Media Regulation

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

From the sublime to the corrupt. First, I draw the attention of hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I believe that a free press, a free Parliament and a free society are intrinsic to one another. Investigative journalism, campaigning journalism and, yes, even on occasion mischievous journalism are absolutely vital. They are the best medication for our political sanity, both in the Palace of Westminster and in society generally. Of course, the press and the media entertain, but they also shine a light into the darker caves of modern life. We should never be naive—if we shine a light into the darker caves, we sometimes get wrapped up in the darkness ourselves.

Many people have told me in the past two years that I have become a bit obsessed with News International and that surely this cannot possibly have gone on only at News International. I am absolutely sure that the problems that we have seen at The Sun and the News of the World may well have been replicated at the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday, the Daily Express, the Daily Mirror—all the national newspapers, in particular those trying to pursue what I call celebrity gossip, which was often where this kind of journalism was going on.

There are three distinctive things about News International’s contribution. First, there is hard evidence of what went on at News International. If there were to be hard evidence on any of the other newspapers, I hope the police would investigate with the full thoroughness with which they are now investigating News International. Secondly, there was a major cover-up at News International, which stretched right up to the very highest levels of the company—as we know, even up to James Murdoch. In the end, I suspect that that will prove to have been the biggest crime. Thirdly, News International is owned by News Corporation, which has the largest holding in BSkyB. That makes it quantifiably and qualitatively different from any of the other newspaper holdings in this country.

It is important to remember some of the background to the debate. Some 10 journalists at The Sun, and, as I understand it, 24 employees of the News of the World, have been arrested. They are all on police bail. Police and other public servants have also been arrested. The culture of mass corruption was intrinsic to The Sun’s modus operandi. One public employee received bribes of more than £80,000. One journalist at The Sun had more than £150,000 to disburse in illegal cash payments. So far as we have been told, they were not for grand projects of investigative journalism, but to pursue salacious gossip. A series of private investigators were used, probably not as private investigators, but as paid informants. For example, Philip Campbell Smith was sent to jail yesterday for obtaining private information for cash—another person caught up in this saga.

For a long time, News International maintained that there was one rogue reporter at the News of the World. We now know that that was a lie told on several occasions to Parliament. In an attempt to protect Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, News International said that the hacking started in 2004 and not before then. However, Charlotte Church’s phone was hacked in 2002, as were many others—another lie repeatedly told to Parliament.

News International also maintained that the contagion was just about one newspaper. It had to keep on maintaining that, because otherwise there was a danger that the whole thing would collapse around its ears. Now we know that it was not. The Sun on Monday, The Sun on Tuesday, The Sun on Wednesday, The Sun on Thursday, The Sun on Friday and The Sun on Saturday were in it up to their necks just as much as the News of the World, now renamed The Sun on Sunday.

There is then the illegal cover-up. We know for sure that senior figures at News International ordered the mass destruction of evidence—the clear, incontrovertible evidence of corrupt payments to police that News International garnered together, gave to lawyers and squirreled away, and revealed to the public only very recently. The authorities in the US should be investigating that, because I do not believe that a single member of the board of directors of News Corp took their responsibilities in this regard seriously enough to prevent the payment of corrupt officials.

Yesterday, it was revealed, though I have known for some time, that some of the people who were targeted by the News of the World were on the witness protection scheme—people absolutely vital to securing convictions against very dangerous people in society. They rely absolutely on the state to protect them, so that they can deliver justice for others. The only people who could have given those names and telephone numbers to the News of the World are the Metropolitan police, who are meant to be the there to defend us. That single fact—it is not helpful to know the names—is one of the most destructive of all.

We know from yesterday that Tom Crone, the News of the World’s head of legal affairs, wrote to the then News of the World editor Andy Coulson on 15 September 2006 outlining what Rebekah Wade, now Brooks, told him about the information relayed to her by the cops. That is like the FBI going to Don Corleone and telling him that it has a bit of information on what his family has been up to—an extraordinary thing for us to witness. I suspect that people are so punch drunk with all the different stories in the past two years that they almost fail recognise its significance. The e-mail states:

“They suggested that they were not widening the case to include other NoW people, but would do so if they got direct evidence, say NoW journos directly accessing the voicemails (this is what did for Clive).”

