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House of Commons

Friday 29 January 1993

The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS

[Madam Speaker-- in the Chair ]

Parking (Speaker's Court)

9.34 am

Madam Speaker : I have an announcement to make on a matter of internal administration. The parking of cars in Speaker's Court is by permission of the Speaker. All the available spaces there are allocated. Despite repeated requests not to do so, which have continued now for a matter of months, the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) continues to leave her car in the court, thereby taking someone else's parking space and, by her conduct, causing embarrassment to the servants of the House whose duty it is to enforce the regulations. This situation cannot be allowed to continue and I have given directions that if, after today, the hon. Member leaves her car in Speaker's Court, she will not be allowed to move the vehicle until she has given an undertaking that in future she will make use of the parking facilities available to her elsewhere.


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Orders of the Day

Freedom and Responsibility of the Press Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

9.35 am

Mr. Clive Soley (Hammersmith) : I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

It is with pleasure that I seek to move the Second Reading of the Bill. I hope that the House will not make the mistake of rushing into hasty legislation as a result of the high-profile cases of recent months. Those cases are important, but the genesis of my Bill is events before those cases came to light. The case for my Bill lies in the rights of ordinary citizens to a decent, fair and accurate press. The House has to get right the standards, combined with the freedom, of the press. I hope that today's debate will be the beginning of that process.

The debate about press freedom has a long history. Frank Allaun, a former Member of Parliament, introduced a Bill many years ago. That was followed by Bills introduced by my hon. Friends the Members for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd), for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) and for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell). Mr. John Browne, who did not retain his seat at the last election, introduced a privacy Bill. All those Bills had an impact.

There have also been two royal commissions--in 1949 and 1977. We have had the first and second Calcutt reports. We had the Press Commission from 1953 to 1991 and the Press Complaints Commission since 1991. Much more recently, I set up my own committee as part of my legislative process, if I can describe it in that way. I thank the many people who were involved in supporting the taking part in the proceedings of the committee and to the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack), who chaired it throughout in his usual able way.

The committee undertook an important process. The results of its deliberations have been fully transcribed and are now available. They make useful and informative reading on the background to the Bill. I suggest that it is helpful to hold such hearings before a Bill begins its Committee stage, or in Committee. I have always been a great supporter of the welcome reform of the special Bill procedure introduced by Norman St. John-Stevas when he was a Member of Parliament.

When a private Member holds hearings before introducing his Bill he takes three weeks out of his own time. Unless we reformed other procedures of the House, it would be a high-risk business to do it through the normal system offered by the House. That is why I did it in the way that I chose. However, it puts an enormous burden on the resources and work load of the Member involved. It is difficult enough to think of the right questions to ask witnesses who appear before a Committee. But when one is worrying whether the next witness will appear, it puts a different meaning on the words "stress of the work load". One starts to wonder where one's priorities are--delivering the people or asking the questions. It is a good system and I commend it, but we ought to make it possible within the structure of the House, without risking the loss of time that it implies, especially for a private Member.


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A number of people have asked me why I have introduced the Bill, and what was my interest in the press, as I have not been involved with it or been a journalist. I have a long history of interest in the subject--going back 10 or 15 years--which came about simply because I was concerned about the erosion of press freedom during the past 10 to 20 years. The House has placed many Acts on the statute book-- sometimes unthinkingly--that have had a profound and detrimental effect on press freedom. Yet, at the same time, journalistic standards have collapsed in some parts of the press, although not all, and we now have a serious problem.

Mr. Michael Stern (Bristol, North-West) : The hon. Gentleman and I were present yesterday at a meeting of the Chartered Institute of Journalists. Does he agree that it is at least commendable that that is one body which not only has a charter of conduct for its members but enforces it?

Mr. Soley : The National Union of Journalists also has a charter, and its ethics council gave evidence to my committee and made the important point that any member of the public can take up a complaint, which can be enforced by disciplinary procedures, against a member of the NUJ. The problem is that those codes of practice are not well known, and hardly anyone either inside or outside the House is aware of them.

May I refer Members to the debate that I initiated when I was fortunate enough to win the ballot on private Members' motions on 27 November 1987 and introduced a similar Bill? Many of the issues of which I gave examples then still trouble me today.

