My Lords, I cannot give this House a legal opinion but I can give an opinion based on experience. I declare an interest: I attended the Leveson inquiry because I was on the end of illegal tapping of my phone. Public interest was not defined there; it was defined by the editors of the papers. They said it was not illegal, but clearly it was.
I support what the noble Baroness has said tonight. She is absolutely right and I am glad that there is a lot of support for her amendment. However, I am concerned that it addresses only a small part of what Leveson recommended. He made recommendations about public interest—it is an important issue and I welcome the amendment—but even though we all voted unanimously for the royal charter and the proposals of Leveson, we keep hiding away from debating his main recommendations. He made 37 recommendations and only 12 have been implemented. We have taken a small step forward but to have a serious debate about public interest you have to cover all the things that Leveson recommended—and we do not do that. We have to ride on the back of a single piece of legislation, and the answer always comes that it is not realistic to put such a proposal in the legislation. I am glad that tonight there has at least been agreement—presumably by both sides, for whatever political reason—that we have to move to do something about the important issue of public interest.
I will not go on about that. I have a couple of questions for the Minister, which I hope he will answer. I wonder whether we are taking into account here the hacking actions that are going on at present in the courts. The Government have always said that they will wait until the courts have finished, but hacking actions are continuing. Statements have been made in court that hacking is still going on, involving and paid for by some members of the press.
The royal charter involves the monarchy in politics. It is where the divisions are and why I resigned as a privy counsellor. I thought it was designed to keep the monarchy out of it, but now it is right in the middle of it as we get more and more into whether we are for or against the Leveson proposals. Is it still the Government’s policy that they will wait until all the court trials have finished before they give their view of the many recommendations in Leveson? Is it the position that the Government do not want to accept Leveson’s recommendation for a second inquiry into the relationship between the police and the press, which is still at the heart of many of these problems at the present stage?
To show that I am intellectual, I read in the Times—which is not a paper I support—an editorial headed “Free Speech in Peril”, which covers the very things we are discussing at the moment. It states:
“A number of peers have seized on a chance to curb press freedom by meddling with new data protection legislation. They should desist”.
I hope that tonight we will not desist but will carry it through.
The charge levelled in the Times—that this is an attack on press freedom—is signed by 70 newspaper editors. In fact, that means it is signed by seven owners of different papers. Seven cabal owners decide to describe Leveson as a big attack on press freedom, so why is it that the same papers that object to interference, in regulatory form or by government, all sign up for press regulation in Ireland? Every one of the papers we are talking about, which tell us that we are threatening freedom, have now signed up recently. I do not know whether they are less democratic or whether their freedom is threatened in Ireland, but they are the same people. It is hypocrisy.
Have the Government looked at what they have done in Ireland? A Minister is in charge in Ireland, not an independent regulator as proposed by Leveson. In Ireland a government Minister—a direct political person—decides whether the press is acting in a responsible way and, presumably, in the public interest.
The amendment is a small step forward and there is a long way to go yet, without a doubt. I hope that we will give more consideration to those factors. Basically, there is a lot more to be done. I am thankful that the Government, as I have heard, are supporting the proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. It is a small step but there is a lot more to be done. These threats to press freedom are not coming from the politicians but from the press—and it is about time we took account of that.