Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Prescott Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prescott]

My Lords, I cannot declare an interest or experience as a barrister, a lawyer, a solicitor or, indeed, a judge, but I can declare some experience from my seafaring days when the ship owners used to call me a barrack room lawyer. I did not have legal aid, but a bit of industrial muscle helped. Perhaps I can just declare one interest. I am presently, after the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Martin, involved in a no-win no-fee situation with the Metropolitan Police. Indeed, I concur with what the noble Lord has said. If you try to get justice for an offence committed by the press, they just ignore you or say, “We’ll sue you”, and you have to think about whether you will take on a no-win no-fee case. I identify with those circumstances.

I want to concentrate my remarks on what people have criticised about the Bill, which is that it is about cutting costs and money. Indeed, everybody admits that. But the people who are carrying the burden are the most vulnerable in our society, and that too is agreed across all the Benches. However, I disagree with it. I shall address my comments to the biggest interest group in this country—namely, our press. They are the ones that have real influence. They are the ones that have committed most of the injustices against individuals. They are the ones that can claim to do whatever they like in the name of the public interest, usually at the cost of the private individual’s interests and rights. I shall therefore concentrate on Part 2, which deals with litigation.

It has been said that many more cases are taken on under conditional agreements. Naturally so, and many have been won that way. Why is that? It is because people could not afford to take on the press before, who in contempt would not make any kind of apology. By the way, if you did get an apology, it was usually printed on page 25, even if you had probably been given the front page, as they often did with me. But eventually, when you win the case for an apology—by the way, they do not use the word “apology”; they say “correction”—basically it is put on the back pages. They are in contempt of justice for the individual. We therefore now have an opportunity to take into account how this Bill affects this area.

What offends me most about the Bill is that it strengthens the most powerful group against the vulnerable individual. The press have the money, the lawyers and the influence, and they use all that effectively against the individual. What this Bill seeks to do is strengthen that strong group by helping to reduce its costs on the one hand and by increasing its influence in these situations on the other. Look at what the Bill is actually proposing on damages—and we are talking about an industry that does not look as if it is going to change. Listen to the inquiry being conducted by Lord Leveson, or to what was said there today by Milly Dowler’s family. The press are still carrying on with business as usual. This is a group that does not want any change or a statutory framework. It is making it clear that it wants to keep the voluntary system. That has to be questioned.

The importance of that, particularly for this Bill, is: how do you bring an action against a powerful interest group like this? It is accountable to the useless Press Complaints Commission. It is absolutely useless. We have had Members of this House chairing the commission—I think the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, was one. In fact she was the chair of this pretty useless group when it was fined or had to pay damages for libel against one of the lawyers in the hacking case. In that case, did the press pay her legal fees and did they pay the damages? I keep asking but I get no answers. But I can tell you for a cert that it would have been carried by the industry. The PPC is a total failure. It does not carry out its job. Why is that? It is because it is self-regulated. It is controlled by the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee and by its code. If anybody saw the apology made by the Daily Telegraph in regard to Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, about what it did to him, they will see that the newspaper admitted that it was in the wrong and in breach of the Editors’ Code of Practice, but thought that it could still go ahead with the story. Publish and be damned because it could not care a damn, quite frankly, as long as it sells newspapers. That is the only interest of the press in these matters, and they ride over the rights of the individual simply to secure those sales.

This Bill will actually help to reduce the costs of the press, which they are moaning about, and not only in individual cases. Last July, we had a debate in this House on the private Defamation Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Lester. The press were worried about libel tourism and who would carry the costs of that when our judges were making judgments on damages in some of the other cases that they thought to be excessive. Are they excessive when they breach the law and breach people’s rights and even object to judges giving a decision? Look at the case of Mr Dacre, who attacked the judge for making a judgment on human rights issues in regard to the Mosley case. That was totally unacceptable. It is the judges’ right to make the decision about the balance between public interests and private rights. That is what we ask them to do. Mr Dacre was saying it is not the job of the judges to do that. Journalists want human rights legislation changed, so it is not only in regard to individual claims that we have to watch this powerful interest group. They want changes right through the system. They want changes to reduce costs and damages so they can continue to pay them, limited as they are, in order to publish and carry on. That is what concerns me most.

In my own regard, the police constantly opposed my application for a judicial review. Thank goodness the judges eventually made a judgment that I should have one. But the police were contesting it. Who pays the police’s costs if there are damages involved? Who pays for them to employ the best barristers? That is paid, presumably, by the Metropolitan Police, which means by the public. I could not have taken out a case against the press if I had not had the chance to use the conditional system and to pay insurance. We now hear that the Government in this Bill are going to transfer insurance and other costs on to those who win their case. That is totally unacceptable, frankly. We talk about individuals paying damages if they have lost a case, but here we are talking about a powerful, wealthy body called the press which is asking us to make these changes.

There have been recommendations by Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian. He suggested having a proper press complaints procedure with intervention and mediation by the Press Complaints Commission. He is absolutely right. He said it should be an independent body. He is absolutely right. But he does not want it to be a statutory one. How are you going to enforce everybody to be part of the PCC unless there is a statutory framework? How are you going to enforce sanctions, if you believe in doing that? I would suggest to him that in no-win, no-fee cases, the PCC should consider acting in mediation, and if courts or individuals refuse to accept that, then let the Press Complaints Commission take the complaint. Let it offer a conditional agreement so that the individual can then take the case, and let that be a cost to the industry, because it might be an effective deterrent if it has to pay to put something on the front page that is wrong. The Government in this Bill are reducing those penalties and strengthening the press and that is not acceptable.

This House will be debating a number of pieces of legislation. One is the legal aid Bill which is now before us. The second will be a defamation Bill that will presumably come before this House. There will be a new Human Rights Bill, a Bill of Rights or whatever, which normally comes to this House. And there will be a new public complaints or mediation facility and perhaps even a cross-media ownership issue. All these involve the media. This is an opportunity for this House to get a very clear idea of how the press fits within the framework. I believe in a free press—I think it is necessary—but one that defines what the public interest is, not one that is out of control. The Guardian’s proposal is that the editors should determine the public interest. Editors determining the public interest? They are only concerned about their own private interest and the selling of newspapers. To suggest, against the background of what our press has been doing, that they should define the public interest is unacceptable. They have defined it and they have no time for it. It is all about press freedom. I hope when we come to debate this legislation, we will consider all these parts. This is about the role of the press in a free society but not one where it is business as usual, as they are now proposing.