Leveson Inquiry

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

Friday 11th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

My Lords, like other speakers, I feel that we owe a great debt of gratitude to Lord Justice Leveson. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on the Front Bench, I also think that we owe a huge debt to those who had the courage to come before Leveson and give evidence. What came out of Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry was what many of us had long suspected and feared: it was damning and shaming, a stop-at-nothing culture and an industrial scale of telephone hacking, and there would have been much more in the report about telephone hacking if a number of cases had not been sub judice.

Lord Justice Leveson also concluded that there was wilful disregard for decency, objectivity and accuracy. Accuracy! Good heavens—whatever next? The only time that I was ever shocked by the subject of accuracy in relation to the press was when I gave an interview to an American glossy magazine and the next day I was rung up by a lady from Chicago who said, “I’m the fact checker”. I said, “What?”. She repeated, “I’m the fact checker”. That is the only occasion that I was ever approached by a fact checker from a newspaper to check the facts of what had been said. However, what was shocking in Lord Justice Leveson’s findings were the episodes involving the Dowlers, Christopher Jefferies and the McCanns. They have been referred to so often that we have become anaesthetised to the horror of their stories, yet they were truly horrific.

What has been the reaction of the press to the Leveson report? In many cases, it has been a complete lack of contrition. There could not be a greater contrast than the eloquent apology and contrition expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and many newspapers. They have been in completely opposite directions. In some cases, newspapers also ignored specific criticisms that were made of them and their editors. Not a word was printed about the specific criticisms of individual newspapers. However, since Leveson the press have attempted to frame the debate within a particular parameter. The choice, we are told, is between statutory regulation and freedom of the press, but there can be statutory regulation and freedom of the press, as Denmark and Ireland have shown. However, that is not the choice that we are being given.

Statutory regulation is not being proposed. What Lord Justice Leveson proposed is independent regulation free from excessive domination by the industry itself. That regulation is to be validated by a statutorily underpinned body. Leveson’s proposals do not give any rights to Parliament, the Government or the regulator to prevent newspapers publishing anything; nor would his recommendations allow Parliament, the Government or the regulator to prohibit the publication of anything. The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy—who I thought got right to the heart of the matter—talked about the danger of tightening the legislation, but I think that there is a distinction to be drawn. A monitoring body will look at the whole scene overall at periodic intervals—after two years initially, then three years and then another three years. There is nothing in the legislation that could be tightened to become a vehicle for censorship.

Of course it is right that the Prime Minister should warn us to think very carefully before we pass any legislation that refers to the press. He referred to paragraph 71 of the Leveson report and stated:

“Once we try … writing a law that provides for statutory underpinning that describes what the regulatory authority does, what powers it has and how it is made up, we soon find we have quite a big piece of law. That is the concern. We need to think very carefully before crossing that Rubicon”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/11/12; col. 455.]

Is it really going to be quite a big piece of law? We have the privilege of having three or four Bills drafted for us: by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, by the Labour Party and by the Hacked Off group. They have served a very useful purpose. Do they really justify adverts comparing Lord Justice Leveson to Presidents Mugabe and Assad? Are they really chilling and overprescriptive? They do not write the press complaints code into law. They do not describe what has to be in newspapers. They do not describe the procedures that have to be followed.

As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said in his short and forceful speech, we have to draw a distinction between the self-regulatory body that does the regulating —and directing, if there is any—and the body that is just doing periodic monitoring every few years of how effectively the regulatory body is performing its task.

I suggest that no Rubicon is being crossed. As the noble Lord, Lord Trees, pointed out in his excellent maiden speech, the duties and powers of our courts are governed by statute, but that does not mean that our judges are controlled by politicians or the Government of the day.

The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, used the word “touch” and said that it would be wrong if the law even touched on the area of the press. There are already some statutory underpinnings of press regulation. Section 12 of the Human Rights Act 1988 refers to the press complaints code. Why is it there? It is there because the press asked for the code to be recognised in statute.

Some noble Lords argued that the press should be restrained only by law. That seems to be rather like arguing that when a rogue trader in an investment bank commits a fraud, loses the bank £1 million and is jailed for doing so, there is no need for the bank or the FSA to look at its compliance procedures. One needs to use both the law and compliance procedures to ensure that such situations do not arise again.

The Prime Minister rightly said that the Leveson report would and should be judged by the responses of the victims. They have said that they regard the recommendations of the report as the minimum that is necessary. They do not regard a self-regulator as independent and efficient unless there is an agreed system of checks on it. We should accept their verdict. We must not let them down. It is not enough yet again to repaint, refurbish and refit with a few shiny new brass fittings the last chance saloon. That would not be a satisfactory response.