This is an absolutely dreadful amendment and it should be thrown out, rejected and sent back to the House of Lords. It is fundamentally wrong. It seeks to punish those who might be innocent and to fine them for telling the truth and for saying things that people in power do not like. This amendment goes to the heart of our free press, and it should be thrown in the bin. IMPRESS is already an organisation of ill repute, founded, funded and paid for by somebody who is known to us only because of his misdeeds. A degenerate libertine has provided all the money for IMPRESS, which only the most junior newspapers will sign up to. It is a dreadful body.
We should maintain the freedom of our press to help us with our liberties. We have only to look at the policeman who went to prison a few weeks ago. He successfully sued the press in the 1990s, but it turned out that he was in fact a child molester. Whenever we put constraints on the press, we help the powerful to get away with misdeeds. This House should stand up for freedom. It should stand up for liberty and it should reject the unelected House of Lords trying to prevent scandal from being reported freely.