Royal Charter on Press Conduct

Peter Bone Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am afraid that I do not share the hon. Lady’s disappointment. The last thing I want is for the royal charter, or the House in particular, to dictate who should or should not serve on the regulatory body. That is a matter for the press, although it will need to meet the requirements laid down by Lord Justice Leveson, which will be enforced by the regulatory body. However, I am sure that the press will have heard what the hon. Lady has said, and will want women to be represented on the body when it comes to make its appointments.

This will be a voluntary system. It will be possible for Private Eye, perhaps The Spectator, perhaps even a major newspaper, to stand outside the system, and maybe to have its own regulatory body; but if the press are to enjoy protection from the award of exemplary damages in defamation actions, some legislation will be required. I think that that has always been accepted, and I think that it is sensible. It is ironic that some of those who have been campaigning on the issue were prepared to jeopardise the Defamation Bill, which they themselves recognised as being so important, and which is vital to the protection of not just the press but individuals who suffer defamation.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend say a little about the process that has taken place? A major reform has been decided behind closed doors with representatives of party leaders, perhaps unelected. Members of Parliament did not even have a chance to look at the draft until the beginning of the debate. Is he in any way concerned about that?

[Mr Whittingdale]

The original draft was published some days ago, although it has been subject to amendment. I fear that the truncation of the process over the past 24 hours has prevented us from having as much time as was desirable, but if the outcome has been the achievement of all-party agreement and the opportunity to have this debate, I personally welcome that outcome.

The safeguard in the charter—the requirement for a two-thirds majority in both Houses—is welcome because it will send the message that politicians will tamper with the royal charter at their peril. It is, of course, somewhat cosmetic, as any future Government with a majority in Parliament could overturn it and legislate if they chose to do so. It does, however, send the additional, powerful message that this is something in which politicians should not become involved. That issue has always underlain all my misgivings—and, I think, those of my hon. Friends—about the original recommendations in Lord Justice Leveson’s report.

I greatly welcome the fact that we have now achieved this agreement. I hope that it will deliver what we all want: a free press, protected from interference or pressure from politicians, but at the same time subject to clear rules enforced by a tough and independent regulator. If that is the outcome, the House will have done a good job.

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[Simon Hughes]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is a journalist by training, for his work on the subject. One of the good things about today is that we liberate the Defamation Bill and enable it to become the law of the land. We have a very out-of-date defamation law. It has fallen into disrepute and one of the things that we will have done—I was going to mention it—is make sure that we do not clog up other legislation on which both Houses have worked very hard, and prevent it from becoming law—the Crime and Courts Bill, the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill and the Defamation Bill. I hope we can now go on to get the legislation as right as is humanly possible in the remaining weeks of this Session.

There is a suggestion that some parts of our society should be outwith any legal construct. I do not think that has ever been accepted in this country, and when we have not seen adequate self-regulation, Parliament has intervened. We have done it in recent years in respect of doctors, solicitors and ourselves. We have taken complete self-regulation away from this place because we did not think we were doing the job properly, and The Daily Telegraph and others showed that we were not doing our job properly. I commend them for what they did.

We have always followed the adage of the old judge, “Be you ever so high, the law is above you”, and that applies to the press too. We have never had a press free from the laws of the land, but—returning to the intervention from the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly)—the libel law, the defamation law, was not available to most of the public. It was available to the rich and famous, and very difficult for ordinary people to pursue. Yes, there is criminal law governing the press, and phone hacking was illegal under criminal law. That did not deal with all the complaints and all the problems that had arisen.

I, like others here, am one of the victims of those illegalities, but I do not think any of us here think that the problem was that we were getting it in the neck or that celebrities were getting it in the neck. We felt moved to act because people who were entirely out of the public eye suddenly found themselves entirely in the public eye, vilified, abused, misrepresented, traduced or publicly humiliated. It is people in the estates in Bermondsey and in the constituencies of all of us whom we are seeking to support, not because they do not need a free press—they do—but because on occasions the press had abused them without adequate remedy.

[Mr Bone]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a powerful statement, but is he really arguing that something like the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority is being set up? There is a serious point here. We know that IPSA has reduced the effectiveness of Members of Parliament, and if we are setting up a similar body which reduces the power of the press, we have something to worry about.

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[Chris Bryant]

Sorry, we have to rename all of these things. It is great to be heckled by the leader of my own party.

Article 9 of the charter specifies that the charter cannot be changed except by a two-thirds majority. Incidentally, the answer to the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) is that the two thirds applies not to all Members of the House, but just to those who vote. The most important thing is that that provision in article 9 has to be put into statute. That is the statutory underpinning that protects the charter, the House and everybody else from Ministers.

[Mr Bone]

rose—

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Garnier]

The short answer is that I do not know, but I would hazard a guess that if a signed-up member, which would therefore be susceptible to the jurisdiction of the body, failed to do what the body commanded, it would be in breach of contract, and arrangements would be put in place to ensure either that the contract was complied with or that damages were payable for breach of contract. Someone might have to litigate the breach of contract, but the system might contain fail-safe measures allowing the independent body to revisit the matter and deal with the malefactor in some preordained, but sensible, way.

[Mr Bone]

Will my hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I will take this interjection, but I am beginning to waffle, and it is high time I sat down.

[Mr Bone]

Is not one of the problems with this process that we have not had time to read and prepare for the detailed issues, such as the ones we have just been discussing? That is a flaw in the process and could lead to bad legislation.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I am afraid that that is just one of the things we have to live with, and if we cannot cope with it, we are probably in the wrong place. I noticed that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was able to speak for 12 fluent minutes without having seen the motion or read the charter—but then he might have prepared something earlier.