House of Commons Hansard Debates for 10 Jun 1993

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Parliament. We need to control photography, too. As we learned in the Committee, it is possible to place a device the size of a fountain pen in a room and record conversations from 150 yd away. That accords with what my right hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon) said--

Lady Olga Maitland (Sutton and Cheam) : Is my hon. Friend aware that Sir David English, chairman of the Press Complaints Commission's code of conduct committee, is reviewing all these matters, particularly harassment and the laws of trespass?

Dr. Blackburn : I am obliged to my hon. Friend. I am sure that the whole House is delighted to hear that.

Evidence was brought to us by editor after editor, and I took it on myself to investigate the subject of payment for articles. I repeatedly asked editors who were household names whether they practised cheque book journalism. To judge from the replies, one might have thought that they operate in cathedrals, monasteries or synagogues ; they all said that they would never indulge in that sort of behaviour. I told them that when I read a story in a newspaper I might form an opinion about it, but if it said at the bottom that £10,000 had been paid for the story, I might form a different opinion. There have been many cases of articles being published, whereupon three weeks later it has been revealed that £30,000 or more was paid for them--or even as much as £200,000. I think that the public are entitled to know when a fee has been paid.

The House has always been very generous to me, for which I am grateful. I conclude on a personal note. Eleven years ago, I suffered a major cardiac arrest. I found myself in a national health service hospital--God bless it- -in the intensive care unit on a life support machine. I suffered, I endured and--hallelujah--I survived. On the third day, a nurse came in and said that the press were outside and wanted to photograph me. If that is the kind of press that we have, one is tempted to wash one's hands of them.

This problem can be resolved. My prayer is that the Select Committee report will be an important step in this reformation process. I believe that, with good will on the part of the press, Parliament and the public, we will get a press of which we can justly be proud. I commend the Select Committee's report to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

5.46 pm

Mrs. Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) : I welcome this debate, and I am grateful to the Select Committee for making this day available for discussion of an issue that attracts widespread interest. This is a subject about which feelings run high, not least among hon. Members. It is not only in Parliament that feelings run high--they also run high in pubs, clubs and on the streets.

No one can accuse the Select Committee of failing to tackle the issue head on. Its proceedings made for gripping television, not least when the editor of The Sun was put through his paces. I congratulate the Committee on the report. In particular, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), who made a typically stimulating and incisive contribution to the debate. Although, on behalf of the Labour party, I cannot accept all the report's conclusions, there is much that I can endorse.

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I am also impressed by the rave notices that the Select Committee received : almost universal condemnation from the editors of Fleet street. A representative sample must be that from Peter Preston, editor of The Guardian , who said that the report

"is like wearing 15 overcoats in case it rains It just seems baffling--and if it seems baffling to editors, heaven knows how baffling it will be for the public."

If the report appeared baffling to editors of Fleet street, I am worried about their powers of comprehension.

Andrew Neil, editor of the Sunday Times , said :

"It is a busybodies' charter drawn up by busybodies for busybodies. They want to interfere with and regulate every area of newspaper production. They are out to protect themselves."

The assistant editor of The Sun said that the recommendations "reek of hypocrisy. MPs are just trying to look after themselves rather than being concerned about ordinary people."

When was the editor of The Sun ever concerned about the feelings of ordinary people?

Lord McGregor, chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, said that the use of the phrase "ombudsman" was

"a polite euphemism to disguise the fact that it would be direct Government interference in the press"--

but then he would.

Labour agrees with the Select Committee that the Press Complaints Commission has not worked effectively. All too often, sections of the press have disregarded basic standards of accuracy, impartiality and sensitivity in their chase for circulation. Like several hon. Members who spoke earlier, I am also a former member of the press and a member of the National Union of Journalists. The Opposition do not accept that Calcutt's notion of a statutory tribunal is the right response ; nor do we believe that the press would be improved by Government-appointed censors of either party. There would be enormous potential for abuse, with Government bodies intervening to dictate official versions of the truth.