In other words, people right at the top of the News of the World knew in 2006 exactly what had gone on, and everything that they have said since has been a pack of lies. In total, I believe—my poor old researcher has had to count them—there have been 486 lies to Parliament between News International, the police and other organisations. The police effectively became a partly owned subsidiary of News International, with some people working at News International then going on to work for the Met and some people working at the Met then going on to work for News International.

We know also that the Met, in its strategy to deal with victims of Glenn Mulcaire’s activities, bizarrely got in contact with The Mail on Sunday to tell it that its journalists’ phones had been hacked—an irony there; clearly, there is no honour among thieves. However, the Met did not contact all the other victims, including the then Deputy Prime Minister. The Met was saying, right up until February last year, that his phone had not been hacked. We now know that Metropolitan police officers knew for certain that his phone had been hacked in 2007.

This is a problem for politicians, because every element of the regulatory regime failed. The directors of the company did not exercise their fiduciary responsibility, either in the UK or in the US. The Press Complaints Commission failed completely in its duty. The Metropolitan police were suborned. The courts provided justice only very slowly and at great expense and financial risk to those involved. Parliament failed to do its full duty. Let me start with the PCC.

The PCC, throughout all this, has proved to be a toothless gaggle of incompetent crones. At every turn, it has tried to defend the idea of self-regulation. Sir Christopher Meyer, whose period in charge of the PCC was probably one of the most dismal records of public service yet seen, has defended what went on during his time. He has even defended the PCC against the accusations relating to what the press did regarding Christopher Jefferies. Why the PCC did not intervene to say, “I’m sorry folks, it is quite clear what you are doing; you are compromising the course of justice. You must desist,” I cannot understand.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. As weak, appalling and hopeless as the PCC has been, does he acknowledge that the PCC only applies to those newspapers that voluntarily opt in? Other newspapers do not opt in, which puts a big question mark over the self-regulation process.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman, whom I count as a friend in these matters, is right. That issue needs to be addressed and is one reason why the answer that the PCC is coming up with at the moment—a contractual arrangement—will not do the trick, because by definition a contract can only be entered into by two willing volunteers. I do not see how we can proceed in that way.

Let us not forget that Baroness Buscombe, when she was PCC chair, was so fatally compromised by having been appointed by her cronies in the newspapers and by the editors of the major newspapers that she far too readily leapt to the defence of the News of the World and News International, condemned The Guardian and ended up having to pay damages to a Guardian journalist and a lawyer because of how she conducted herself. I do not think that she did due diligence. She is now blaming the News of the World, saying that it lied to her. I do not think that she ever asked the serious questions that needed to be asked.

The new PCC chairman regularly criticises politicians for being politicians. I merely say to him that he is a politician. He is in the legislature and was a Minister and a Member of Parliament; he takes the Conservative Whip. He was questioned at the Leveson inquiry:

“Do you think that Parliament might seek to use any form of legislation, however it was cast, as a way of controlling the press?”

He said:

“Yes, and they have told me so, many of them in both houses.”

His comments are untrue. I do not believe that Members of either House of Parliament want to control the press. That should never be our business. He is making that up and should withdraw the comment. I note that he has gone native, because he is already using unattributed comments, which is of course what most newspaper articles these days seem to consist of.

I say to the PCC chairman that I have no desire to control, muzzle, undermine or enfeeble the press. I want a robust, even scabrous, press to hold the powerful to account and to probe and bring the truth to light with courage and determination, within the bounds of the law and common decency and without hubris. It is hubris, in the end, that has done for News International.

