It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes), who characteristically speaks with great clarity without notes, but I shall take inspiration from the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), the first Back Bencher to speak in this debate, in that I will take a slightly different view from my Front-Bench colleagues on a couple of issues. In particular, I will suggest that there are some flaws in clauses 168 and 169.
When I retired from this House in 2010 I never really expected to be back on these Benches, yet I am now back here representing a different constituency. I missed out on the Leveson report and the subsequent debate about Leveson and the provisions of the Crime and Courts Act 2013. I recognise, however, the tremendous hurt caused by phone hacking, and the crimes committed by those involved in it; indeed, two dozen-plus people were convicted of crimes at that stage. I recognise, too, the tremendous sense of violation of privacy that people felt at that time. I am also well aware of the force of the charges our Front Bench puts to the Government; that at that stage they committed themselves to legislation that they are now resiling from.
I am also aware that the history of my party’s relations with the press over the last century has not been untroubled. We have rightly stood up for a feeling that the press has been out to get the Labour party ever since the Zinoviev letter in the 1920s, published by the Daily Mail. However, despite all that background, I still have doubts about clauses 168 and 169, which would have the effect of putting punitive damages on to our press if they were sued, whether they won or lost.
We must be very careful about taking this step. We are already 40th in the accepted rankings relating to a free press. We are not even in the top 10, and we should be up there with Norway, which I think is No. 1. We should be very careful about taking these steps. How would Russia Today react if our press organisations were forced into bankruptcy or felt the chilling effect that Alastair Campbell warned against recently?