The Select Committee report proposes the setting up of a voluntary press commission with powers to instruct newspapers to pay compensation and to fine newspapers. The Committee also proposes the appointment of an ombudsman. The mind of such a figure, even though he was appointed, would be independent of the interests involved and would involve the Government in less odium than the Calcutt proposals.

The Select Committee proposals cannot simply be swept aside by generalised protests about press freedom, but we are somewhat concerned that the proposed appeal system could lead to complaints being dealt with on a protracted basis. There is an old maxim that justice delayed is justice denied, and there is a danger that the proposals for a press commission, an ombudsman and an appeal to the High Court could introduce an over- complicated system. Therefore, we have still to be persuaded about that.

We have always supported the proposal for a statutory right of reply which would be geared solely to the correction of factual inaccuracies. It would not involve censoring the press, and it is regrettable that some sections of the press have sought to suggest otherwise. My personal support for a right of reply is probably well known. I introduced a right of reply Bill in 1987 and a number of

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colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley), introduced similar Bills. The Government's opposition to such a proposal calls into question their professed desire that the press should maintain the highest standards of accuracy.

The issue of privacy and its frequent invasion by the media presents the Government and the Opposition with difficult choices. Calcutt and the Select Committee support a privacy Bill. On the surface that seems fine, but in practice there are likely to be fiendishly difficult problems, not the least of which involves defining what is in the public interest. It is easy for us to say that we believe in upholding privacy for ordinary individuals and that bugging devices in people's homes and the use of long lenses are outrageous infringements of the privacy of those going about their daily business.

Some problems arise in connection with public figures, such as the royal family, Members of Parliament and leading figures in industry and commerce, because it is almost impossible to draw a clear line between the public and private lives of such people. It can be argued that the moral values that drive the private lives of such people are relevant to their public deeds. That being so, we will never be prepared to inhibit legitimate investigation of the lives of the rich and powerful. Several hon. Members have made that clear. Apart from specific legislation to deal with bugging, telephoto lenses and the like, we are not in favour of restrictive privacy laws.

Mr. Alan Howarth (Stratford-on-Avon) : I appreciate the difficulties of definition in relation to public interest and the private lives of public figures. The hon. Lady raises real and serious problems, and I should like to draw her attention to two matters. As a consequence of the adjudication in New York Times v. Sullivan in America in, I think, 1962 and subsequent case law, a sort of sliding scale has evolved. That means that there is less protection for the private life of the public figure than for the private life of an ordinary citizen. It is impossible to define satisfactorily in general terms the public interest, but over about the past 30 years, judges have been able to find practical ways to deal with the problem. Equally, defamation is not defined in the Defamation Act 1952, but the understanding of defamation in our law has been achieved cumulatively through adjudications and a growing body of jurisprudence since that date.

Mrs. Clwyd : I am certainly aware of the situation in the United States. When I reach that issue, I shall give the hon. Gentleman some information about the situation in the rest of Europe, which is also worth noting. The privacy laws in those European countries that have them go hand in hand with rights of freedom for the press enshrined in law. Of course, such rights are not enshrined in United Kingdom law. One of my main reasons for opposing a privacy law is that it should not be introduced until rights for the press are enshrined in some way in our law.

I should like to refer to an article by an experienced newspaper editor who has certainly interested Opposition Members and, I am sure, the Government in the past few weeks. He is William Rees-Mogg, the former editor of The Times, and his article makes an interesting point about controlling the recording of private conversations. He says :

"there is a strong case for making electronic eavesdropping a criminal offence, where it is not so already. All citizens are entitled to the privacy of their conversations unless they are

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engaged in crime, just as they should be protected against the invasion of their privacy by intrusive photographers with telephoto lenses.