I must make it clear--as I have done several times in the media--that this is not a privacy Bill ; nor does it involve any pre-publication censorship. Underlying our debates on the subject is the idea that we should steer clear of legislation that involves such censorship. There is a strong case for putting something right after one gets it wrong, but if one wants to prevent the publication of something, one needs to be clear that, in so doing, one is not preventing good investigative journalism. Frequently we have not dealt with that issue, and although other aspects of the laws that we have passed have been well-intentioned, they have had that side effect.

Mr. Michael Fabricant (Mid-Staffordshire) : Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that, while many hon. Members and people outside say that it is so difficult to draft legislation to decide what is in the public interest and what is invasion of privacy, nations such as Holland, Germany and the United States, among others, all have privacy legislation? If they can draft it, why cannot we?

Mr. Soley : I shall come to that in more detail later, but, briefly, the critical difference between Britain and the countries that the hon. Gentleman has named is that they all have a press freedom law. That is an important issue, and I shall deal with it.

It is often not mentioned that the underlying agenda and thrust of my Bill is designed to raise standards of journalism. The problem is not that there are insufficient laws affecting journalists--in many respects there are too many--but that the standards and ethical codes of some editors and journalists are too low and we must tackle


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that. People should view my Bill through the eyes of someone who is trying to raise standards. One cannot legislate automatically to raise standards and tell people that, by law, they must behave better. However, one can construct a framework of law that encourages and protects good behaviour. That is an important part of my Bill and it is the agenda for the House on any law. We are always looking for a structure and framework that seeks to achieve the aims of society. As I have made clear, this is not a privacy Bill, because such legislation has certain problems. First, such a measure would largely, although not entirely, protect the rich and powerful. I have had some involvement in the debate that has been raging for the past few months, and hon. Members must be aware that it has centred on public figures with some power, wealth and influence. Although I would strongly argue that such people have a right to privacy, the question is whether we should pass a law simply to deal with the problems of the rich and powerful. If anything, the balance needs to be weighted slightly the other way.

As public figures, Members of Parliament expect and should get more scrutiny than ordinary people, such as non-Members of Parliament and people in less powerful and influential positions. Although we have rights to privacy, we must expect some intrusions. If we passed a Bill to protect people's privacy at this time, no matter what the intention, it would be seen as a measure to protect the rich and powerful

Mr. Andrew Hargreaves (Birmingham, Hall Green) : While I am sure that my hon. Friends on the Conservative side would perhaps sympathise with the hon. Gentleman's stated intention of raising standards for the press, rather than with the formal title of the Bill, the concept that you raised- -

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes) : Order. I remind the hon. Member that he is addressing me.

Mr. Hargreaves : I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. The concept that a privacy Bill would only protect the rich and famous does not wash. It would also protect other people--for example, modest and unknown people who have been involved in some calamity and then suffer the intrusion of having cameras stuffed under their noses.

Mr. Soley : I well understand that, but the underlying aim of my Bill is to raise standards. In the present climate, a privacy Bill, without counterbalancing freedoms, would be seen as a measure to protect the rich and the powerful. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that such a Bill would protect other people, but that has not been the most frequent complaint from ordinary people who complain to the Press Complaints Commission or to me.

Mr. Joseph Ashton (Bassetlaw) : My hon. Friend has been busy in recent weeks, and we have obviously not been able to see him at the National Heritage Select Committee's sittings into intrusions on privacy. Perhaps the press has given massive publicity to the problems of the royal family, and Mr. Kelvin MacKenzie got enormous publicity last week with his list of Members of Parliament. However, there are members of the Select Committee in the Chamber today who can tell my hon. Friend that we have given the maximum emphasis to the problems of rape victims and people who have been harassed after a bereavement, such as widows of members of the IRA--


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people who have been thrust into the limelight through no fault of their own and have suffered great distress. That is the reason why we need a privacy Bill--not to protect the rich and famous who attract the attention of the newspapers.

Mr. Soley : My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

The other problem is that if we introduced privacy legislation in Britain, there would be no counterbalancing press freedom or freedom of information Act. That is profoundly important.

Some people would say that we can write protections for the press into the small print of a privacy Bill, but there are a number of problems with that. First, one would be creating a Bill designed with let-out clauses for the press, which would create problems in its own right. Secondly, we need a measure that the courts can adjudicate on, that could act as a balance between the rights and needs for freedom of the press and the rights of individuals.

