Tracey Crouch
Main Page: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
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Maria Miller
Clearly that is something for the editors as employers to look at carefully. I hear the point that the hon. Gentleman makes—it is important that we have a journalistic industry with integrity, and I am sure that he is making that point very well and that it will be heard by people outside the House.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on coming up with proposals that avoid legislation, but she has sadly failed to satisfy fully either side in the debate. Will she specifically tell the House how the proposals are viewed by the local press, and what representation it will have under future regulatory structures?
Maria Miller
I welcome my hon. Friend’s contribution, and I hope that by trying to take the Leveson proposals and make them workable we will come to an arrangement that everyone will feel will make the situation much better for the future. She is right to raise the issue of the local press: the press industry itself, in its deliberations on the new self-regulatory body, is looking at that in detail. It is for it to work out how the local press is accommodated, but I echo her concern, particularly given, as we all know, the financially difficult times that the local press faces, and remembering that it is not necessarily the architect of the problems that we are trying to address. That needs to be recognised in the way in which self-regulation is worked through in future.