Most bugging is indeed already illegal, yet a clearer law which made prosecution easier would be desirable. But who would be most likely to fall foul of such a law? Who does most of the bugging in Britain? Undoubtedly it is the state. Newspapers, as in the David Mellor case, have occasionally used improperly obtcond world war and earlier."

He concludes :

"We should hope, therefore, that the protection which British citizens ought to have against intrusion and espionage, by whatever means, will cover intrusions into privacy by the state, from which there is much to fear, as well as by paparazzi and tabloid journalists."

We would do well to remind ourselves of that throughout the debate.

Although we accept that both Sir David Calcutt and the Select Committee were working to a specific remit, the Government have the opportunity to view the argument about press freedom and press regulation within a broader context. It is absurd for the Government to claim that issues of press ownership are unrelated to the debate about press freedom. A pluralistic press and media are fundamental to the notion of a free and democratic society.

The past 14 years have witnessed a further increase in the concentration of press ownership. When one individual, Rupert Murdoch, can own 35 per cent. of all weekday newspaper circulation, that is, in the eyes of most people, a quite unacceptable concentration of power. There is surely no more insidious monopoly than a monopoly of opinion. We should all be concerned that Rupert Murdoch acolytes now have the temerity to argue that their boss should be allowed to take over vast tracts of British television.

Such people have no respect for democracy. They say that they want a pluralistic society, but they act in such a manner as to suggest the opposite. For them, the monopolistic control of the media is a means of achieving political power, denying the diversity of express which is essential to a free society.

When I put it to the Secretary of State during National Heritage questions on 22 February that the existing concentration of press ownership was unacceptable, he said :

"we keep these matters under review and I do not believe that the adjective unacceptable' can be justified at this time."--[ Official Report, 22 February 1993 ; Vol. 219, c. 668.]

If not at this time, perhaps the Secretary of State will tell us when he believes that adjective can be used and when it will be necessary to take action.

Despite recent attacks on the Government--there have been many of those in the past few days and weeks--no one should be under any illusion about the ultimate loyalty of large sections of the press. At the run-up to the next election, they will run like well-trained sheep back into the fold of the Conservative party.

Clearly, the Government will never take action to reduce the overweening power of a small number of press barons. A future Labour Government will immediately refer the whole matter of ownership and cross-ownership to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. We will look for ways of bringing more diversity to local, regional and national newspapers.

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We agree with the Select Committee that greater freedom of information is an essential component of any action to regulate the press. We are totally committed to a freedom of information Act. We note that the Government oppose the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher). Clearly a Government who are desperate to suppress the truth on such matters as the sale of arms to various fascist dictators around the world, the Matrix Churchill supergun affair, the real level of unemployment and the true state of public finances will be opposed to a freedom of information Act. Those who have a contempt for democracy will for ever seek to limit the spread of information and understanding. It is essential to appreciate the context of much contemporary journalism. Journalists are put under great pressure by predominantly right-wing editors and proprietors to produce particular types of stories. Principled journalists who resist are frequently bypassed for promotion ; ambitious journalists accept it as a distasteful fact of life. We agree with the Select Committee that much more emphasis should be given to the promotion of journalistic ethics and that owners and proprietors should carry the can for stories that their staff are frequently bullied into writing.

As part of its investigation, the Select Committee went to the United States to consider the experience there. As I said earlier, it is worth while in such a debate to consider how the press operates in other European countries. In a recently published report by the organisation Article 19, the International Centre against Censorship, Britain was found to have the weakest press freedom and the most over-regulated press of the 11 countries studied. Britain is the only country in the Council of Europe that has not entrenched the right to freedom of expression in its laws, either through inclusion in a constitution or by incorporating article 10 of the European convention.

We have long recognised the basic truism that there cannot be a free society without a free press. The Labour party has a long and honourable record of defending and promoting press freedom. The Government can claim no such record. In the past 14 years, they have not only underwritten an increasing concentration of press ownership but acted more directly to restrain freedom of expression. In 1985, the Government attempted to ban the showing of "Real Lives". In 1987, they attempted to ban the Secret Society programme about Zircon. In 1988, they attempted to stop the showing of "Death on the Rock" and imposed a broadcasting ban on a number of organisations in Northern Ireland. They also sought to ban the publication of Peter Wright's book "Spycatcher" through the use of injunctions on British newspapers.

