Leveson Inquiry

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Friday 11th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, that while he makes a few good points, the defensive tone and aggression of his remarks are hardly likely to encourage anyone to believe that the press is capable of putting its own house in order.

However, I want to focus on the issue of plurality. That has received relatively little attention in the public debate and, until the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, rose to speak, relatively little attention in this debate, although my noble friends Lord Donoughue and Lady Jay mentioned it. A truly free press requires diversity of opinion; diversity of opinion means real diversity and plurality of ownership; and plurality of ownership, in a world of ruthless capitalism that the press occasionally advocates, requires effective regulation of competition and merger policy.

Some of my best friends are journalists, and some of them even work for the Murdoch press. I do not necessarily believe that the Murdoch empire is uniquely evil; nor do I believe that its journalists and editors are the only ones capable of the dark arts of attacking personal privacy and breaking the law. However, the Murdoch empire is uniquely dominant and dangerously powerful. But this goes beyond Murdoch. If you look at the totality of the media—electronic as well as print, regional as well as national—they are subject to a high degree of oligopoly and are close, in some cases, to monopoly. They are under the control of relatively few proprietors, service providers and editors. Whether those individuals are malign or benign, it is a dangerous situation for a democracy that does not provide a truly free media.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, I was disappointed that Lord Justice Leveson did not spend more time on plurality and I am also disappointed that the four Bills that are before us do not deal much, if at all, with that issue. However, Leveson gave us a lead. The last few recommendations in his report set out a bit of a route map, as the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, suggested. The most important aspect of that route map is the recommendation that the thresholds of levels of competition in relation to the news media must be lower and probably considerably lower than in competition policy in relation to other sectors. That leads Lord Justice Leveson on to say that we must concentrate on the measurement of plurality, as the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, said, and that the regulators—Ofcom or possibly the new Competition and Markets Authority—should look at ways in which that plurality could be regulated and enforced. He also suggests, because the point where the law at present intervenes is largely on acquisitions and mergers, that there should also be periodic reviews of the ownership pattern of the media and that should extend to the electronic media and online publications as well as the print media. He suggests also that the Secretary of State should continue to develop the ideas of public interest. Although those propositions may not have received the same attention and may not be in the same detail as some of the other propositions from Leveson, they do provide a basis and a package on which the Government ought now to be basing their propositions in relation to plurality and competition within the media sector.

This is not the first time I have raised this. When we had our double-handed presentation of the Leveson report just before Christmas, I asked the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who was giving the Liberal Democrat version of the Government’s reaction, whether they were about to make propositions on the diversity front, and in particular whether they could possibly use the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which is currently before this House and is changing the whole basis of competition policy, to put in specific clauses relating to media competition and media structure. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, did not say yes and he did not say no. What he did say was that it was above his pay grade. Since the lamented former Leader of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, was sitting next to him, it was presumably above his pay grade as well. I raised it again during the Committee stage of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, where the noble Lord, Lord Marland, one of the other Banquo’s ghosts from the Front Bench, also said it was above his pay grade, but explicitly said it was the Prime Minister’s pay grade.

It may be a bit late to insert such a provision into a Bill which is already going through this House and which has already passed through the Commons. It may, in any case, deserve a stand-alone Bill. But the issue of plurality in news media is an important one for the Government to grasp. It does not have the same level of controversy that we have seen in terms of the regulation of media behaviour and it could be worked on now and brought before this Parliament within a relatively few months. I would hope to hear from the Minister today that that is indeed the way in which the Government are thinking. I am sorry that the public debate and this debate have focused on it so little.

However, I will make one remark that may be of slight comfort to the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, and to the press in general, and may upset some of my colleagues. I am in favour of Leveson’s propositions in relation to underpinning by statute a voluntary system. I think he has got it about right. My misgivings relate to something to which the noble Lord, Lord Bew, referred in relation to Northern Ireland. In the course of history, we have had on the one hand the kind of actions of which we are complaining in the press which are already mostly illegal—from phone hacking through to intimidation. On the other hand, many of the great exposures of wrong-doing in high places, private as well as public, have required somebody to break the extant law for them to be exposed, whether breaches of the Official Secrets Acts, breaches of contracts, or indeed the kind of whistle-blowing that we are more familiar with these days. The development of a transparent democracy requires on occasion the press and the media to take on the law in that respect.

It seems to me that the central job of the form of regulation that Lord Justice Leveson recommends and which I can support requires us to say clearly when the public interest overrides the effects of those laws. Public interest does not mean public prurience but there is often a public interest in getting information which, without breach of those laws or contracts, would never see the light of day. That is a difficult matter for all of us but it is one which a recognition commission on the one hand and the proposed self-regulating structure on the other can take on board.

However, the one message I would leave with the House, with the Government and with the political leadership who are looking for some consensus on this issue is: deal with plurality as soon as you can, otherwise all this will be for nought.