Data Protection Bill [Lords]

Richard Drax Excerpts

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

[Bill Wiggin]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. What he is saying is that businesses with a turnover of over £100 million should be protected, which I think is probably not quite right.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend find it odd that the lesser-off papers, as I think he phrased it, get away with some things and the better-off papers do not? Is that not discriminatory and completely against British justice?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The freedom of the press is so overwhelmingly precious that we should preserve it even if sometimes the press upsets us. It is amazing how many people who have had run-ins with the press have suddenly found that they think it should be more tightly regulated. Fascinatingly, the Daily Mail carried out a survey of their lordships House and discovered that more than a third of those who voted to shackle the press had been embarrassed by the press. May I therefore pay all the greater tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) for his impressive speech? He has suffered at the hands of the press, yet he recognises that the value of the free press is one of the great jewels in the crown of our constitutional settlement. But it is a jewel that has become tarnished because of actions taken by us; in four years, we have fallen in the rank of free nations from 30th to 40th, so that now we are behind Trinidad and Tobago, and, perhaps most insultingly, even below the French in freedom of the press. The clauses before us today should fill us with shame because they go to the heart of what we should believe in, in terms of our liberties, our freedoms and the rule of law.

New clause 18 seeks to have double jeopardy. Why did Leveson 2 not go ahead in the first place? It was because of a fear that trials could be made unfair by an inquiry going ahead at the same time. But those trials have now gone ahead and juries have returned verdicts. Interestingly, what verdicts did they return? It was not the ones the establishment expected. By and large, the journalists were found not guilty—not guilty of misusing any public office—but the police who gave them information were found guilty.

Was that not proper justice at work? The receiving of information as a journalist is your job, but the giving of information as a policeman is against the law. They have had justice, they have had the inquiry and they have been through the process, but now people want to put those found innocent through it again. They want to call them in front of a tribunal, to put them on oath, to put them in the stocks, and to let them be quizzed, questioned and interrogated so that the freedom of the press can be undermined and pressurised by those who have sometimes had the sharp lash of the press’s tongue against them. It reeks of self-interest.

[Richard Drax]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I will not because time is so short.

Let me move on to new clause 20, the Max Mosley amendment. A man more cynical than I am might think that £540,000 donated to a certain political party might have had some influence on the desire to support IMPRESS—on the desire to support the creation of a known racist, a man who went on anti-Semitic rallies with his father. A party suffering from accusations of anti-Semitism wishes to be in bed with a man who gave it £540,000 to pursue his cause, which is to make IMPRESS the regulator of our free press, in the pocket of one of the most disreputable figures in this nation. IPSO has made leaps and bounds to ensure that it is a proper self-regulator. It is a self-regulator free from the taint of state approval, state authorisation and state regulation—