My Lords, I declare an interest in this group of amendments as executive director of Telegraph Media Group and draw attention to my other media interests in the register.
When I saw, not with a great deal of surprise, that this group of interlocking amendments relating to press regulation had been tabled—perhaps their second or third outing in as many years—I was reminded fleetingly of that famous line of President Reagan to Jimmy Carter in a presidential debate: “There you go again”. That is what this feels like. We have another Bill—with only the most tangential link to the media—and yet another attempt to hijack it to bring about some form of statutory press control. As the Times put it last week:
“The Data Protection Bill is meant to enhance protection of personal data. It is not meant to be a press regulation bill by another name”.
But this profoundly dangerous set of amendments seeks to warp the Bill in just that way.
Can we please be crystal clear about the impetus behind these amendments? It is certainly nothing to do with data protection. It is to try, yet again, to force the British press—national papers, regional and local papers, and magazines: in other words, everything from the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph to the Birmingham Mail, the Radio Times and Country Life—into a state-sponsored regulator, with virtually no members and no prospect of any, and almost wholly funded by the anti-press campaigner Max Mosley. Indeed, it is the very same regulator which was recently brought into disrepute when an internal report found that its chief executive and two members of its board
had breached internal standards by distributing tweets attacking major national newspapers and journalists. These amendments try to do that by seeking to remove vital journalistic exemptions enshrined in the GDPR from all those who will not, on grounds of principle, be bullied into a system of state-sponsored regulation. Other amendments seek to remove the protection for freedom of expression, which has worked very well in the Data Protection Act 1998, to balance convention rights and make privacy in effect a trump card.
Let us be clear: the amendments would be a body blow to investigative journalism—at a time when, as we have seen in recent days and weeks, it has never been more vital—by giving powerful claimants with something to hide the ammunition to pursue legal claims and shut down legitimate public interest investigations into their activities even before anything is published. All UK news operations, none of which will under any circumstances join Impress or any body recognised by the Press Recognition Panel, would find themselves under incessant legal challenge, with a profound impact not just on investigations but on news, features and even the keeping of archives. In my view, it is no exaggeration to say that that would overturn the principle that has underpinned free speech in Britain for two centuries: that journalists have the right to publish what they believe to be in the public interest and answer for it after publication—a right upheld by the courts here and all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights.
The protections which make investigative journalism possible would in effect be enjoyed by only a handful of hyper-local publishers which have signed up to a state-backed regulator. Are the noble Lords in whose names these amendments stand really content to see the future of investigative journalism in this country invested in The Ferret or insideMoray, rather than in the teams from the Observer, the Liverpool Echo, the Scotsman and the many others which over the years have broken story after story in the public interest? Frankly, if this were not so deadly serious, it would be funny.
If these amendments ever found their way into this legislation, it would be not just a massive blow for investigative journalism and public interest reporting but a further knock to our international reputation as a beacon for press freedom. No other country in the free world has a system such as the one proposed here, where publications are bullied by politicians into some form of state-backed regulation.
It is six years since the Leveson inquiry took place. In those six years, the world has changed—not just in terms of the commercial position of newspapers and magazines, many of which now fight daily battles simply to survive, but also in terms of strong independent regulation. It is time that we moved on too, and I am very pleased that my party has done so by committing itself to the repeal of Section 40.
This Bill is very carefully crafted to balance rights to free expression and rights to privacy, which of course are of huge importance. It recognises the vital importance of free speech in a free society at the same time as protecting individuals. It replicates a system which has worked well for 20 years and can work well for another 20. To unpick it in the way that this set of
amendments tries to do, making so much public interest reporting impossible, is grossly irresponsible, and I hope that the Committee will reject it.