Leveson Inquiry

Debate between Rory Stewart and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Monday 3rd December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point; I agree with him.

A new statute to make independent regulation effective would improve investigative journalism, if it included express public interest defences. It would ensure that when the ends were in the public interest, the means would be justified. The example of The Daily Telegraph has already been cited, but I will give it again. The information that led to the expenses scandal was illegally accessed, but it was so obviously in the public interest that no one has ever challenged the newspaper. Theoretically, it could have been challenged. We now have an opportunity to protect journalists engaged in that kind of activity.

Let us not pretend that the state does not already influence the media; it does. There are countless laws relating to the press, a number of which—defamation and contempt, for instance—bear directly on the content of newspapers. What is more, despite arguing vigorously against any form of state intervention in the media, Lord Black and Paul Dacre have both advocated the use of legislation in their own submissions to Leveson. Both advocated a tribunal that could hear defamation and privacy cases and protect newspapers from high legal costs and damages, and both acknowledged that that would require statute. It does not follow that legislation would inhibit journalism. For example, Finland, which has been No. 1 on the world press freedom index in eight of the past 10 years, has a system of independent press regulation backed by statute. In 2003, it passed a law that gave people a right of reply and gave publications a duty to correct.

Television has a far higher level of regulation than anything I—indeed, most people in the Chamber—would endorse for newspapers, but it is worth noting that, no matter what survey we choose to look at, we see that television remains the country’s most trusted medium. Neither is television journalism cowed. Every Government, more or less without exception, have taken issue with the BBC, fought with the BBC and actively disliked the BBC. In addition, many of the recent high-profile exposés—for example, of Jimmy Savile, Winterborne View, of “The Secret Policeman”, racism in Polish football and so on—came from television.

Those who oppose any form of legislation have genuine fears, and I absolutely do not seek to discount them or pretend they do not exist. Good regulation would, I believe, improve our newspapers without inhibiting any public interest journalism; bad legislation would do immeasurable harm. There is room here to get it very wrong.

I want to point briefly to what I believe is a mistake made by Lord Leveson. The same “ConservativeHome” editor I cited earlier made a statement that I thought risible at the time. He said:

“Essentially, they”,

meaning advocates of legislation,

“want to create a climate of opinion in which, for example, doubt can’t be expressed about whether global warming is driven by human activity.”

Having read much of the Leveson report, although I admit not all of it, I have some concerns. Instead of confining himself to protecting the victims of newspaper smears and malpractice—Christopher Jeffries, Milly Dowler and so forth—I believe Lord Leveson has strayed beyond his brief. Let me quote directly from the report:

“Overall, the evidence in relation to the representation of women and minorities suggests that there has been a significant tendency within the press which leads to the publication of prejudicial or pejorative references to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or physical or mental illness or disability…A new regulator will need to address these issues as a matter of priority, the first steps being to amend practice and the Code to permit third party complaints.”

The rumbustious, politically incorrect and sometimes irresponsible—and, in my view, occasionally, appalling—approach of the tabloids is not to everyone’s taste, but in an open society, it is part of the rough and tumble of free expression. I know I am not in a minority on either side of the House when I say that we must never make it possible for lobby groups with their own political agendas to suppress free speech. Unless there is an individual victim with a legitimate grievance, the regulator has no business interfering.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

Could my hon. Friend produce an example of such a system somewhere other than Finland and Ireland? One of the problems of this debate is that it is difficult to point to a country such as the United States, France or Germany where such a regulator exists, but perhaps I have misunderstood.