We have one of the most secretive and authoritarian Governments this century. It is outrageous for them to claim that they are the guardians of press freedom. Against that background and in the light of Labour's total commitment to a free and flourishing press, we will bring forward our legislation on press and television when we return to office, which may be sooner rather than later.

6.6 pm

Mr. Toby Jessel (Twickenham) : The whole House ought to act as guardians of press freedom. Until the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) spoke, there was complete unanimity in the House, just as there was

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complete unanimity in the Select Committee on National Heritage in the preparation of its report under the chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman).

It is a pity that the hon. Lady strayed from the bipartisan approach that has characterised the debate. I am the first to understand that her party expects her to make an attacking speech. I hope she will forgive me if I am not drawn into retaliating in the same spirit, although I shall come back a little later to what she said.

Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland) : The hon. Gentleman speaks of the absolute unanimity in the House this afternoon reflecting the absolute unanimity of the Select Committee. The only people who have spoken in the House this afternoon other than the hon. Lady were members of the Select Committee, so it should not be taken that that reflects the opinion of the entire House.

Mr. Jessel : It might be premature to say that the House is absolutely unanimous, but I was not saying that, because plainly the hon. Lady was not in agreement ; but the Select Committee considered different options in very great depth before reaching a unanimous conclusion.

The report has been carefully written after intensive work. It was a job assigned to the Select Committee by the House, so the House owes it to the Select Committee to study its report with an open mind and with great care before dissenting from it. I hope that the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan), whom I have known for many years, will do that.

I regard it as a tremendous privilege to serve on the Select Committee, which is one of the finest Select Committees of the House. Following the report that we have produced, and for the reasons that have been set out by several right hon. and hon. Members during the debate, we cannot let things stay as they are.

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for National Heritage for being present to listen to the debate. I hope and believe that he will carefully consider not only the views of the Committee as expressed in the report, but the opinions put in this debate and that, before long, he will take a view on what is needed and lay proposals before the House.

The House has a duty to protect the weak against the strong. As the report says in paragraph 5 :

"The Committee's concern has been mainly with the ordinary citizen who in the normal course of his or her life will never come into contact with the broadcast or written media, except as viewer, listener or reader ; but who suddenly becomes of interest to the media, due often to circumstances beyond his or her control, such as becoming a crime victim or being related to the victim of a crime or terrorist act. Such people, as a result of injudicious, thoughtless or malicious reporting, can suffer additional distress at what is already a time of trauma and shock The Committee does not believe that anyone has the right to inflict such harm on innocent persons." I make no apology to the House for alluding again to the case of two widows of soldiers who were murdered in Northern Ireland. I should like to quote from the evidence given by those two widows to the Select Committee.

"There was one particular reporter who persisted in coming to my sister's house with cameras we had about three or four phoning up at all times of the day or night. My husband's sister"--

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that is, the sister of her husband who had just been murdered by the IRA--

"was heavily pregnant, about 8 months pregnant at the time, and she was living on her own, and two men at 11.00 at night knocked on her door. She asked who they were and they said that they were friends of my husband. So naturally she opened the door and let them in. Once they were in the flat they told her they were press She had just lost her eldest brother and she was very traumatised through that." My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, North (Mr. Gorst) then asked :

"Did the press ever try to represent to you that you had a duty?" The widow said :

"Yes. The onus was put on us that if we did not tell the British public exactly what was going on, then we were very negligent. It was our duty to inform the public exactly what happened, so that they got the story straight."

She went on to say :

"At the time you do not have much of a choice. You are in a daze anyway. You go on to automatic pilot and just say go away and put what you want to say. It is at a time when you are not fully aware of what you are doing It takes about 12 months before you are actually aware of things that are happening around you. Obviously I did it three days after my husband died and you are just numb."

