The Home Secretary introduced her remarks by referring to how the Bill had been enhanced by parliamentary scrutiny. I have no doubt that the Public Bill Committee did good work, but as a description of the 20 minutes we have had in today’s debate to consider all the remaining non-Leveson clauses, “enhanced by parliamentary scrutiny” is probably not the appropriate one.
I welcome what I see as the core of this Bill: the creation of the National Crime Agency. The shadow Home Secretary cavils in respect of how it is not going to be greatly different from the Serious Organised Crime Agency, but surely the key difference is that the NCA will be able to task police forces with carrying out necessary policing activities in the national interest. SOCA has not had that power and has been reliant on persuasion to get co-operation from local forces, and the creation of the NCA is the other side of the coin of the election of police and crime commissioners. We are making local and democratic what properly should be local and democratic while ensuring the necessary central control over national policing, which we have not really had in this country previously.
I very much regret the attachment to this Bill of what I consider to be, in all prospects, a press law. An organisation, Hacked Off, seems to have taken over both the Liberal Democrat and the Labour party positions on this issue. In response to an apparent allegation that the Labour party was the political wing of Hacked Off,
the deputy leader of the Labour party did not deny it; she merely gave great congratulations to Hacked Off on what it had achieved. I am concerned that what it has achieved is eliding two different groups: the genuine victims of the press, such as the Dowler family, and a group of celebrities who would like to engage with the press on their own terms. I fear that what is coming out of today’s proceedings will benefit that latter group at least as much as the former. Some older Members of the House may recall the days of the industrial relations court in the early 1970s. When trade unions did not co-operate with that body, it failed in its objectives. That could, and I hope will, also happen to the royal charter, with its statutory underpinning that we are pushing through today.
The problem with the royal charter is that in many ways it is worse than a statute, because we cannot actually scrutinise it; it is just Ministers and senior people in the Opposition meeting behind closed doors to cook up these instructions to the press, and next to no scrutiny is provided in this House. For instance, article 11.7 of the royal charter states that the board
“shall have the right to request further reasonable sums from the Exchequer. In response to such a request, the Exchequer shall grant such sums to the Recognition Panel as it considers necessary”.
It could be argued that that was a disbursement of public funds without scrutiny from this House.
Another area of concern to me in the charter can be found in paragraph 11 of schedule 3, which states:
“The Board should have the power (but not necessarily the duty)”—
whatever that means—
“to hear complaints…from a third party seeking to ensure accuracy of published information.”
The schedule goes on to say:
“Although remedies are essentially about correcting the record for individuals, the power to direct a correction and an apology must apply equally in relation to…matters of fact where there is no single identifiable individual who has been affected.”
Instead of the interplay of ideas between different journalists and individuals competing to have their material published and heard in the public sphere, a regulator will determine the meaning of truth—a Ministry of Truth, as it were.
People will have to submit to this process, and if they do not there will be exemplary damages or they will have to pay the costs of anyone who wants to take up a case against them, however ill-founded it might be. We are not going to the right place with this royal charter; it is not where we should be heading.
It is also extraordinarily unclear how the charter will apply in the blogosphere and to the web. The definition of relevant publisher almost suggests that one particular blog, that of Guido Fawkes, has been singled out to try to ensure that it is caught by the terms of the charter. Let us consider the statutory underpinning. Public bodies are exempted under paragraph 6 of new schedule 5, and apparently a public body
“means a person or body whose functions are of a public nature.”
I hope that my blog will be exempt and I will not have to answer to the Home Secretary for any transgressions I make within that sphere. The final issue in considering the charter is where it will go next. We are setting it up without any idea of its final destination.
One thing we failed to consider in today’s debate was the excellent new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab). The Home Secretary referred to the respect in which she holds my hon. Friend, but judging by the letter she issued earlier today he would have caused the release on bail and the non-deportation of 4,000 people a year. We were not told that his advice has been signed off by three eminent QCs, whereas the record of the Home Secretary’s officials and, in particular, her lawyers in this area is, to put it mildly, less than stellar.
We heard yet again from the Home Secretary about the supposed binding rule 39 injunctions when, as the Abu Hamza case showed, they are merely indications to the Government of the European Court’s view according to its rules of what might be in the interests of justice. They are not binding on the Court and it is the Home Secretary who decides that these people will not be deported. It is as if she has not even read the second leg of article 8, under which she is able to interfere in the operation of the right to a private life in the interests of national security, public safety and the prevention of crime. What else could be covered by a rule saying, “You cannot consider this”, when a crime has been so serious that the foreign national has been imprisoned for more than a year? Those people should be sent back and if we had agreed to the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton, they would be sent back. Because we ran out of time, and because the Home Secretary is not prepared to take on his far better ideas, the situation will, unfortunately, continue.
11.48 pm