Data Protection Bill [HL]

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to support the cross-party amendments in this group, spoken to so ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, to remedy imbalances in the Data Protection Bill and provide new incentives for the press to join a properly independent system of self-regulation, which is what Leveson recommended and both Houses of Parliament agreed.

Let us remember what led to the establishment of the Leveson inquiry: we had revelations of data breaches on a massive scale. I have never met Hugh Grant—I have not even seen any of his films—but I suppose that one can say that film stars and politicians, as we are public people, are perhaps considered fair game by the media. I do not believe that, but it is an understandable point of view. However, we saw ordinary members of the public and anyone vaguely of press interest being targeted. That meant victims of crime, the bereaved and other totally innocent, private people. Medical records were stolen, mobile phones were hacked and bins were sifted through. Often, there was no public interest or even a suspected story. It was speculative—or “fishing”, as it is known.

Before we get bogged down in legal arguments that this is not the right Bill for these amendments, let us go back to basics and remember the one glaring example that started all this off. A little girl called Milly Dowler disappeared and the media hacked into her voicemails even before her murdered body was found. Despicable as that was, the police did nothing about it, because it was accepted that it was par for the course and that journalists did that sort of thing. That was the view I had as a Member of Parliament in the other place; we took it for granted that that would happen. It was part of the police/media mutual back scratching. Police tipped off friends in the media about arresting the actress Gillian Taylforth performing what was called “a sex act” on her boyfriend in a Range Rover and the media returned the favour by giving some crime story greater coverage in order to help the police.

All parties at the time recognised the need for reform and the Leveson inquiry was established. The inquiry was established to make recommendations to protect freedom of expression and take the matter of press regulation out of the hands of government and give it to an independent body. That is the proper way to reform regulation of the press: a public inquiry the recommendations of which all sides sign up to. Governments of left and right are always vulnerable to pressure from the press, whether it is from Murdoch, Dacre or other individuals, to sway policy in their direction, often at the expense of the public. Let us be honest that no Government have been immune from those pressures. All Governments run scared of doing anything on press regulation when the press might criticise it and not back the party at the next election. That is no way to settle policy, least of all when it overrides the will of both Houses of the British Parliament.

These are not new points; they are a summary of Sir John Major’s evidence to Leveson. I am supporting these amendments today in order to bring those reforms into effect, as Leveson recommended and as Parliament intended and voted for. As noble and noble and learned Lords have said, it is vital that newspapers have access to the exemptions necessary for investigative journalism—Leveson recommended that. We are all defenders of free speech. Newspapers that wish to continue to enjoy the broadest range of exemptions need only sign up to an independent regulator, whereupon they will enjoy not only all of the exemptions already in the Bill, but three new exemptions added by these amendments.

Let us be clear that we mean an independent regulator, not the in-house, fey, bogus, patsy system that the media have created for their own benefit and which is no better than the discredited Press Complaints Commission. We have heard enough examples from noble Lords tonight to show that they have failed to do their duty. We have a cross-party, judge-recommended way forward on these matters. We should take it and take press regulation policy out of the hands of government and into Leveson’s independent system. It is probably just as well that the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, is not here for this debate. In my 40 years in Parliament I have never agreed with anything he has said except every word tonight. I assure noble Lords that it would be as terrible a shock to the noble Lord to hear it as it is to me to say it, but he is absolutely right—we have implemented only a trivial amount of Leveson.

Noble and noble and learned Lords have said, “This is not the right Bill”. There never is a right Bill, unless the Government bring in a press regulation Bill, which I can understand that no Government would want to do. So we are forced to try to implement Leveson by tacking a bit on to this Bill, hoping that there will be another criminal justice Bill next year so we can tack another bit on and gradually, bit by bit, getting Leveson implemented. Of course, the Government could easily implement Section 40, which would give us 90% of what Leveson wanted. These amendments, or implementing Section 40, are the only ways to protect the public while ensuring freedom of the press. I hope that noble Lords from all sides of the House will support these amendments tonight—or, if not tonight if we do not have a vote, in the new year.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I shall make very few remarks and confine them to Amendment 53—which I oppose, I should say at once. In my arguments addressed to an earlier group, I referred to Section 12(4) of the Human Rights Act, to which the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, referred again this evening. He is plainly right: if you look at the text of that, the amendment and paragraph 24(3) of the schedule—which the amendment would excise—you see that the amendment makes no sense. It would leave out precisely what is already there, which mirrors what is already in Section 12 of the Human Rights Act. If ever there were such a thing as a constitutional Act, that is. It has a considerable place in our overall constitution.

I have been searching the Leveson inquiry report, not least the paragraphs devoted specifically to the press and data protection. I certainly hope to be corrected if I am wrong, but I cannot find any suggestion by Lord Justice Leveson—Sir Brian Leveson, not Lord Leveson—that Section 12 of the Human Rights Act should be repealed. In effect, however, Amendment 53 is, if not repealing it, at least producing a position that would be inconsistent with it.

I do not seek to address Section 40. Manifestly, this is not the right Bill, but my objection is deeper still. It would be wrong and unwise, all these years on from the enactment of the 2013 Act, to bring into force Section 40. I set out all the reasons why I take that view in the full debate that we had in this Chamber on 20 December—just before Christmas—a year ago. I do not want to weary your Lordships by repeating it all, although, if I did so, I fear that what I would say would be in plain conflict with a good deal of what was just said by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. Surely the right course now on Section 40 is to wait to see the Government’s final response to their admittedly prolonged consultation process. We will not get there tonight, so I leave it at that. I oppose the amendments.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)]

My Lords, it is late, so I will be brief, but I cannot avoid speaking against Amendment 53. I declare my interest as someone who spent most of her career in journalism and now chairs the Financial Times complaints commission, which is, I assure your Lordships, a very serious commission. The FT aims to put things right.

I absolutely accept that the public were justifiably incensed by the hacking scandal. It was atrocious and, as has been pointed out, illegal. The fact that it was not dealt with as it should have been at first instance through the criminal process was absolutely wrong. In the end, as we heard from noble Lords such as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, people were punished and newspapers folded. That was right, because hacking was illegal and should never have happened, and the public were right to be angry about it. But I do not believe that the British public wish to see all media tarred with that scandal. Neither do I believe that the British public, who are an inherently fair group of people, wish to see all media straitjacketed into joining an inappropriate regulator. I cannot resist echoing my noble friend Lord Black in his use of the word “bullying”; that is exactly how it feels. On the whole, I do not think that the British public would go along with bullying on that scale.

I declare another interest as somebody who, as a supporter of remain, has found myself very much on the sharp end of what newspapers can do. The Brexit media have been quite unpleasant, putting aside the fact that at some stages I have worked for the newspapers in question. That did not stop them. Nevertheless, do I want to see them subject to punitive damages in the circumstances that Leveson imagined? No, I do not, because, as everybody in this House has expressed, I too am a believer in free speech. If we believe in free speech, we need to think very carefully about there being punitive damages for not joining an inappropriate regulator. I do not believe the public want that and I do not believe we should support the amendment.