Royal Charter on Press Conduct

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

This whole debate began because the public felt that some of the press, not all of the press, were far too close to some politicians, not all politicians, and particularly to politicians in government. It began because the public felt that some of the press, not all of the press, were far too close to some police, not all police, in a way that was very corrupting. It also started because people were worried that some of the press would become all-powerful, leaving no pluralism among those looking after news and current affairs, which is a guarantee of real freedom and understanding.

In many years since the war, Parliament and Governments have perfectly properly and reasonably commissioned inquiries into the press. When the most recent scandals broke and the Prime Minister took his brave decision to announce that an inquiry would be carried out by Lord Justice Leveson, with the agreement of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, it seemed to me that Parliament and the parties all agreed that such matters should be reconsidered as things had gone badly wrong. There was consensus; I have never known such strong consensus in this House as there was at the moment when Parliament said that we had to put our house in order.

I commend Lord Justice Leveson and those who worked with him on his inquiry, to which the three party leaders, I and many others gave evidence. Lord Justice Leveson came up with an extremely balanced report and its credibility is strongest because it is so well balanced. It did not come up with a draconian new regime to deal with the press, but understood the desirability of, the need for and the absolute imperative for a free press in this country while saying that we needed systems in place.

We had a bit of a debate in this place and in the media about what the structures should be and Lord Justice Leveson spent a large part of his time and conclusions on that subject. He was clear about two things, however. He was clear that there should be an independent self-regulatory system, and that that should be underpinned by statute. He made that explicitly clear and today, in a clever but appropriate way, we have ensured that there is a charter at one remove from legislation through which we can guarantee the new system and that is locked in by a legislative safeguard. I commend those who thought of the idea and I think it gets the balance right. There is underpinning in legislation, but the key document is a charter agreed by this Parliament and by all the parties in this place.

[Paul Farrelly]

Another advantage of today’s agreement is that the Defamation Bill, on which we have worked so hard, will be free to proceed. The amendments made by Lord Puttnam will be dropped, but another important amendment to the Bill raises the bar on the ability of corporations to use the chilling effect of libel law on legitimate investigative journalism and wholly helps the press. Will the right hon. Gentleman commit to supporting the retention of that provision when the Bill returns to the House of Commons?

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes]

If I tried to defend IPSA now, I think I would be lynched, so I shall not do so. That is not the model that has been followed, and the royal charter is as far away from IPSA as anyone could have contrived.

Let me make two final points. The important thing to come out of today is that we have established a regulator which nobody can veto, a code of conduct which, yes, will be drafted by the press but has to be agreed by somebody independent of the press, the rights of third parties to complain, and probably most important, the right of the regulator, if necessary, to direct both an apology and the method of the apology.

The greatest abuses recently have been the sort of examples that the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition gave. Somebody appears on the front page, the subject of a story that is totally untrue. Their career may be ruined, their reputation damaged, their lives, their mental health and their finances decimated, and there is no remedy available. What happens and has always happened is that a very small correction or apology appears later, sometimes. That is the real failure of the system to date and that will now change. All our constituents should have some hope that there may be a fairer system.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman suggesting that if there is a calumny on the front page of a red top, the apology will also be on the front page? If he is, that is great.

[Simon Hughes]

That is exactly what I think the public want. That is why it has been a privilege to work with colleagues of all parties and their staff. I pay tribute to the Prime Minister and his team, to the Deputy Prime Minister and his team. and to the Leader of the Opposition, his deputy and their team, and to their staff, the civil servants, the special advisers and others who have worked beyond the call of duty, and to the Clerks, including the Clerk of the House. There has been an absolute will to try to solve the problem in time.

[Mr Adrian Sanders (Torbay) (LD)]

Is not the prize here the fact that a free press will still be able to expose wrongdoing, but not at the expense of trashing people’s lives?

[Simon Hughes]

That is a very good summary. We want the best and freest press in the world, but we do not want a press that is marred and tarred by being seen to cosy up to the Government of the day, and compromised, and parties compromised. We do not want a press that does dubious deals with the police behind closed doors, not in the interests of members of the public. We want people to be able to be supported by the press, not trashed by the press. My hon. Friend is quite right.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hughes]

No, please, many others want to speak.

For 20 or 30 years, colleagues of mine in both Houses have said that we needed an inquiry such as this—Lord McNally, Matthew Taylor and many others—and we have now had one. Whenever people ask me what I stand for, I do not invent my own words; I look at the little card that my party issues, which quotes from the preamble to our constitution. I hope that we have all done what one sentence of that preamble says, and that we have all today taken action

“to build and safeguard a free, fair and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community”.

Today is about getting the balance right. I think that we have corrected the balance and it is a tribute to all who got us here.