Let us take the matter one stage further. The problem with many of the privacy legislation proposals is that they would not have prevented the publication of material in recent high-profile cases. For example, the proposal on physical intrusion in the summary of recommendations in Sir David Calcutt's report, which was defined, among other things, as

"placing a surveillance device taking a photograph",

was subject to a let-out clause that would have allowed publication of the tapes of the right hon. and learned Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor) and the photographs of the Duchess of York. Paragraph 2 of Sir David's summary includes subsections (b) and (c), which provide two let-out clauses in the public interest--they are exclusion clauses.

We are in danger of talking ourselves into a privacy law that would not prevent the problems posed by the recent high-profile cases, which may or may not address the needs of "small" people, about whom my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) is concerned and which would not guarantee press freedom. I should be happy to consider a privacy Bill if it were counterbalanced by a press freedom or freedom of information Act.

Mr. Patrick Cormack (Statffordshire, South) : Surely the nub of the matter is deciding what is in the public interest and what is of interest to the public. The two things are not the same.

Mr. Soley : The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right ; I have made that point on a number of occasions.

Most complaints about the press relate to accuracy. The most recent report of the Press Complaints Commission that I have studied reveals that 66 per cent. of complaints were about that. The interesting thing about the cases that have been forwarded to me is that harassment follows an inaccurate story and is aggravated by that inaccuracy.

A classic example of that is the case of Linda Townley, who gave profoundly effective evidence to my committee, and who received a lot of national coverage. She was the maid at the centre of the story about Princess Anne's letters. The story suggested that she was the thief of those letters. If she had stolen them, one did not need to be too bright a journalist to work out that she knew what was in them and, better still, where they were. The story therefore became doubly attractive because people wanted to get hold of those letters.


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The harassment that Linda Townley suffered was largely caused by that inaccurate story. She believes that the problem is that, if one cannot go for libel, which is a heavy weapon to use, one has to put up with the inaccuracies. Mona Shourjabi also put that argument very effectively recently. That is why such people--and there are many--who have suffered from intrusion and harassment have said no to a privacy law and no to Sir David Calcutt's recommendations, but yes to my Bill.

Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) : I am exceedingly bothered by my hon. Friend's Bill. How does he define accuracy? One person's perception of fact may be very different from that of another. Some of us consider his Bill a lucrative field for lawyers and a nightmare for editors.

Mr. Soley : My hon. Friend has asked a question which was, until recently, put to me many times, until people realised that the answer is abundantly clear. I shall come to that issue later.

Another alternative to my Bill is anti-bugging legislation. I should certainly vote for such legislation, but it would not stop the publication of the Camillagate tapes because the transcript was published overseas--by chance, of course, in a Murdoch newspaper--and somehow or other it found its way into similar papers here. If we had an anti-bugging law, one might be able to stop the publication of a transcript in this country, but once that transcript was published overseas--whether the bugging was done here or somewhere else would be irrelevant--we would then have to have a law to say that we could not publish it here. I do not need to remind the Government of the problems created by "Spycatcher". The Government fell into that exact trap when they chased the publishers all around the world trying to stop the publication of that book in Britain when it had been published in every other country. One cannot sensibly go down that road.

I accept that we should endeavour to make bugging difficult or impossible, but the new offence on bugging recommended in the Calcutt report would not have stopped the bugging of the telephone in the case of the right hon. and learned Member for Putney when that telephone was in someone else's flat. It would not stop papers being able to use the transcript of those telephone conversations, because they could claim the public interest defence. Although I am fully in favour of stopping bugging, legislation is not the answer, because overseas publication of transcripts presents a problem.

I was strongly against the use of the photographs of the Duchess of York. It was not necessary to use them to make the point that dishonest statements were being made about relationships in the royal family. Obviously, the nature of those statements and consequences for our constitution, which is somewhat unusual, but has nevertheless been very successful. I do not doubt that those photographs were used to increase circulation.

It may be fine to bring in a law to restrict the use of photographs taken on people's private property, but how does one stop the publication of photographs when a television crew goes to the door of any hon. Member, asks for a comment and that person closes the door with the words, "No comment"? The television company must get the permission of that hon. Member before using those


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photographs, but are we suggesting that they should be unable to use photographs of that hon. Member coming out of his front door? There are all sorts of traps.