My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, North then asked her : "How long did this intrusion persist for? Was it days or weeks?" She replied :

"Intensely, about three or four weeks then it sort of petered out."

She went on to say that the journalists were :

"poking cameras through the front room window I do believe to a degree they have to report what happened, but poking their cameras through your front room window at a time when you are at your lowest ebb, the most traumatic time for me in my life, then that is an invasion of privacy If you want to be in your own house with your family at a time when you are grieving, then it is your own private time I was advised by the Army that if I did not do it, we would just get even more harassment. So I did it when they wanted me to. They got the photographs they wanted and I thought that would be it, but they persisted and persisted. I had them climbing trees at the graveside to get better pictures You should be given a chance to say No, I do not want to do this interview. I do not want to talk about it. Please leave me along,' but you are put under intolerable pressure by the fact that if you do say no you know they are going to keep coming back and back and in the end you give in simply for a quiet life."

That is completely unacceptable. Twenty years or so ago, the House decided to stop harassment of tenants by landlords such as Rachman. It is now time that the House acted to stop the harassment of people who are in terrible trauma from the great shock of a sudden bereavement due to, say, a terrorist act, or to their daughter being raped, or some other great trauma. Those people must be protected, too. I hope that we will not delay that action for too long. It is quite wrong that it should be allowed to continue and quite wrong that anyone should seem complacent about it.

The hon. Member for Cynon Valley questioned the commission's proposals for an ombudsman or for fines, but the Select Committee, having been round and round the subject, took the view that if there were no teeth, nothing would happen. Under what we propose, there is ample protection for members of the press who act properly and fairly.

As the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) explained with such force, it is quite normal in other professions for professional bodies to be able to fine. It ought to be possible for the press commission to do so in

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cases of that kind. If such fines are not possible, the commission should be able to refer the case to a press ombudsman, as the Lord Chancellor suggested when he gave evidence to the Select Committee. The ombudsman could then endorse the fine proposed by the press commission and, if the newspaper concerned refused to pay the fine, it would be open to the ombudsman to apply to a court of law for the fine to be sanctioned.

There is a need to alter the framework and redress the balance. It is not enough just to say that there should be a code of conduct for journalists. We proposed that, and it has some value and some uses. However, picture a journalist with a wife and children to support, anxious to make his way in his profession, under pressure from his editor to produce a newsworthy story. The editor has the sanction of that journalist's promotion and the journalist's job might even be at stake if he does not do well enough. The editor is in turn under pressure from the proprietor to boost circulation and to improve the profit of that newspaper. So all those pressures are on a journalist to get a sensational story and to trespass on the privacy of an individual to an unreasonable degree in order to do so.

Unless the framework is changed in the way proposed by the Select Committee, I cannot see how we will be able to protect people such as those two widows. I hope that the House will take the matter seriously and impartially, and will try to achieve a degree of unanimity in the belief that something needs to be done. If the House does not act in the near future, I do not think that the public will be likely to forgive or forget our failure.

6.18 pm

Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland) : I agree with the hon. Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel) that there is a need for something to be done. However, I do not accept any implication that all 43 recommendations of the Select Committee either reflect the consensus of the House or are necessarily the best way in which to proceed. Having said that, I pay warm tribute to the Select Committee for a thorough piece of work. It clearly took a great deal of evidence, reflected on it carefully and approached the matter with a non-partisan spirit. Therefore, its recommendations carry weight, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, and that should be recognised by other hon. Members.

However, I am odds with at least one over-arching and core recommendation as the ultimate sanction--the establishment of a statutory ombudsman to provide back-up to the other methods recommended for self-regulation of the press. Because of that rather fundamental disagreement, I want to focus more on what I disagree with than on what I agree with.

