Leveson Inquiry

Viscount Astor Excerpts

Friday 11th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Astor]

My Lords, looking back to my youth, I realise how naive I was, because I used to believe what was written in the newspapers. Even when I started my first job as a very junior reporter for the Bradford Telegraph and Argus, as I knew that what I wrote was true, I assumed therefore that what others wrote was probably true, or largely true. I say “largely” because, having lived at Cliveden throughout the Profumo affair, I realised that a certain amount of exaggeration was the norm in much of the press.

It was not until I joined the world of politics and newspapers started writing about me that I realised that there was not a glimmer of truth in many of their stories, but I put that down to the price one pays for being involved in politics. After all, no one forces us to attend this House. However, in my time in newspapers, I learnt that most journalists seek the truth, but each newspaper has its target audience. Therefore, to keep the circulation up newspapers must pander to the views and often the prejudices of their readers. There is nothing wrong in that: newspapers have every right to have views whether we agree with them or not, and every right to tell people what they want to hear, as well as every right to tell them what they do not want to hear.

We must not forget that newspapers are a business. They are managed in order to make money for their shareholders, but that does not stop them having an important role in our democracy and our society. When newspapers champion themselves as guardians of free speech, often it is their freedom of speech that they are championing, not necessarily ours.

I deplore those who seek to restrict free speech because they do not agree, have different views or regard some views as unacceptable. Provided that it is not against the law of the land, freedom of speech is a core value in this country. Too many people have started using the words “freedom of speech”, followed by the word “but”. That is not freedom of speech.

Readers are not fools. If they do not like or do not agree with a newspaper, they do not buy it. When my family owned the Observer newspaper, my uncle, a distinguished and principled editor, came out against Suez. Although history shows that he was probably right, his readers took a different view. The circulation died. He lost thousands of readers, we were overtaken by the Sunday Times and we never recovered. When readers like what they read, they buy the newspaper. Of course, that is why the News of the World was so successful. Many of its readers were delighted by the salacious stories that they read.

I have three points to make on the commendable Leveson report. First, if the Government propose that the body for newspapers and magazines is to be voluntary, what happens if someone decides to leave, as did the Express newspapers from the Press Complaints Commission? Are we then to have a statutory body? If so, what will be its powers and its remit? We know that almost all the abuses set out in the Leveson report were already covered by the law, the Data Protection Act and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. If the editors, own code of practice had been adhered to, there probably would have been no need for an inquiry. It was the systematic abuse of their own guidelines that led to the inquiry.

It was also the failure of the police and prosecuting authorities, not the failure of the law, that allowed the abuses to survive for so long. I do not blame so much the journalist who bunged the police: I blame more the police for accepting the cash. However, I worry about the Bribery Act 2010, which seems to make it illegal to pay for information that could reveal corruption. I hope that the Government will look at that point.

My second point is whether a new body should be set up by royal charter. I believe that if that were the case, it would be a major mistake. Look at the BBC, which is under a royal charter. It is not really accountable to Parliament and it certainly is not accountable to licence fee payers. Recently, it often has treated Select Committees in another place almost with disdain. When a royal charter comes to Parliament, it is not amendable: we can only debate it. Any proposal that comes to Parliament needs to be scrutinised properly and be able to be amended.

We must have a new way to protect those who are most vulnerable when they are wrongly accused or smeared by the press. That is the challenge that your Lordships face. I agree that the ideal outcome is an independent regulatory body, established by the industry, which is able to secure the voluntary support and membership of the entire industry, and thus able to command the support of the public. Commanding the support of the public is probably most important.

Many of your Lordships will remember the days when, if they could not get their stories into their newspaper, journalists would march to hand their copy to Private Eye, where it duly would appear the following week. The internet carries that same ability, except that its circulation is infinite rather than in the thousands. Therefore, unless the internet service providers can be made accountable, any new scheme must fail. That is why any proposal and any new body must have real authority, and therefore probably must be backed by statute. The outcome would not be censorship, as has often been claimed by a group of self-important and self-righteous editors, who, as many of your Lordships have said, seem to lack any contrition and have never apologised. One wonders if they see the real crime as getting caught.

We need freedom of the press, with some small and important safeguards for those abused by the press. Editors need greater liberty to publish what is right and proper, not constrained by either the Government or their corporate masters.