I was as offended as anyone else by the use of some recent photographs, but the most effective legislation would be an effective code that is respected and honoured by journalists and editors. If we had that, we would not need to trouble the House with specific legislation. What to do about the failure of self-regulation is the problem.

Mr. Ashton : Surely it is possible to have a law to prohibit the buying, selling and publishing of such material. No one can stop pictures being taken or a telephone being bugged, but it is the buying, selling and publishing of such material without permission that is the problem. Child pornography is published abroad, but it is not published here because we are allowed to have separate laws.

Mr. Soley : I understand that, and I am not saying that it would be impossible to draft the necessary legislation, but we would be faced with the difficulty of trying to restrict the publication of photographs, tapes or whatever that were published in other countries. Such material is fundamentally different from child pornography because of its political slant--it may relate to the royal family and therefore have constitutional implications. It is not impossible to get round the problem, but it would be profoundly difficult to do it in a way that does not impinge on genuine investigative journalism.

I believe that there is a better case for a tort of harassment, but, again, I emphasise that that must be balanced by legislation guaranteeing press freedom. That is the difficulty we face. I shall now outline briefly the scope of my Bill. I will take further interventions, but I should be grateful if hon. Members were brief, because I know that many wish to speak. Clause 1 sets up the Independent Press Authority which has two duties : to enforce accuracy and to promote press freedom. The duties and powers of that authority are spelt out in clause 2. It aims to promote high standards, the lack of which is the underlying problem and is top of my agenda. We cannot legislate simply for bad newspapers ; we must legislate for all, so that the balance is right.

It is important to stress that many of my proposals would protect good journalists. A photographer came to see me recently and told me that he did not like climbing over people's fences to get photographs, but he admitted, "Frankly, if I don't, I don't get the job." That is the problem. Good journalists and photographers need to be protected against the practices of some editors and others, who are anxious for material at any price.

Clause 2 promotes press freedom. I have already spoken about a possible amendment to it, and, in this regard, I have sought the help of the Government.

My Bill provides a good structure for the way forward. A key element that should be considered for inclusion is a legal defence of press freedom. That would make it easier for the House to enact an anti-bugging law, a law forbidding the photography of private property, and a privacy law. Were such a provision included, the cases in France, Germany and the United States would become more meaningful.


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It would be easier for people such as myself to vote for such measures if the law contained a provision on press freedom that could be cited in court. If the Government could come up with something like that, they would profoundly help the cause of press freedom. That would allow the House to legislate on matters such as those suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) on privacy, bugging and photography.

Mr. Paul Channon (Southend, West) : I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman has said. However, will he explain in a little more detail what the law on press freedom will actually say? What freedoms will be enshrined in it that do not presently exist?

Mr. Soley : The simple route would be to use something similar to article 10 of the European convention on human rights, which was drafted by the British--as were so many other parts of the law around the world--in 1945. I looked to see whether we could include article 10 in the Bill : I do not think that we can merely lift it and place it in the Bill.

There is another argument, about whether we should incorporate all European human rights legislation into British law. There would be problems in doing so, but it would not be beyond the wit of lawyers to include in the Bill a clause similar to article 10. If that could be done, it would provide a good way forward.

As a halfway measure, I have suggested tightening up my clause so that it reads :

"and to promote the fundamental freedom of the press to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas." That section would replace the words "press freedom" in clause 2(b). That would place a much stronger duty on the organisation to promote press freedom, not just argue for it, which is important. However, that would not be as good as having a legal defence of press freedom.

Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough) : I understand the hon. Gentleman's arguments about introducing into the Bill, if possible, something on the lines of article 10 of the European convention. However, if he is prepared to do that, would he be prepared to introduce into the Bill article 8, which states that everyone has the right to respect in his private and family life, his home and his correspondence?

Mr. Soley : The hon. Gentleman has missed much of my argument--that was precisely what I was saying. If there were a press freedom law, people such as me would not have a problem with privacy law. My problem--and that of many hon. Members--concerns introducing privacy laws without the counterbalance of legislation on press freedom and freedom of information. It is fine by me if the hon. Gentleman wants to introduce such laws through articles 8 and 10 of the European convention on human rights, but we cannot have one set of laws without the other, particularly if we introduce privacy laws first with no provision for press freedom. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman is right, but he must remember that that is precisely what I have just said at some length.

