My Lords, I think there is something rather odd about the procedures of this House. It is no criticism of my noble friend at Question Time, but we all remember his rather cautious replies to questions. The first point to make is that all the detail was actually in the Evening Standard, which could be found in the Library. The second point is that it has now been confirmed that the Defamation Bill will be returning to the House and will go through the normal parliamentary processes. That is the point that I wished to establish when I asked about the Defamation Bill. It was totally uncontroversial and, frankly, I think that it could have been confirmed.
I should like to make the same point that was made by the noble Lord who opened for the Opposition. As he said, it is an historic day. This is a compromise solution, but it is a solution to which all three parties have signed up. We have all had to give up something, but that is what happens in compromises. Rather than one party or another making claims that they, and only they, have won, it would be much better to ensure that, by the rules set down, the scandals that have affected some parts of the press never happen again in this country.
This debate is not just about press freedom; it is also about the power of the press and the misuse of that power. That is why the News of the World was closed down, why journalists have been arrested and why dozens of victims of phone hacking have been paid very substantial damages. We now understand that even more victims have been discovered. It is a discreditable episode in the history of the British press, so it is not enough just to say, “I am in favour of the freedom of the press”, as dozens of editorials have been doing over the past months. In spite of the newspapers’ black propaganda about those of us who support Leveson, we all believe in the freedom of the press—there is no question about that. However, we
are also in favour of effective measures to deal with the scandal of press intrusion that has been revealed over the past months.
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I see that newspapers keep on quoting—in defence of press freedom—the Sunday Times stories on thalidomide and Philby. I absolutely and entirely agree with that and I remember those stories only too well. Who was the editor on that occasion? It was Harry Evans, one of the giants of Fleet Street. What does Harry Evans say about Leveson? He says:
“I regard the proposals on statutory underpinning as an opportunity, not as a threat”.
Therefore, if we are going to accept Harry Evans’s views—and I personally would—I think we might take that into account.
Will the new proposals be effective? I am not going to go into the argument about whether we are or are not seeing statutory underpinning. I simply observe that the Government are putting down amendments to two Bills. First, the Government have put down pages of amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill on damages, costs, multiple claimants and the rest, and I support those amendments because they aim to make the Leveson system work. Secondly, there is an amendment to the Bill before us which applies to royal charters.
As the House may remember, I am not an unreserved supporter of royal charters. As I have noted before, the charter website says:
“New grants of Royal Charters are these days reserved for eminent professional bodies or charities which have a solid record of achievement”.
I have never thought that that totally includes the British press, particularly not at this moment, after the scandals that we have had.
I observe also, in passing, that the royal charter is described as the bright idea of Oliver Letwin. In fact, the idea came—as all these good ideas do—from the Times letter column last December. It was suggested by a correspondent from Budleigh Salterton, who also wrote to me. As with so many things in this debate, you could not make it up. He wrote in the Times that a press body could be set up by,
“a royal charter overseen by the Privy Council, an ancient body descended from the ‘wise men’ who were advisers to the monarch before Britain became a constitutional monarchy”.
It is certainly one way of defending a royal charter. It is not entirely my way of looking at it, but I do not wish to be rude in any way to the writer of that letter, Francis Bennion, whom some of us may even remember as a parliamentary counsel here.
It was not the antiquity of the idea that spurred my opposition but my experience in respect of the BBC when I was chairman of the Communications Select Committee. I found there that we all made our proposals. We said that the divided management proposed for the BBC was completely wrong. Everyone now agrees with that and most people agreed with it at the time. Parliament, of course, did not get a look-in; it was simply agreed between the Government and the BBC, and that was it. That was how the royal charter worked, and those were the reservations that I had at that time.
I acknowledge the very great efforts made in these talks to avoid a similar fate overtaking a royal charter on the press. I pay tribute to that but I do not find it perfect. As far as I can see, only the Government can initiate any changes in this area, but the safeguards are there and it is important that they should be there. At the same time, I acknowledge the hard work that has gone in over the months in trying to develop these proposals—not just by the Government and the Opposition but by those outside, including the much-maligned Hacked Off group, which has done a vast amount of work in this area. Moreover—if I may say so in a slightly defensive way, because I know what my Front Bench feels about my role in this—I commend the Tory MPs who stood out against a solution being imposed on them in the other place.
It is a compromise and no one should claim anything more, but it gives us the opportunity of a new beginning and an end to the deep misconduct which has affected some newspapers. It deserves support and, above all, I hope that the press will now co-operate in making it a success.