Data Protection Bill [Lords]

Paul Farrelly Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 9th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, and my right hon. Friend has pre-empted what I was about to say, which is that the choice is not between doing something and doing nothing, but between doing something and doing something better. New clause 18 calls on us to go into a backward-looking inquiry when what we need to do is ensure that we allow the press to rise to the challenges we face today.

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for giving way, not least in view of what I am going to say. Is the truth not that he has broken promises to the victims, ignored the opinions of Sir Brian Leveson and ridden roughshod over the cross-party, unanimous opinion of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee? Much has happened since Leveson 1, and one thing that Leveson 2 could establish is who told Sir Brian the truth and nothing but the truth the first time round. Why is the Secretary of State afraid of establishing the truth?

[Matt Hancock]

I want to focus on the challenges we face now. That is my job as Secretary of State, and it is my judgment as to what the proposals I have put forward do, and do in a better way than re-establishing the inquiry.

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[Paul Farrelly]

May I add another voice? There is no journalist more respected on these shores than Sir Harold Evans, the former editor of The Sunday Times. He wrote to everybody today in support of the previous Government’s promises:

“Whatever your party, I and many of my associates, look to you to honour that commitment. To renege would be an affront to every citizen who suffered intrusion, but also the many independently-minded journalists of talent and integrity.”

Is it not time today for fair and independently minded MPs to vote as Sir Harry advises?

[Liam Byrne]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. What strengthens his argument is the way in which the Secretary of State has sought to bring forward one argument after another, all of which have been knocked down.

When we were first told that Leveson 2 could not proceed, we were told that there had been a day, sometime in about 2010, when magically, all of a sudden, all the abuse that we had ever heard about before categorically, unequivocally and without doubt ceased. We were all quite surprised about that. We were even more surprised, therefore, when John Ford presented his evidence to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee on 13 March. It is worth setting out what Mr Ford said, because not everyone luxuriates in membership of that Committee:

“I illegally accessed phone accounts, bank accounts, credit cards, and other personal data of public figures… My targets included politicians of all parties. In most cases, this was done without any legitimate public interest justification.”

Mr Ford goes on to reflect on whether the practice had magically ended, as the Secretary of State asserted, or whether it was ongoing. He was asked directly to reflect on the Secretary of State’s assertion that it was all over—nothing more to see; time to walk on by. Mr Ford writes in his letter:

“I am sorry to inform you that Mr Hancock is totally wrong”.

Who can imagine such a thing? He goes on to say that

“having spent 15 years in the business, it is no surprise…that I still know people in the illegal data theft industry, and specifically,”—

this is the nub of the argument—

“that I know individuals who are still engaged in these activities on behalf of newspapers.”

The idea that magically this bad behaviour suddenly stopped and is not ongoing is argument one that has been knocked down.

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[Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will take heed of your reminder about the time limit.

It is now over 10 years since the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, of which I was Chair at the time, first conducted an inquiry into phone hacking. We conducted several subsequent inquiries, which helped to bring out the truth about the extent of phone hacking and other illegal practices. Without the work of the Committee, those would not have been revealed, although I pay tribute to The Guardian’s brilliant piece of investigative journalism. A lot of this debate concerns investigative journalism.

I think all of us were shocked by the revelation of phone hacking and we were determined that action should be taken to prevent anything like that happening again. In the 10 years that have passed, however, a lot has changed. The News of the World closed down as a result of the revelations. There were prosecutions, with 10 journalists convicted for illegal practices, although it is worth bearing in mind that 57 were cleared.

Obviously, we had the Leveson inquiry. Even if it did not complete all that it originally wanted to complete because of the ongoing criminal cases, it still took over a year and cost £49 million. It produced a swathe of recommendations, although the royal charter was not one of them. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) had the brainchild of the royal charter and, accompanying that, sanctions in the Crime and Courts Act 2013 for newspapers that did not sign up to a regulator recognised under the royal charter.

Since that time, two major changes have taken place. When the royal charter was designed and the recognition panel was established, I do not think anybody in Parliament ever expected that not a single newspaper—certainly no national newspaper and virtually no local newspaper—would be willing to sign up to a regulator that applied for recognition under the royal charter. It was not just the usual whipping boys; the News International papers, the Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror. The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent and all the local newspapers refused. I have met the publications that have agreed to join IMPRESS, but they are micro-publishers. No major publisher was willing to go along with the royal charter. We originally invented the idea of sanctions with the view that one newspaper, or perhaps two, might stand out against the rest. We never intended to bring in a sanction that would punish, in what seems an incredibly unjust way, every single publisher. Their refusal to join is on a matter of principle, and we have to respect that.

What did happen was that they created a new regulator called IPSO, which has steadily evolved. To begin with, it was deficient in some ways. I had talks with IPSO and pointed out to it the areas where I felt that it needed to make changes, particularly through the introduction of an arbitration scheme, which was one of the key requirements under Leveson and which did not exist. However, IPSO has now made a lot of changes, including, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State pointed out, the inclusion of an arbitration scheme, which is compulsory for members who sign up to it. Those that are outside it are the local newspapers, against which virtually no complaint has ever been made, and which face the greatest peril from the economic situation that exists for newspapers.