Clause 2 also relates to monopoly. I do not want to spend too much time on that subject, but the monopolistic structure of the press--not just its ownership, but its distribution--poses a problem. Circulation wars rage between competing groups. When the Daily Mirror published the photographs of the Duchess of York, The Sun suddenly decided that, having sat on the tape of Diana and not used it for about two years for "a principled


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reason", that reason no longer applied, mainly because the sales of the Daily Mirror had risen by 100,000. The problem with such battles--they also pose problems for the Press Complaints Commission--is that circulation wars take precedence over the ethics of journalism.

The Bill contains a code of conduct, which is profoundly important. A code of conduct in a high-status, lay-dominated organisation of the sort that the Bill sets up would have more effect than the present one, which is unbelievable. The status of that organisation is important. Examples showing how well it can work can be found in the electronic media.

Clause 2(1)(g) and (h) refer to Parliament's influence. We should debate the subject more frequently in the House. Press freedom is too important to be debated only occasionally.

Clause 3 relates to the power to enforce accuracy, and marks the basis of my assumptions. If people understood my assumptions, many of their arguments would fade away. One of my great disappointments is that editors will not say what I am about to say : citizens have a right--I mean a right --to expect their news to be reported accurately. There is no such thing as inaccurate news ; there is only disinformation. If that were disseminated by Pravda, we should rightly be furious--and we were. If such action is taken by our papers, we should be equally furious. Inaccuracy is a contradiction of press freedom ; it is the other side of the coin of press freedom. If one makes that assumption, many of the other arguments fade into irrelevance.

Mr. Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) : Does not the hon. Gentleman accept that some of the disputes within the press--both regional and national--over the past few years have undermined the drive towards accuracy by forcing experienced journalists out of jobs in favour of cheap, inefficient and untrained journalists, in order to bring down costs and, with them, standards?

Mr. Soley : Much of what the hon. Gentleman says is contained within the duties of the new Independent Press Authority. That organisation has a duty to look at the training and ethics of journalism. Another problem is that there are relatively few schools of journalism in Britain, and within them the standards and teaching of ethics is minimal. I am not saying that a wonderful ethics code exists that can always be applied, but any journalist should always ask himself questions about the ethics of what he is doing. Journalism is one of the trades where one does not need to be trained in a specific way of behaviour, but must keep asking oneself, "Am I invading someone's privacy, am I doing my job properly and for a good reason, or merely to sell papers?"

Mr. Peter Bottomley (Eltham) : I think that the House will want to pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for the work that he has done in preparation for his speech. Surely, freedom is the right to be wrong. If something that I say turns out to be wrong, I should correct it, but I should not be required to prove everything that I say before I make a contribution. In that context, the press have a far harder job than Members of Parliament.

Mr. Soley : One reason that I have drafted the Bill as tightly as I have--many legal experts agree that it is tightly


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drafted--is that I deliberately wanted to stress that we should not comment on opinion. I have proposed dropping the section on impartiality, as I see that it would cause difficulties, such as those currently faced by the BBC and ITV. That subject is not contained in the Bill, only in the long title which is set down earlier.

One can still hold an opinion and express it, but if one makes a factual inaccuracy, one must set it right. The Bill does not involve pre- publication censorship. One can publish whatever one likes, but if one gets it wrong, one has to put it right. People get things wrong for many reasons, often well-intentioned reasons.

Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South) : My hon. Friend has been saying that journalists should have standards, should not intrude and should adopt a decent moral code. The problem is that perfectly decent journalists who want to do good work have to take jobs with rotten employers. If a journalist is told that he has to get the news story and find dirt on the Labour party--as is frequently the case--the journalist either has to maintain his high standards and not be employed or do the dirty work. How will my hon. Friend's Bill provide a safeguard so that journalists can maintain the decent standards that they were taught during their training?

Mr. Soley : The organisation in my Bill has a duty to report on, research and recommend on journalistic standards, including training, ethics and the practices of the employers, including the editor. There is no reason why that should not be done. However, the organisation should not enforce, which is why I have not given it the power to do so. The Bill contains only one statutory power : to correct inaccuracy. That is important as standards can be raised in other ways.

My hon. Friend's intervention was helpful in another respect. I recently saw a press release from News International stating that The Sun and others were now going to enforce the Press Complaints Commission code. Any employee who breached the code would be fired. I am looking forward to Kelvin MacKenzie giving himself notice.

