My Lords, I should declare an interest as chairman of the Press Standards Board of Finance and executive director of the Telegraph Media Group. I have the greatest admiration for the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam. He and I have made
common cause on a number of things over the years. However, we rarely agree on issues of regulation and I am afraid that I will not disappoint him today because I believe that what he is proposing is unnecessary. It is unnecessary for this House to intervene statutorily in press regulation and to deliver an arbitration service. Actually, it would be counterproductive and set back the delivery of the arbitration system which is currently being worked on.
As noble Lords will know—my noble friend Lord Fowler mentioned it just now—I have been working with my noble friend Lord Hunt and others to build a new independent regulator with tough powers backed by the force of contract law. An arbitration system is a central part of that, and it is important that I explain how it would fit in, not least in dealing with the news blackout that my noble friend Lord Fowler mentioned.
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In July last year, I presented detailed proposals to the Leveson inquiry for a new regulatory system. That proposal foreshadowed an arbitration system which would deal with both defamation and privacy. My third witness statement said:
“The industry is extremely keen to pursue this—believing it will be good for the public and good for the industry at the same time—and believes that the structure that is being proposed will be flexible enough to allow such a … development”.
It is important to make the point that it would deal with privacy as well as with defamation.
That was one of the ideas that Lord Justice Leveson enthusiastically backed, but his report made it very clear that he wanted the arbitration system to be part of the industry’s own self-regulatory mechanism. In Part J, Volume IV of his report, he says that he considers it,
“very important that the arbitral system should be one part of a regulator”.
Since the report has been published, the industry has been working extremely hard with the Government to finalise the details of a regulatory scheme. Much progress has been made on the development of a contract, regulations and governance to deliver a genuinely independent regulator. The arbitration service will be a very important part of that. There are issues around it which are very complex and which need a great of work if it is to function properly, but to deal with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, made, there is no question of kicking this into the long grass.