No. I have read the Bill, and in particular spent some time pondering whether clause 232 could help us in these circumstances, and came to the conclusion that it could not. A five-year review of an amendment, passed in the other place, that has nothing to do with the Bill did not strike me as something the Bill’s drafters had in mind—I am sure the Minister will clarify that for us—when they put in place the five-year review. They want that review to be of the very important measures in the Bill that govern the operation of the security services and how they are able to carry out their investigations.
Regardless of one’s views on the implementation of section 40, this amendment is absolutely the wrong way to do it. It is, to coin a phrase, opening up a back door to implement section 40 when it should be for the Government to have a debate in this House on whether that is appropriate.
That brings me to my next point, which is of course about the statement made earlier in the house by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who made it clear that there will be a consultation on the implementation of section 40. Now, to quote a former editor of The Guardian once in the Chamber is bad enough; to quote him twice may be a misfortune. But I remind the House that he wrote on Sunday in The Observer that he would like to see section 40 “mothballed”. As I said earlier, that may perhaps go too far, but the tone of his very thoughtful article was that the position we have come to on potential regulation of the press has been circumspect and perhaps tactical rather than strategic. Going forward, this House has an opportunity to talk about a regime that actually works. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) said during the statement earlier, the current system of press regulation itself does not take into account wholly unregulated arenas such as Facebook and so on, where so many people go to get their news.
That brings me to my third point, which is a more general one on press regulation, as that is what we are debating because of this Lords amendment. We should give IPSO time to settle down. It is introducing a system of arbitration. It has something like 2,500 members. It could take into account the issue of how so much of the information we now get is available in the unregulated sphere that is the internet.
My fourth point echoes the excellent points made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset on the impact on newspapers. I said many times as a Minister that our newspapers, and our local and regional newspapers in particular, faced a perfect storm, with both their readership and the classified advertisements that were their revenue migrating on to the internet.
I take issue here with the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry). She is quite right that regional newspapers were not affected by the phone hacking scandal, as they did not participate in phone hacking. But it is also right to say that they are the ones that have been contacting Members to point out how section 40 could have an impact on them. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s consultation on section 40 is so welcome.