I do not think that it is going to be a very unified note by the end of the day, and I think there was an element of irony in the contribution by the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker).
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for their campaign on stalking. The legislation has changed over the years, particularly since 1997, and it is good that this issue is now recognised for the terrible harm that is done to many victims.
I want to talk primarily—this is a bit of a smorgasbord debate—about the Leveson issues and amendment 24, which I wish was not necessary. However, it is necessary, and it has been put on the amendment paper only because their lordships and a large number of us in this House are distrustful of the Government’s intention in relation to what happened over Leveson.
I believe that it is necessary to have the full Leveson—that is not two Leveson inquiries, but one Leveson inquiry, some of which could be done before the criminal investigations were completed, and some of which could not be done until the criminal investigations were completed. That was always the promise. It was never, “We will think about having Leveson 2 once we have come to the end of the criminal investigations; it was always said from the very beginning that there would be one inquiry with two parts and that the second part would happen. In fact, the Prime Minister, in the quote given by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), said those words the day after Leveson 1 had been produced. So Ministers have absolutely no excuse for turning round now and saying, “Oh no, no, we never really intended to proceed with Leveson 2.”
Why does that matter? Why is it important? The truth is that we are talking about corruption in one of the organisations of the state that matters most to our constituents and to the rule of law in this country: the police. I am sure the vast majority of us agree, given the little bits and pieces that we have managed to glean from Leveson 1, that there was a time when the Metropolitan police, to all intents and purposes, were a partially owned subsidiary of News International. Metropolitan police staff went to work for News International. When they had finished working for News International, they went back to work for the Metropolitan police. There was a revolving door. On the very day that the police decided not to continue with the investigation into what had happened at the News of the World, the leading investigator was having dinner with Rebekah Brooks.
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We do not know all the facts because Lord Justice Leveson rightly said, “I cannot investigate all these elements of corruption in the Metropolitan police and what went on at the News of the World until such time as the criminal investigations have been completed.” They are now complete. I reiterate that not only Prime Minister David Cameron made those promises; the then Home Secretary repeatedly, time after time, said in this House that there would be Leveson 2. She did not say that we would have Leveson 2 if it proved necessary, or that we would perhaps have Leveson 2. She said that we would have Leveson 2 and that it would be proceeded with as is necessary according to the law, as the inquiry was originally set up, the moment the criminal investigations were completed.
From the way in which the new Government have conducted themselves, they need to listen to Conservative Members such as the hon. Member for Aldershot
(Sir Gerald Howarth) and the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), who have rightly made the point that the Government are walking themselves into a cul de sac. The truth of the matter is that this House and the other place agreed legislation—section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013—that is yet to be implemented. This House and the other House agreed nearly but not quite unanimously that we would set up a royal charter to put a body in place to decide on the independent regulation of the press. If the royal charter is to be withdrawn, there must be a two thirds majority in this House and a two thirds majority in the House of Lords. That ain’t gonna happen. The Government are walking into a cul de sac unless they choose to act and act swiftly.
I believe that the Government should already have implemented section 40. The hon. Member for Aldershot is absolutely right when he comments on the wholly exaggerated campaign being run by the press. The victims of press intrusion were promised something very simple. The hon. Member for North Herefordshire was right to say that this is not about MPs or celebrities. To be honest, I do not give much of a fig about what happens with them. We put ourselves in the public domain—some of us have done it more than others—and to some degree we have it coming. However, what really upset me was when victims of crime had their phones hacked. Why did the Culture, Media and Sport Committee originally do our investigation back in 2003? We did it because the people of Soham felt that their privacy was being invaded by the press and they had no means of saying, “Go away. Leave us alone.” They were the victims and not the perpetrators of crime.
We want something that is very simple: a genuinely independent system of self-regulation. Frankly, IPSO is no better than IPSA. IPSO is exactly the same as the Press Complaints Commission. It has no more teeth than the previous organisation; it has some of the same staff, virtually the same code of conduct and the same structure. It is not independent at all. We want a code of conduct that can be relied on so that the intrusion into the victims of crime stops. We want a right of apology, and for the correction in the newspaper to be given the same prominence as the original offending article. I would have thought that it was in the interests of all the press, at a really difficult time for them, to have a cheap system of rectification.
The only reason why the amendment is on the amendment paper is that we want the Government to stand by the promises they made. I see the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on the Front Bench. I hope she will not walk us any further down this cul de sac, because it will do the victims of crime no favours. It will do politics no favours because it will look as though we have simply caved in to a nasty, tawdry little campaign by the press.