I, too, begin by drawing attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I receive remuneration for a regular column in PR Week—but hon. Members will realise that that has not had any influence on my opinions on these matters.
A number of hon. Members have alluded to the long history of failure on this issue. I am conscious that I have only 10 minutes in which to speak, but I do wish to reflect on some of that history because the House has not always been very good at learning from the mistakes of the past. This story begins in 1949, with the first royal commission advocating the setting up of a royal commission and saying that Parliament should do something about the issue. Four years later nothing had happened, so the Labour MP C.J. Simmons, a former journalist, introduced a private Member’s Bill, which forced the industry to say that it would now act. In withdrawing his Bill, he said:
“I give warning here and now that if it fails some of us will again have to come forward with a Measure similar to this Bill.”—[Official Report, 8 May 1953; Vol. 515, c. 806.]
In 1962, a second royal commission told the press that it needed to toughen up self-regulation:
“We think that the Press should be given another opportunity itself voluntarily to establish an authoritative General Council…We recommend, however, that the government should specify a time limit after which legislation would be introduced.”
In 1977, there was a third royal commission on the press, after more failure. It said:
“We recommend that the press should be given one final chance to prove that voluntary self-regulation can be made to work.”
Let us fast-forward to 1990 and the Calcutt committee. At the time we were told:
“This is positively the last chance for the industry to establish an effective non-statutory system of regulation”.—[Official Report, 21 June 1990; Vol. 174, c. 1126.]
In 1993, the Calcutt review said that the Press Complaints Commission was not effective and recommended a tribunal backed in statute.