Leveson Inquiry

Debate between Nick Clegg and Jim Dowd

Thursday 29th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I accept that there is a big philosophical difference between liberals, who, as I have sought to explain, try to balance freedom with the hurt endured by people who are abused by the powerful, and libertarianism, which believes that freedom should be completely untrammelled and unconstrained. The latter is not a philosophy that I believe in—it is a one-eyed approach to freedom. The press has always operated within the ambit and the context of the law. It is creating a straw man to imply that law is always inimical to the exercise of freedom in the press. That is a slightly absurd position, because the press has been constrained and indeed protected in many respects by the law for generations.

[Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

The detail of the new regulatory body is critical, but does the Deputy Prime Minister accept that it is only within the legal underpinning that the public support that is so crucial to any new regulator is carried?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I have expressed my own views about the assertions that Lord Justice Leveson makes about that. As I said, this is a debate about means, not ends. Let us dwell for a minute on the fact that this afternoon everybody appears to have agreed that what we need is tough, independent regulation of the press, where people are properly protected when things go wrong. The debate is about whether legislation is the indispensible means to deliver that.