to be said that newspapers were tomorrow’s fish and chip papers but, because of the internet, they are today’s reheated fish and chips. On the internet, lies can be circulated around cyberspace and constantly move in advance of any correction. There was evidence from Gerry McCann on this when he spoke about his fear, as a father, of the time when his children will be old enough to start searching the internet engines and come across articles which allege that their mother and father were complicit in their sister’s murder.

Of course we cannot control what is on the internet, but if we want to live in a civilised society, it behoves us to do all we can to regulate the veracity of what goes on the internet in the first place. We are reminded that democracy is not just an event, but a process, and that distils down to a duty to keep a check on power. We must make sure that the regulatory system keeps pace with the shifting contours of power in our society. It used to be said that it was the role of journalists to speak truth to power. Through the Leveson inquiry we have heard from victims of the press, and it is their courage in re-entering the public square and sharing their accounts which has turned and spoken truth to the power of the press. We must remember that the object of all our freedoms is not the preservation of a free press, but the protection of a free people.