Mr. Stuart Randall (Kingston upon Hull, West) : I ask my hon. Friend to extend his arguments with regard to the intervention from the hon. Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley). The hon. Member said that there should be a freedom to be wrong, and then my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) went on about accuracy, with which I agree completely. The other consequence of this--it is an argument much used by the hon. Member for Eltham--is the harm it creates. Surely it cannot be right for journalists to be free to create harm.

Mr. Soley : My hon. Friend puts the point very powerfully. That point has been in my mind recently, but I had not yet made it, so I am grateful to him.

Mr. Peter Mandelson (Hartlepool) : My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. Randall) argued that there is a straightforward difference between factual information on the one hand and information on the other. Surely, there is a third category-- interpretation. In the case of the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales, journalists were interpreting the information they had, and then the heavens opened and they were damned for doing so. It then turned out that they were accurate.


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Mr. Soley : I do not think that that is the problem which the hon. Member for Eltham fears. I have made it clear that if one is printing something which one believes to be accurate at the time but which turns out to be inaccurate because someone else has been lying, covering up, or whatever, one corrects it at the time it comes out. If it is the other way round--if one publishes something which one believes to be accurate--that is all one needs to do.

In other words, if a paper wants to print a story in which I say something that they think is daft, wrong or dishonest but is newsworthy, it does so. It is for me to take the flak if I am wrong. It is the same thing to give me that flak if I got it wrong. I shall come back to the royal family in due course because it is an important point.

Let me put it this way. I use the example of a criminal who is managing to fool a journalist who believes, rightly, that the person is indulging in criminal behaviour. Let us say that the journalist must correct an inaccuracy which later turns out to be right--perhaps when the criminal goes to court, the case is found to be proved. Are we really saying that that criminals should be convicted on inaccuracies? On the other hand, if a newspaper turns out to be accurate at the end of the road, is not that part of the evidence? The job of the newspaper is to report accurately what it judges to be news. If the news turns out to be inaccurate for reasons other than the newspaper's reporting, that is when the newspaper corrects it. That is when newspaper says, in great big headlines : "We told you so. We told you that Clive Soley was doing a cover-up". That is how it should work, and it is how it works in other democracies. There is no problem with it.

If I may make a bit more progress on this, I was about to move on to clause 4--the power of enforcement. Under clause 4, a press complaints adviser is appointed. A press complaints adviser is important because of some of the failures of the present Press Complaints Commission. Complaints are taken only in writing ; there are no oral hearings. Some of the complaints that I have heard are that the way in which the Press Complaints Commission reformulates complaints does not cover the points which the complainants were making. There are no oral hearings in which the complainants can put their views. In other words, there is no one to help the complainants, although that help is clearly important.

The Bill contains a more flexible time span than exists under the present code of the Press Complaints Commission. The time limit is one month, although that can be extended in certain circumstances. In the Bill, I also rule out trivial and vexatious complaints. One of the arguments used earlier in the debate is that it will be inundated with letters from the green ink brigade. Frankly, Members of Parliament are inundated from time to time by those letters. Most of us are capable of dealing with them without too much trouble. If we can deal with them, I do not see why another body cannot deal with it. The Bill provides the body with the ability to exclude vexatious and trivial complaints. Once again, it is not a problem. I have said that the code of conduct is important.

Clause 5 deals with adjudication. The press complaints adviser will hear both sides of the argument. Clause 6 sets out the powers of the adviser, which may also be a conciliatory role. The House should remember that most complaints will be resolved between the editor and the complainant, as happens now. Most complaints continue in that way. A minority of complaints in which there is a


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major problem go on. In such cases, there should be, and often will be, a rate agreed by conciliation. Cases will only need to go to the much further extent, which I shall come to in a moment, in other circumstances.

There is only one schedule in the Bill. Paragraph 1 appoints the Independent Press Authority. Many people have told me that article 1 troubles them. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) is worried about it. Editors are worried about it ; they panicked like mad. My Bill provides that the Home Secretary will make the appointments. I know that there is some anxiety about that. Such a system of appointment has worked well for the regulated electronic media, television and radio, for 40, 50 or 60 years. No one goes around the world saying that ITV, the BBC and so on are not free, are grossly inaccurate, do not have a decent code of behaviour and do not do good investigative journalism. The electronic media are regulated, and they perform well. The system in the Bill is the same.

