My Lords, I did not want to pre-empt any other Back-Bench contributions. I declare my interest as the independent chair of the Press Complaints Commission, and my other interests that are set out in the register.
When we debated the Leveson report on 11 January, I reported to the House that I was confident that I could deliver a fresh start and a new body with teeth,
“with comprehensive sign-up right across the newspaper and magazine industry by the middle of this year”.—[Official Report, 11/1/13; col. 386.]
To those who are worried about perceived delay, that is still my intention—and I will deliver on my pledge.
I confess that I have a great deal of sympathy with many of the contributions made so far today. Those of us who have turned every page of Lord Justice Leveson’s report will remember that on 25 November, on the day of publication, I welcomed the report and said that I would now ensure that the new regulatory body would be Leveson-compliant. That is my position today. However, I sense and feel the frustration that it was as long ago as July 2011 when the leaders of all three main political parties said that the PCC must go, a new body must be set up and a new regulatory system established, and that it is now two months since the Leveson report was published.
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The first point I wish to make is that I have attended some, not all, of the negotiations and I have seen no evidence of delay. I put that on the record because I have been there. Indeed, I have been struck by the candour of the exchanges, by the considerable degree of consensus on accepting the architecture proposed by Lord Justice Leveson, and by the fact that everyone appears to be negotiating in good faith and in genuine hope of reaching a common position. I remind the House that we are not dealing with a few publications
sited in London; I am speaking on behalf of all those who attended an open meeting I called last month when representatives of 5,000 editors and more than 200 publishers attended. I hope the House will allow me to give an update of where we are.
On re-reading Lord Justice Leveson’s report, I am struck by the number of times he states, very clearly, that what he advocates has nothing to do with statutory regulation. Indeed, statute is unnecessary. He said that he wanted to see,
“genuine effective independent regulation in the public interest”,
established by the industry itself. I gave up when the number of times he said that in his report hit double figures. I commend the report to those who are interested because, in turning page after page, you are reminded all the time that it is up to the industry to set up this new body.
I have no history here. Although I recognise that there are many in this House who have a more distinguished history and connections with the press, I have had no connection with the press at all apart from being severely criticised on more occasions than I can remember. However, I sense that we now have consensus on almost every aspect of the new structure, and perhaps I may give a more detailed analysis. There will be a far more open and transparent appointments procedure and an independent majority at every level of the organisation. There will be a new standards arm with the power to undertake in-depth investigations where serious or systemic breaches of the code are believed to have taken place. For the first time ever there will be fines, as and when such breaches are established. There will be enhanced powers to require the prominence of corrections. The board of the new body will be represented on the committee that draws up the code and will have a veto on any possible changes to it.
I am greatly heartened that I can report to the House that all the publishers in the newspaper and magazine industries are willing to move forward as one, with one or two exceptions. However, the public need to know where everyone stands. There should be one code embodying generally accepted standards and overseen by one regulatory authority with real teeth. On page 1779 of the report, Sir Brian acknowledges this. He says:
“I would strongly urge that it is in the best interests of the industry and the public that a single regulatory body should establish a single set of standards on which the public can rely”.
As is already evident, there are two particular problems. As far as I understand the situation, the only outstanding areas of controversy and disagreement relate to the proposed arbitral arm and the method by which the new regulatory structure will be verified. I will deal briefly with each of these points, because they go right to the heart of this debate.
The noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, has very helpfully provided colleagues with a two-page briefing note. My eye was drawn immediately to paragraph 14, which he referred to in his opening speech, where he quotes me in the evidence I gave to Lord Justice Leveson. But the paragraph opens with the statement:
“An Arbitration Service on this model is supported by the newspaper industry”.
I am sure that there was no intention to mislead, but that is not the case, because it is the proposed arbitral arm that is dividing the industry. With good reason, many in the national press are strongly supportive because it would help them in their work of challenging international corporations and others with deep pockets. At the opposite pole—and I have spent the past few weeks going round the local and regional press—many of those editors believe that a whole new class of what they describe as potentially ruinous actions could be created.
Sir Brian is vague—I think intentionally—on the details of this arbitral arm. In his report, Sir Brian accepts the view, which has been expressed by many in this House, that there should be no role for compensation within the complaints function of the new regulatory structure. I reiterate that because one or two confusing comments were made earlier in this debate. The arbitral arm he proposes will not deal with breaches of the code but with existing claims under civil law. It would be designed to improve access to justice.
I see the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, in his place. He will recall that when the Legal Services Bill was passing through this place, he and I joined together to ensure that access to justice was put right at the heart of the new system, and that is where I still am. Although the arbitral arm would improve access to civil redress for some people who currently have no access to the system, it would not create any new course of action. If the arbitral arm is to achieve the rather limited but tightly defined objectives set out by Leveson, it needs to be very carefully constructed. I am sure that a Leveson-compliant system can be constructed, but it must not be erected at what could be ruinous cost to the local and regional newspaper sector.
I understand that media lawyers from the whole industry are still meeting to discuss this. They are nearly there, they told me, just before this debate started. This is no time to start telling them, “This is now going to be imposed on you because you have not yet come up with the solution”.
The amendment also deals with recognition. My position on this is quite clear. We stand ready to build this new structure. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, knows, the Irish system merely acknowledged the existence of a body that had already been created two years earlier by the industry. We stand ready to build a completely new regulatory structure, and I am sure it should be subject to serious scrutiny by an outside verification body, but the noble Lord’s quotation from me is extracted from the submission I made to Lord Justice Leveson. It is taken rather out of context. The implication is that I was talking about an arbitration service, when in fact I was making the point that I felt very relaxed, indeed positive, about the possibility that the editors’ code might be recognised in the Bill. That was the point that I was making.