Press Regulation

Lord Sugar Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, my understanding is that these are, as I say, points to do with the arbitration system, which are matters of detail. The intention is not to reopen this because all that will do is produce the situation that noble Lords have quite rightly berated me about. This takes us into avenues of reopening matters and, in a way, your Lordships and the nation feel that we have reached a point now where we have to resolve the matter.

[Lord Sugar (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to narrow my comments today to one particular organisation. All parties successfully applied pressure on News International, which resulted in the resignation of editors and the removal of the News of the World from circulation. I do not wish to dwell on the attack by the Daily Mail on the Leader of the Opposition in the other place or to compare it to the phone hacking incidents of the past, but the attack is the final straw. The tyrant Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, has gone too far this time.

It is about time that all parties again join together and demand of the shareholders and the owners of the Daily Mail the removal of this nasty man. He is not a fit and proper person to be an editor of a national newspaper. The culture that he has created at the Daily Mail has attracted the nastiest bunch of vindictive, arrogant and some would say racist people who call themselves journalists. Over the years, the Daily Mail has harassed members of all parties unfairly and it is about time Parliament showed some unity and flexed its muscles to deal with these nasty people once and for all.

We have to stand up to these bullies. Too many people have held back in the past. Anyone who dares to criticise the Daily Mail will be paid back by being attacked even more. There is no fair system of redress when it comes to them.

Noble Lords: Question!

[Lord Sugar]

I will give you a question shortly.

My question is in urging the Minister seriously to see what he can do to put pressure on the directors and owners of the Daily Mail. Dacre's refusal to apologise for what he did last week can be likened to the Kelvin MacKenzie/Hillsborough headline, which is something that he will be remembered for. I hope that last week's event will be something that Dacre is remembered for. Last week's events and the actions of the Daily Mail are further evidence that newspapers cannot be trusted to regulate themselves.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the first thing to say is that we are having a royal charter precisely because state regulation is not an option that the country or indeed parliamentarians generally wish to travel towards. As the noble Lord has raised the point about the Daily Mail, I think that honest exchanges and robust differences of view are all legitimate, but I have always thought that they should be done in a civil manner. I do not think that what happened with the Leader of the Opposition and the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday was civil.