Having said that, I have proposed two amendments which might be worth while. I should like hon. Members to address the issue if they feel strongly about it. In Calcutt's first report, he suggested--Louis Blom- Cooper and others have suggested it as well--that an appointments commission be set up by the Secretary of State, which would then appoint the members. One could say that it is at arm's length. I have suggested a slightly more radical approach, which could incorporate that proposal. I commend it to the House, and I should welcome views on it.

There is a strong case for saying that the relevant Select Committee-- probably the Select Committee on National Heritage--should have the power to veto appointments. That is not only an additional safeguard, but a traditional British method of the legislature checking the Executive. It also gives more power to the Select Committee and Back Benchers. I have always argued--indeed, many hon. Members on both sides of the House have also argued--that that is something which we need to do in the House, because in some respects Back Benchers have lost the powers they had in the 19th century. It is an interesting way forward. I should welcome comments on that proposed amendment.

I want to turn to some of the arguments that have been used against the Bill. Let me deal first with the argument raised in an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow. His argument is the one that was used constantly during the first few weeks of my campaign on the matter by the editors all round the country. The editors then dropped the argument. They said that one cannot define accuracy : one man's accuracy is another man's opinion. One cannot adjudicate on the matter.

I picked up the Press Complaints Commission's code, which was drawn up by the editors. Clause 1 relates to accuracy. One should notice the importance and the status of it : "You will report accurately. You will put it right if you get it wrong." Who adjudicates on that? The Press Complaints Commission adjudicates on it. The argument is not and never has been that one cannot have accuracy or adjudicate on it.

The argument--this is why the editors dropped their opposition--is who should adjudicate. The editors want to be the judge and jury in their own cases. I am saying, as one who is strongly in favour of regulated bodies, that it


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is a profound mistake to sit in judgment on oneself, because even if one gets it right, one will not be believed. That is the problem, and that is why it is so powerful.

Mr. David Harris (St. Ives) : I have great sympathy for what the hon. Gentleman is saying. In approaching the whole issue, he seems to see the whole question of news reporting in black and white terms. The hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson) was right to say that there is a grey area, especially with regard to interpretation. I spent 19 years in the parliamentary Press Gallery and in the Lobby of the House. As we all know, that is an area in political journalism where one deals with facts. In the Lobby, one is sometimes dealing with something else which cannot be proved, whether it relates to facts or not. That matter will provide great difficulties, especially on the point of correction.

Mr. Soley : Someone muttered that it was a rumour. I shall answer in a different way. The BBC and ITV do not have that problem, but their investigative journalism is better than that of the press. Secondly, newspaper editors say that it can be done under the PCC code, but the hon. Gentleman says that it can not. He is really saying, as are the editors, "We want to judge it, please. Let us judge ourselves." It is as if the House said, "We shall have elections but MPs will elect themselves"-- [Interruption.] I should not give the House ideas ; it could be dangerous.

Mr. Bruce Grocott (The Wrekin) : As my hon. Friend has rightly said, newspaper editors and most journalists strongly oppose self-regulation for everyone else. When self-regulation is mentioned in respect of any other area of our national life, journalists, and newspaper editors in particular, are rightly derisory about it. They are in favour of independent regulation for others and opposed to it for themselves.

Mr. Soley : My hon. Friend is right. The point was powerfully made in my committee. I read a powerful editorial in The Guardian --it often has good editorials--which said that self-regulation in the City had not worked and needed to be independent. Two weeks later, it came out against my form of regulation for the press. That suggests that people have not fully thought through the arguments.

The next argument, which I am pleased to say is not much used now, is that people do not have a right to accuracy. One or two editors told me that, and they were really saying that it did not matter if they got it wrong. The citizen has a right to expect his news to be accurate. The argument against that, more than any other, ignores the damage caused to people's lives. I have many cases of people who were deeply hurt and are fearful of the press. That is sad news for journalism, and I do not get any joy from saying it.

The next argument is that the Press Complaints Commission is all right, is doing a good job, and should be left alone. However, it has a credibility problem. Just about everyone--including the Government, to judge from the statement by the Secretary of State, and Sir David Calcutt--agrees with me on that. It has only reluctantly accepted a lay majority, but I am sorry to say that that majority will not be of the people who are necessary to adjudicate. I am also worried about so many editors being on that board. I am in favour of working journalists being on such a body, and for my committee I


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