I acknowledge, welcome and congratulate the members of the Select Committee, especially the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), on having already achieved a number of reforms. I do not think it an accident that the composition of the Press Complaints Commission has been changed or that a helpline has been established. Those important steps are a direct consequence of the quite proper pressure put on the press by the House, through its Select Committee.

Almost every hon. Member who has spoken has felt it necessary to put his hand on his heart and say that, notwithstanding the proposals in the report, he is firmly committed to the freedom of the press. That is scarcely a

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surprising asseveration to make in the House, but it needs to be made. Any deliberate steps taken in law to abridge that freedom would be very serious--and there are proposals in the report that would abridge that freedom.

Much has been made of the example set in the United States of America, yet it is a cornerstone of its approach to the problem that the first amendment to its constitution provides that Congress should not abridge the freedom of speech or the freedom of the press. That fundamental law, which is entrenched in the constitution, is the background against which we must judge the steps that have been taken--both through the development of the jurisprudence of the courts and the development of state legislation on privacy--if we are to understand where the priorities lie in the United States. I believe that they should lie here, as they do there, firmly on the side of the freedom of the press.

The hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) spoke of her similar conclusion and said that other European countries had secured that commitment to the freedom of the press by entrenching in their domestic laws a safeguard such as that contained in article 10 of the European convention on human rights. I very much welcome the view expressed by the Labour Front Bench, because it is not so very long ago that it opposed the incorporation of the European convention in all its aspects.

The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) appears to be an unreconstructed opponent of incorporation and, therefore, the securing of the protection of the freedom of the press and, incidentally, due entrenchment of the rights of privacy. Although article 10 secures the freedom of the press, article 8 guarantees protection of the privacy of the family and the individual. It is that sort of balanced approach that the House and the Government must take on the issues that have given rise to this debate and to the need for legislation.

It is true that, over recent months, parts of the popular press have offended many people by the stories that they have published. The means that they have employed to get the stories and the intrusions of privacy that they have committed have in some cases shown an almost total absence of self-restraint in pursuance of higher circulation figures at all costs. However, the behaviour of some newspapers has led to the suspicion that it has been deliberately designed to test how far the press can go and its power in conflict with existing political structures and the establishment.

Some newspapers have gone so far as to say that they are prepared to test the law itself. I am thinking of The Sun, which this week flouted the law with the disclosure of the identity of a person under the age of 16 involved in an attempted rape case. That newspaper quite boldly set out what it was doing. The law covers that behaviour and no doubt the law will take its course. I do not underrate the extent to which the press, or certain sections of it, is testing the resolve of Parliament and the limits of the law.

So far, the Government's response has been restrained. The two reports by Sir David Calcutt certainly were not rushed. Neither have the Government been speedy in concluding what, if any, changes in the law are required. I commend the Secretary of State for that, because the problem is difficult-- how to prevent such excesses without limiting the freedom of speech ; how to uphold the freedom of expression while providing protection for victims of

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unjustifiable intrusion of privacy ; and how to achieve a balance between the need to know and the need to protect individuals from unwarranted and cruel exposure of the sort referred to by the hon. Member for Twickenham.

Mr. Roger Gale (Thanet, North) : I have listened to the hon. Gentleman with great interest and, indeed, great sympathy. He referred to unjustifiable intrusion into people's privacy. What does he regard as justifiable intrusion, if there is such a thing? He stated his view--it is one which I share and which I shall touch on if I catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speaker--on how the press appears to be setting itself up in judgment on almost everything, at any time.

The hon. Gentleman referred to personal attacks. I do not want to be party political, but does he feel that the personal attacks made on my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the former Chancellor of the Exchequer--and, indeed, at one stage the leader of the hon. Gentleman's party and the Leader of the Opposition--were justified?

Mr. Maclennan : It is easier to say what is unjustified than what is justified--

Mr. Jessel : Answer the question.

Mr. Maclennan : My whole speech is an attempt to deal with the question. I hope that I can satisfy the hon. Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale). