It is not my business to decide which of the two is better. The whole point is that we set up—through a royal charter that can be changed only by a two thirds majority here and a two thirds majority in the other place—a body that would take the decision at arm’s length from us. My anxiety about today’s decision by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Media and Sport is that she is bringing this matter right back into her inbox, which I think is wholly mistaken. The press would be best advised not to encourage that.
Since that day in 2013, Conservative Ministers have repeated their commitment to the package time and again: the right hon. Member for Basingstoke on 18 March 2013; David Cameron and Viscount Younger of Leckie on that same day; the right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) on 10 April 2013; the right hon. Member for Basingstoke again, six times, on 16 April 2013; the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) on 16 April 2013; the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright), now the Attorney General, on 25 April 2013; Lord Gardiner of Kimble on 3 July 2013; the right hon. Member for Wantage—again—on 4 December 2013; David Cameron in The Spectator on Boxing day 2013—a nice little Christmas present; Lord Gardiner again on 2 April 2014; the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, now the Secretary of State for Communities and
Local Government, on 20 January 2015; and indeed, the Government did so as late as 26 June 2015. All these people constantly reaffirmed that they were in favour of the commencement of section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013. No wonder, then, that some Members in this House are impatient; no wonder there are Members in the House of Lords who are impatient, and want the Government to get on with it. That is precisely why the amendments were tabled.
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To be honest, this is a question of keeping faith. Promises were made to the victims of phone hacking and press intrusion: people such as the family of the murdered schoolgirl Millie Dowler, whose voicemail messages were hacked by the News of the World, giving her family the desperate false hope that their daughter was still alive; people such as the family of Madeleine McCann, whose mother Kate said she felt mentally raped by her treatment at the hands of the press.
All that means that we must have Leveson 2. It was never meant to be that there would be a decision on whether Leveson 2 would happen once the legal cases were complete; it was meant to be that Leveson 2 would happen once those cases were out of the way. Commencement of section 40 was also intended. There is no earthly reason why it could not have been commenced already. What everybody wants is redress—true redress—because when it comes to privacy and correction, it is phenomenally difficult to get “no win, no fee” agreements with lawyers. The awards that might come at the end are relatively minor, and lawyers simply do not want to take the risk.
There is a real danger now—even more than there was five years ago—that those intruded upon—ordinary members of the public and the victims of crime—will become the victims of intrusion all the more, without ever having had any opportunity for redress. People have said to me many times, “You can always go to the courts, if you have been libelled”, but the victims of Hillsborough—both those who died and the groups that were treated to calumny by the press—had no opportunity to go to the courts to seek redress. That is why we needed change.
I want a robust, naughty, scabrous and vibrant press. I even expect it to break the law on occasion when it is chasing down corruption and wrongdoing—as long as it really is in the interests of the public. I also want ordinary members of the public to get a real right of redress, provided impartially, independently and at minimal cost to them. The only incentive we have to persuade IPSO to become a better and more independent body that actually provides that right of redress is section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013. The Government have shown themselves repeatedly determined not to commence it, so of course the House of Lords is tweaking the Government’s nose and saying, “Come on, get on with it”. Conservatives promised it—