My Lords, so that my noble friend Lord Lester can come in in due order, I will speak to Amendment 88. I also draw the Minister’s attention to Amendment 91, which relates to the City. It is clear from the ICO guidance that journalistic exemption was intended to apply to non-media companies, but this is not made explicit in the Bill. In addition, the Bill does not address whether material can be considered published if it is behind a paywall, or mainly addressed to corporate subscribers. That is the thinking behind Amendment 91. We were discussing earlier the concerns of some in financial services and companies such as Thomson Reuters about how the Bill affected them, and that is my probing for them.
I would like to speak to Amendment 88. I was one of the four privy counsellors who signed off the royal charter. I was in government when this went on. It was not an attempt by government to regulate the press. In fact, the coalition Government twisted and turned to try to find ways of taking this forward, as far away from state regulation as we possibly could.
9.30 pm
I always like to hear the noble Lord, Lord Black, in full flow and we had the lot: hijacking the Bills, state-sponsored legislation, an attack on principle and bullying. As the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, said, Leveson did not come out of a clear blue sky. It is now more than 25 years since the then Minister, David Mellor, warned the press that they were drinking in the last-chance saloon. But it has always been the feeling of the kind of media that the noble Lord, Lord Black, represents that they just have to dig their heels in and refuse to do anything, because the fuss will die down and the politicians will lose their nerve and back off. As somebody who believes passionately in press freedom, I say to the noble Lord that that policy approach—the feeling that the press can turn back any reasonable proposal and in the end be successful—is an extremely dangerous one. Last June, had the general election campaign gone on another month, the press might have had to deal with Mr Tom Watson as Secretary of State. The idea that the press will inevitably have a Conservative Government and that that Government will do its bidding is a high-risk strategy for any sector.
One has to say it is true that the Conservative Government have reneged on the clear promise they made to see through part 2 of Leveson, which would have dealt with data. It is six years since Leveson but,
my goodness, in six years the importance of data and how it is handled has grown ever more important, as this Bill illustrates.
One thing on which I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Black, is that the past few days have reminded us just how important a free press is, given the scandals around Westminster and tax avoidance. However, Leveson came out of massive violations of public trust; the noble Lord, Lord Black, and his friends seem to show no sense of remorse for or understanding of that. Here, I must pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, who, over a number of years, has shown great courage and fortitude in sticking to her principles on these issues.
There is another thing that sticks in my mind. I remember when Rupert Murdoch was before the committee. He said that it was the “humblest” day of his life, which I always thought was a slightly strange choice of words—he did not say “humbling” but “humblest”. But then I understood: what really happened was that he weathered the storm, went back and, like the Bourbons, learned nothing and forgot nothing. There is no guarantee that the press will not behave as badly again. IPSO was set up in the same old sweetheart format as its predecessors. As I said, the Conservatives reneged on their promises about the second part of Leveson. Then, almost to add insult to injury, they put IPSO in this Bill rather than the recognised regulator.
I know my noble friend Lord Lester is going to say how sad he is that he cannot support us on this, but what I want is some sense from the noble Lord, Lord Black, and his friends that they have to move. This issue will not go away. The sense of outrage will not go away. The sense that they have got away with it again will not go away. The idea that the only kind of press regulation that we can have is the kind that is determined by the owners of the press is an insult to the intelligence of the British people, and an underestimate of just how appalled and outraged they were by the things that came out during the Leveson inquiry.
I therefore say to my noble friend Lord Lester, who I know has great influence in these matters: instead of always castigating us for attacking the freedom of the press, could he use some of his eloquence to persuade the noble Lord, Lord Black, and his friends to move towards what the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said? Influential people in all parties have been willing to put their hands to trying to find a compromise—a system that would work and have credibility, and give some satisfaction to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, and those who have been damaged and hurt by the abuses of the press.
Today, I had a letter from the Press Regulation Panel, which with all good organisation, I cannot find in my papers. The Press Regulation Panel stands ready to work for such a solution with all the best intentions in the world: not to have a state-regulated press, but to have something that gets that balance right between privacy and press freedom, privacy and freedom of speech. My noble friend Lord Lester has written a very good book about five freedoms. The two freedoms put side by side are privacy and freedom of speech. But as it is now, that balance has not been reached. The noble Lord, Lord Black, has not moved an inch
this evening. I can only say, as I said before, that this issue will not go away; not because people want to hijack Bills, but because from the media there is no repentance, no remorse and no realisation that there is still a great public demand to see them mend their ways.