Data Protection Bill [HL]

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

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

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, who obviously knows a great deal about the matter—more than I do. I still think that we should question the ability for this to happen in the future. Surely the whole point of the Leveson inquiry was to tighten things up so that this would not happen so much. When I listen to people talking about what happened to them and how they felt that they had very little recourse—although they took civil action and some of them won—I accept that newspapers shut down, but my goodness, perhaps they should have done. These things are right.

In listening to the debate, I was very impressed by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord McNally. It is not that I do not believe in the press—believe me, I think that the press does a wonderful job, by and large—but even those of us who are involved in doing wonderful jobs do so because we can look at ourselves and say, “We got this wrong”. That is what I have not heard enough of. My noble friend Lady Hollins is having a rather tricky time; she is up against some big guns.

What do the future victims have if they do not have recourse to law—if they believe that Leveson was the answer and we gradually remove most of his recommendations, which is what we seem to be doing? Perhaps noble Lords are right; perhaps in law we should be getting rid of them, but I am worried that the public will begin to think, “What are these inquiries? Why does the status quo always remain exactly the same?”. That is why I wanted to speak up for my noble friend Lady Hollins. We must think a bit more about people whose lives are sometimes ruined just by innuendo. As we have heard, they might get a tiny apology at the bottom of the page, but the damage is done—and it can be terrible.

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

My Lords, I first congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, on withdrawing her amendment, which I thought was extremely wise and thoughtful. She does us a great favour by constantly bringing us back to these issues.

I try to take the long view. I declare an interest: I am the extremely proud son of a journalist. My father was not any old journalist; he was one of only two people who were evacuated from Dunkirk twice, because he was sent back to report it twice. I am very proud of my father; he was a remarkable journalist and a very fine man. That is why I am passionate about this subject. I apologise to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, if I intervened inappropriately at the end of the last debate. I was trying to make it clear that this House does not contain people who oppose freedom of the press; if we could just agree on that, it would be something of a triumph.

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, for whom I have enormous regard, and the noble Lord, Lord Black, both used an interesting word: “bully”. The idea of using the word “bully” in the context of a debate such as this, as if it excludes the notion of press bullies, is obviously farcical. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Pannick: when a headline appears that accuses three High Court judges of being traitors, is that fair comment? Is that damaging? Does that provide for the type of democracy he would like to see this country moving towards, or does it irrevocably drive it backwards? As a remainer, I am sick to death of being accused of being somehow undemocratic and apparently opposing the will of the people. That is as much rubbish as is the notion that I might be opposed to freedom of the press.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is exactly right. We must be more sensible about this. There is fault on both sides. We are not where we would wish to be. The 1998 Act—I was here when it was passed—was a very good act, but it is not sufficient for our present circumstances. It has been ignored by some highly unscrupulous editors. The present regime of apology is ludicrous; the other day, I put that to the noble Lord, Lord Black. I am not sure if he agrees, but it is a joke. We must be more sensible about moving forward on this issue, so I applaud the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, for taking a long view. We must do the same, but we must also adopt a very determined, clear and moral view to get this right.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, as I made clear in Committee, I wish to see the recommendations of the Leveson report, which strikes the right balance between the interests of the public and free expression rights of the press, be enacted in law. I say to my noble friend Lord Black that there is certainly no intention to punish anyone.

We already have the architecture in place: the royal charter and the Press Recognition Panel, which applies tests suggested by Leveson and made under the royal charter. There is already one approved regulator in place. The only role left for the state and the Government is for Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act to be commenced and to deal with some of the detailed data protection issues. We do not need to do much more and we certainly do not need to start again.

These Leveson changes are the only way to achieve a thriving, free and independent press that is immunised against a very rich target for investigation, as well as to provide appropriate protection for the public from abuse. I therefore have no hesitation in strongly supporting the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. I remind the House that I have never been mistreated by the media and I do not know any celebrities, except those who are or have been parliamentarians.

In Committee I also made it clear that one of the factors that stung me into action was the copious misinformation and wrongful propaganda published about press regulation and Leveson’s recommendations by elements of the press. This tactic of publicising falsities about the recommendation in the Leveson report also motivated the DCMS committee in another place to criticise press misreporting about Section 40 and other matters in its submission to the government consultation on press regulation earlier this year.

Probably one of the most palpably false media claims is that the implementation of Leveson is unnecessary. Many noble Lords have already touched on that. The media says that the regulator it has established and controls, IPSO—which fails the Leveson and royal charter tests for independence and effectiveness—is already sufficiently robust. Many noble Lords clearly do not believe that. IPSO helpfully mailed a fact sheet last week to some noble Lords. I was pleased to see that it has already been subject to a rebuttal by a further mailing from Professor Brian Cathcart.

I was alarmed to see some particularly erroneous details in IPSO’s mailing. They cannot be left unchallenged. For instance, IPSO claims that it had ordered 17 front- page references. The truth is that not once in three years of work has IPSO required a national newspaper to publish a recognisable correction on its front page, no matter how profound the original breach. I have to confess that I do not regularly read a certain broadsheet newspaper that many noble Lords would expect me to read. I do not find it to be a reliable source of information, very sadly. So I subscribe to the Economist, but even that august newspaper last week disappointed by publishing a correction about a forgivable error in the previous week’s report on transgender rights that was in small print and at the bottom of a completely unrelated article about Labour Party polling.

Moreover, IPSO argues that its complaints process puts great emphasis on complaints between publication and the complainant being resolved with, it says, more than 600 resolutions in its three years of operation. But what does “resolution” mean? The reality is that in many cases, as with the failed PCC, complainants become so worn down by the process that they give up or accept weak and inadequate remedy. Furthermore, when cases are supposedly “resolved” there is no recording of a code breach, which means that essentially nothing is kept on record by IPSO to show that the newspaper has failed to meet the appropriate standards.

As for IPSO’s claim to offer Leveson-style arbitration, Leveson said that it is critical that arbitration is compulsory for news publishers, yet IPSO’s scheme allows the publishers to choose whether to accept an arbitration claim. In other words, the whole system is optional. This means that those with the strongest cases but with limited means can be refused arbitration, forcing them to go to court—if they can afford it—whereas a multi-billionaire can threaten very expensive legal proceedings against the newspaper. That is exactly what Leveson feared and it renders IPSO’s whole scheme redundant. This is not access to justice for all; it just protects the ultra-rich and elites but leaves ordinary aggrieved citizens with no protection. It is no wonder that, after 18 months, IPSO’s trial arbitration scheme has had no takers.