UK Parliament / Open data

Leveson Inquiry

Proceeding contribution from Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Conservative) in the House of Commons on Monday, 3 December 2012. It occurred during Debate on Leveson Inquiry.

I sense that an answer is bubbling up in the speech we will hear from the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). I cannot answer my hon. Friend’s question, as the examples I have given are the examples I know, but it does not change the principle. In effect, we are effectively talking about taking the editor’s code—a code written up by the editor—and giving it teeth. What I cannot understand is why the media commentators who so viciously oppose any kind of legislation would oppose putting into law something that they themselves have deemed okay and appropriate because they have designed it themselves. There is a break in the argument there that I am yet to understand.

I will actively support the creation of a genuinely independent regulatory body, backed up in law, that exists to even the playing field, so that newspapers can be held to account for their behaviour, so that individuals can seek fair redress and so that the code can be seen as real and not, as it is today, synthetic. I would not support a Bill that went beyond that. In common with the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham—I mention Peckham and the other lovely part of the constituency—I support the creation of a slim Bill that guards against slippage and creep, but which does the job.

Finally, I want to make a suggestion. When the Secretary of State meets editors tomorrow, I urge her to ask them to develop a proper plan—not the already and widely discredited Hunt and Black proposals, but a real plan—and then to present it early next year, in January or February. Parliament should then be invited to decide in a free vote—in my view, it must be a free vote—whether the plan goes far enough. If we decide that it does, that is the end of the matter. If we decide it does not, we would commit ourselves to creating a new PCC backed up by statute. As a means of avoiding division in this House, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said she wishes to avoid, over such a complex and highly sensitive issue, I can think of no better mechanism.

5.54 pm

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
554 c629 
Session
2012-13
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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