The Leader of the Opposition, the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister all acknowledged that successive Governments have not taken action to put in place a proper, sensible, reasonable complaints system, not because of the regional or local press, but because of the power of the national press, particularly the monopolistic power of the national press. We will have to move on to the question of monopolistic ownership, but not now because we are exhausted. However, the regional and local press have nothing to fear from having good standards and having a complaints system. One of the reasons why we worked to narrow the arbitration system was the great fears of the regional and local press. We know that they are facing very tough times so we do not want to do anything to make matters more difficult for them.
I agree with the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), who is no longer in his place. He said there was something uncomfortable about dealing with matters behind closed doors. The royal charter is an agreement that is not subject to scrutiny. It does not go before a Committee or to the House of Lords. It drifts by in a flash, then it is up to the Privy Council. However, we cannot have it both ways. We can have Parliament crawling over legislation that applies to the press, which makes the press feel very uncomfortable and makes the Prime Minister apparently feel neuralgic. I do not have the same sensitivities, but apparently the Government do. We can avoid that through the royal charter process, in which case there is no parliamentary scrutiny. We cannot have both, and the choice has been to have a royal charter and a self-regulatory system, without parliamentary scrutiny of it, beyond the discussion that we have had.
In that respect, I shall mention one issue which is not the subject of the amendments but which comes into the question of the charter. I refer to conscience clauses for journalists. Many journalists gave evidence to Leveson and said, “We knew that we were being asked to do things that were in breach of the code and we wanted not to do them, but we feared that we would be sacked if we said, ‘We won’t do this.’” Journalists talked of being asked to do outrageous things but because it is so difficult, and fearing that if they lost their job they would never get another, they never dared speak up.Lord Justice Leveson proposed that the industry and the
regulatory body should consider encouraging conscience clauses in journalists’ contracts. The relevant new clause has not been selected, so I will not mention it because that would be out of order. However, in schedule 2, on page 13 of the charter, which hon. Members have had scant opportunity to look at, there is what the Foreign Office calls a brush past. Basically, this is mentioned in paragraph 4.
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I hope that we will see people getting cheaper arbitration. I hope that fewer people will need to go to arbitration because of media torts. I hope that the higher levels of accountability will make the newspapers more careful—not to chill freedom of speech, but just to respect the civil law and their own code of conduct. I hope that there will be higher standards so that we do not have masses of apologies all over the front pages, because they will have thought before they write a story : is it accurate, is it fair, is it truthful? That will be better for the readers as well as those who write the story. We are not at the end of the process, but at the beginning. I hope we will continue to work together to protect the freedom of the press, recognising that we can have a free press but also protect those who have suffered horribly from abuse.
I finish on the question of Hacked Off, because people have accused the Labour party of being its political wing. I would say that they should think for a moment about what it must be like to suffer the disappearance of one’s child, as happened to Milly Dowler’s family and the McCanns. Those people had never had any exposure to or relationship with newspapers, but found that they were dealing not only with the most horrific personal tragedy but that their lives were turned upside down by the newspapers. People should think about the absolute sense of grief and the inability of every family member to deal with what was happening.
By bringing together the victims of this awful press abuse, Hacked Off enabled them to support each other, to be in a network with other people who had some sense of what they had gone through. It enabled them to move from being just victims to people who were able to speak at the Leveson inquiry, which took the most enormous courage. If the thing that one wants most of all is not to be in the newspapers, stepping forward into the spotlight and giving evidence at such an inquiry was an incredibly brave thing for the Dowlers, the McCanns and the Watsons to have done and, indeed, for people such as J.K. Rowling and Charlotte Church. Hacked Off enabled them to be not just victims, trying to cope with their lives, but agents for change, to improve public policy. As the Leader of the Opposition said, I do not think we would be here today if they had not had that courage and bravery. Hacked Off helped them play that role, so I make no apology for our relationship with Hacked Off, and I pay tribute to the work that it has done.