We need a new body—not the PCC dressed up in a new fur coat—imbued with different principles and on a different standing. It is clear that it must be independent of the Government, but it must also be independent of the newspapers, because otherwise it will not command the respect of the British people. It must have statutory teeth provided to it in statute law, so that it can enforce its decisions. It must have an independent chairman, not a member of the legislature and certainly not a journalist or someone who takes a party political Whip. It must have the power to enforce redress and, if necessary, to fine. For instance, it should be able to say, “If you’ve published a story on the front page attacking somebody and it proves completely libellous, the response—the retraction—must be on the front page, if the victim of that libel wants.” The new body, whatever it is called, needs to have that power. Ofcom is not that bad a model for us to pursue.

The Minister said on “Question Time” last week that a new body still had to be self-regulating. He slipped that in rather quietly. It is not the view of the Prime Minister, who has made it clear that the body needs to be independent of the Government and the press. The Minister is obviously on the edge of his political career at the moment in respect of that disagreement. Self-regulation is long past the last chance saloon; it has had its last gin and tonic. It is time for a new body that is completely independent.

I have some suggestions on how to deal with the problem in other areas. For me, the biggest problem relates to ownership. At one point, News International had nearly 40% of the newspaper share and the largest part of the single biggest broadcaster in this country. BSkyB is often not referred to as a broadcaster these days, because in most people’s minds it is the platform on which broadcasts are provided. The Communications Act 2003 needs radical surgery in this regard and must be amended to catch up and include platforms, which are often the most anti-competitive element of the business, in the ownership structure.

At the moment, the only restriction on ownership is that if someone owns 20% of the newspaper share they are not allowed to have more than 20% of ITV. We need to be far more radical and say, first, that there is a cap on the amount of the whole of the media world that people can have and, secondly, if they are to own newspapers and broadcasters there has to be a lower cap on how much of that they can enjoy. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has asked Ofcom to consider this matter in relation to news only. We need to consider that market, but we also need to consider the whole. We need to reform the language on the fit and proper person, on which Ofcom has to adjudicate.

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[Zac Goldsmith]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that no matter what regulation or self-regulation emerges from the Leveson process, as long as individuals and individual corporations control such a large percentage of the news, it is inevitable—unavoidable—that Parliament and the democratic process itself will always bend beneath those interests?

[Chris Bryant]

Absolutely spot on. I agree. In addition, it is inevitable that political parties, craven as we are, will seek to influence somebody with so much concentration of media ownership and the relationship will become too close. Tidying this up is for the good of us all. It is not just for those of us who take a particular view about News International; it is about any potential conglomeration in future.

In relation to the fit and proper person test, one danger is that because so many members of the BSkyB board have been there for way in excess of the eight years that is now considered to be the maximum time that people can be considered as an independent director, to all intents and purposes none of that board’s members is now an independent director. That is bad for BSkyB. I could go on at great length about why BSkyB operates on a monopolistic basis. It uses its application programming interface, its operating system and its hoovering up of rights, in a way, to crowd out any new entrants to the market. Broadcasting is always intrinsically prone to monopoly, because it costs a lot to make a programme and relatively little to give it to 1,000 people, rather than to 2,000, 3,000 or 4,000. That is why statutory intervention is needed.

We need reform in relation to seeking redress. I have already mentioned the powers that a new body might have, but we also need legal redress through the courts that is cheaper than the present arrangements. Let me give figures in relation to myself. I was awarded £30,000 in a settlement. My legal costs came to some £300,000 and are being paid by News International because of the settlement. That is the normal proportion in such situations. The maximum that has ever been awarded in a privacy case by the courts is £60,000, yet if people go to court in a privacy case their costs will be between £300,000 and £500,000 and they may have to meet the costs of the other side as well, which might be in excess of that.

For the sake of both newspapers and ordinary members of the public, we need a cheaper way of doing this. We should set up some form of small claims court, perhaps limiting awards to £20,000 or £25,000. Such a process would not be heavy on lawyers—people would not need legal representation—and cases would be fairly simply and straightforwardly adjudicated, but they would go through the court system, which has true independence built into it.

