Press Regulation (Communications Committee Report)

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford, in whose diocese is situated the parish of Lexden, with its fine, flourishing church dedicated to Saint Leonard. However, I regret to say that my Christmas card from the right reverend Prelate has yet to arrive.

The Communications Committee rendered a conspicuous service by producing this clear, sharply written report on press regulation. It summarises the story of perhaps the greatest crisis in the long history of the British press. From the 17th century onwards, our press—diverse, irreverent, bold—has been woven into the history of the evolution of rights and freedoms in our country. The report, which the noble Lord, Lord Best, so helpfully brought up to date in his speech, underlines the sheer gravity of the crisis which struck in July 2011, and reminds us of the quite considerable and intensive work done over the years that followed to find lasting solutions to it.

However, the report is so much more than a valuable work of reference. In its final chapter it poses the central questions which required answers in March last year when the report was published. The questions were addressed to the Press Recognition Panel, the Independent Press Standards Organisation, the Independent Monitor for the Press and the Government. The first three have provided at least some partial answers to the report’s questions through the actions they have taken over the year and three-quarters that have elapsed since the report’s publication.

The Government’s response consists of just seven noncommittal sentences in an annexe to a letter sent by the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, John Whittingdale, to the noble Lord, Lord Best, on 29 June last year. The seven sentences—one of which, incidentally, has a small spelling mistake which renders it ungrammatical; as a former editor, although not of newspapers, I notice these things—were in reply to a report of 47 pages, excluding appendices. When I was a member of the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House, I often expressed dismay at the brevity and belatedness of the Government’s responses to our reports—but they were positively lavish compared to Mr Whittingdale’s effort. Not the least important of the incremental reforms that could assist your Lordships’ House is a firm and binding convention that Governments will provide timely and substantial responses to reports submitted to them by the committees of this House.

As we all know, the Government will soon face a moment of reckoning on the most critical of all the proposals for the new system of press regulation that has been developing since the Leveson report; they will tell us shortly whether or not they propose to implement statutory arrangements designed to coerce the overwhelming majority of newspapers, which are now members of IPSO, into joining Impress. The report of the Communications Committee, written early last year, states:

“It appears that under the leadership of Sir Alan Moses, IPSO intends to fulfil more of the main recommendations of the Leveson Report”,

having by that stage already incorporated,

“some of the features of a regulator advocated by the Leveson Report”.

It seems to me that Sir Alan has done what he indicated he would do a year and three-quarters ago.

The extent of Sir Alan’s and IPSO’s progress over the period has been carefully measured by the distinguished public servant Sir Joseph Pilling, who in the years since he retired as Permanent Secretary at the Northern Ireland Office has forged a second career as a reviewer of secular and ecclesiastical institutions. He is fearless and determined in his approach. His review of IPSO, published two months ago, was unequivocal. It found that IPSO is independent, effective and largely compliant with the Leveson recommendations. IPSO now constitutes a firmly established regulatory system which will undoubtedly develop even further, underpinned by contract law. Would it be right now to place it in severe difficulties by implementing Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013?

The extent of the ensuing difficulties that could arise has been widely publicised in relation to the national press. There has been some attempt to suggest that regional and local newspapers, which constitute such a precious ingredient of our tradition of press freedom, would be affected to a much lesser degree. It has been said that concern for the future of our local press is but a smokescreen—a diversion from the main issues—but the threat to our regional and local newspapers from Section 40 is real and potent. Strong representations are being made by local editors and journalists throughout the land; their voices should not only be heard but heeded.

I am particularly worried about what would happen in Northern Ireland, a part of our country with which I have been closely involved for over 40 years. The situation there is already very curious. Northern Ireland is not covered by the royal charter, yet surprisingly it comes within the scope of the Press Recognition Panel established under the charter—a document which, as the committee’s report reminds us, owes nothing whatever to the Leveson inquiry. It emerged from the excited, fertile imagination of a Minister who has now lost office, leaving others to pick up the pieces. Great difficulty and confusion would be created in Ulster if Section 40 were implemented. The Act, like the royal charter, does not apply in the Province, so a Northern Ireland publisher brought before the Northern Ireland courts would not be subject to the penalties that could be inflicted on his counterparts in England and Wales. On what ground of principle could this difference possibly be justified?

However, the devolved Northern Ireland Executive might decide to adopt Section 40 through legislation in the Northern Ireland Assembly, or to introduce quite different arrangements of their own. Where would that leave the much-vaunted freedom from political interference that the royal charter is supposed to guarantee? Even if the Northern Ireland Executive stay their hand, Section 40 might still catch a Northern Ireland publisher if action were brought in the courts of England and Wales. How could it be right to inflict such a totally confused state of affairs on one part of our country?

In its conclusion, the Select Committee’s report spells out precisely what is needed: a system of press regulation which adequately balances the right to privacy with freedom of expression, and which has the confidence of potential claimants and the press itself. There is just one addition that needs to be made: a system that operates uniformly and fairly in all parts of the United Kingdom.