[Paul Farrelly]

The Select Committee, of which the right hon. Gentleman was a wonderful Chair, recently recommended unanimously, cross-party, the partial commencement of section 40 to give those publications protections—to protect investigative journalism—if they joined the approved regulator. That was one of the options in the consultation. What is wrong with that course?

[Mr Whittingdale]

The hon. Gentleman is an old friend—we sat together on the Committee for 10 years—and I have some sympathy with what he says. When I talked to the publications that had joined IMPRESS, they said that one reason they had done so was the possible protection offered if they were part of a recognised regulator, in that they would not have to pay costs even if they lost. That is a separate matter, but in this debate we are talking about the introduction of an amendment to provide not the carrot, but the stick—the punishment for newspapers that do not wish to sign up to a Government-approved regulator.

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[Mr Clarke]

I fear that my hon. Friend is probably right, although I should give some credit to my right hon. and hon. Friends in government. I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but my suspicions are as strong as those of my hon. Friend.

[Paul Farrelly]

The Government also asked the public what they thought. When they announced the results of the consultation, it quickly became clear that the Secretary of State had set aside two petitions signed by more than 200,000 people who were in favour of Leveson 2, but counted 62,000 pro forma newspaper coupons that were against it, just because they had been returned in envelopes. Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman think that that is a rather odd way in which to judge the outcome of a consultation, and perhaps a little biased?

[Mr Clarke]

I personally will give my right hon. and hon. Friends the benefit of the doubt—I am sure that every representation was considered extremely carefully—but, in the end, it is for the House to decide what goes on.

The first argument that seems to be raised is about the lapse of time and the fact that we are talking about such a long time ago—2012; 2011—that we cannot spend public money on reopening former issues. It has already been said that quite a lot has happened since then. At the time of Leveson 1, I do not think that anyone knew that The Sun was involved in hacking. I do not think that anyone realised that Trinity Mirror was as mired in criminality as News International, and that it had gone in for hacking. They have tried to cover up the details since then by settling every civil claim that has been brought against them because they do not wish to give any evidence in public, or to have any evidence heard in public against them.

The other issue that has not gone away, about which the right hon. Member for Doncaster North, the former Leader of the Opposition, spoke very eloquently, is the treatment of the victims. There have been other incidents since that time. The Manchester bombing is a plain and obvious example. Victims of tragic occasions such as terrorist outrages still find, far too often, that their gardens fill with photographers. Weeping relatives find that their doors are being knocked on so that they can be asked for comment. They are interviewed when they are plainly still badly shaken up, and probably not yet able to cope with the pressures.

I think that quite a lot has happened, but it has taken some time. It is not actually that long, in my aged recollection, since 2012. This consideration has never been applied to any other public inquiry, and we have lots of public inquiries. When trying to refute the moves against them, the press go back to 1961 in order to attack Mr Mosley and resurrect his activities as a student—they were fairly startling—with his notorious father.

The sexual offences inquiry—a very important inquiry—is making very slow progress. It is inquiring into allegations against public figures now dead, going back for decades. In any other context, shock would be expressed about a scandal of the scale we had in the case of the behaviour of the press. To say, “Oh, that’s too late now; it’s all gone by and we do not wish to know any more about it,” would be greeted with outrage and treated as a ridiculous argument, and I really do not think that we should accept it.

The Independent Press Standards Organisation is a big improvement on what we had before, but it is plainly not an independent regulator. If we had a group of people with the authority of those involved in part one of the Leveson inquiry recommending a new independent regulator, no other public body—none of the utilities, for instance—would be allowed to turn around and say, “We refuse to comply. We will be regulated, but only by a regulator whom we appoint and can change at any stage.” That would be dismissed.

The Government can address all the unworthy suspicions we have that their decision is motivated by a combination of fear and desire to curry favour. They should recover their courage and let the process go ahead, and we will see whether the press really have anything much to fear. I do not think that legitimate journalism and the very many honest journalists have anything to fear. As has been said—I am sure this is true in the House of Commons—everybody in public life in this country thinks that a free and fearless press is a key part of our liberties, and it is a joke to start presenting any moves to investigate as a threat to the freedom of the press.

The final argument that has been used against the proposal is that as the press are under great commercial pressures and face lots of challenges, we should not allow this to go ahead. I cannot think of any other body of organisations of such public importance that could claim, “We are under a bit of pressure, and there is a lot of competition; it is worse than it was a few years ago.” We should certainly tackle the digital market. I think it is quite obvious that Facebook and others are publishers. We should get away from the fiction that they are not publishers, and they should be subject to the same regulation as publishers, but that is another issue.

I supported Leveson when it was set up and I believe it should be completed. Leveson should not be cancelled. There are probably policemen still serving who are hoping that their corrupt relationship with the media will not be investigated further because they have got away with it so far. There are probably journalists still working—editors, even, still in post—who knew perfectly well that they were acting illegally in sourcing private information about public figures not just in politics, but in sport and theatre—anybody who achieves B-list celebrity status in this country. It is still the case that nothing sells newspapers like celebrity sex and scandal—no doubt long may that continue—but we must have a look at the ethical standards that should be applied to every possible sort of story.

This is not just about the law; it is also about ethics. We want more respect for our free press, and a proper Leveson 2 could eventually lead to that being achieved.