We need to change some elements of the law. First, in relation to interception, it is clear in the law that if people listen to a voicemail message after the person for whom it was intended they are still intercepting it. Some believe that this matter is not quite as clear as crystal. Perhaps we should clarify that position. That is not to resile from the existing state of the law, which is perfectly adequate, but for the sake of clarity.

Similarly, we should take away the public interest defence for blagging. If someone is obtaining private information about someone else by deception, there should be no public interest. The corollary is that, just as the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Crown Prosecution Service always have to decide, first, whether they are likely to obtain a conviction and, secondly, whether it would be in the public interest to prosecute, so we should give a specific power to the DPP to decide not to prosecute in media cases.

There will be times when a journalist will rightly break the law because there is greater criminality to be detected. I suspect that the journalists in the United States of America who revealed Watergate broke the law on many occasions, but no one prosecuted—wisely, because they were revealing greater criminality and levels of corruption. Such an option should, manifestly, be available to the DPP and CPS.

Let me say something about the public interest test. The PCC has its own test:

“The public interest includes, but is not confined to…Detecting or exposing crime or serious impropriety…Protecting public health and safety…Preventing the public from being misled by an action or statement of an individual or organisation”,

and, secondly:

“There is a public interest in freedom of expression itself.”

That test, frankly, is riddled with holes. To say that there is a public interest in freedom of expression itself is a circular argument—that, basically, it is better to reveal whatever it is even if there is no other public interest at all. That idea is mistaken; we should not look at the public interest but at the public good. Many people—many editors—confuse the public interest with what the public are interested in, but the public can be made to be interested in absolutely anything.

One of the ironies of the past 20 years is that the tabloid newspapers in particular, seeing the collapse of their circulation, have ended up pursuing titillating, salacious stories about who is sleeping with whom and all the rest of it, thinking that celebrity would maintain their circulation. They have tended to do that in a pejorative, condemnatory and judgmental way, but we cannot have prurience and judgmentalism together—they just do not fit. If we are going to be prurient, we have to give up on the judgmentalism, which in practice is what has happened.

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[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.

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[Mr Vaizey]

rose—

[Zac Goldsmith]

I should like to take up both those last two points, although that was not originally why I wanted to intervene.

I edited The Ecologist for about 10 years. We were threatened every month with litigation. Were it not for the fact that I personally had deep pockets and could defend the magazine in a way an ordinary editor or owner could not, the magazine would have been thrown against the rocks, so I take my hon. Friend’s point; but that is entirely different from the point that the hon. Member for Rhondda was making.

There is a clear public interest in the issues that Nature, for example, wanted to explore. There is no public interest in the kind of industrial-scale but nevertheless schoolyard bullying that people such as Charlotte Church faced, and which served no public interest. A 16-year-old girl was mercilessly torn apart by newspapers, and I do not believe any decent person in this country would defend what the newspapers did to her. The fact that she is a celebrity is neither here nor there. What they did was inhuman, and there is no public interest defence.

I challenge any of the newspapers following the debate to come up with one example of a genuine public interest story that has not been published as a result of the so-called chilling effect of the Leveson inquiry. I ask the Minister to reassure people who are afraid of a chilling effect resulting from it—several people have made that point—by saying that none of the ideas being put forward in response to the crisis that we face would jeopardise a free press.

Index on Censorship, which has campaigned harder than anyone else for the kind of reforms that my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West wants, has teamed up with Hacked Off, which focuses entirely on the kind of abuse we have been discussing. The fact that they have joined forces to come up with a solution shows that the proposed solutions are not designed to jeopardise a proper free press.

I ask the Minister to make that point and to add, finally, that even if a crazy idea were put forward—if Leveson lost his head and came up with a lunatic idea, which is highly unlikely—the ideas are just recommendations, and Parliament will take a view. There is no reason at all for anyone to fear the Leveson process. I hope that the Minister will echo those sentiments and make that very clear.

[Sandra Osborne (in the Chair)]

Order. Could we have short interventions, please?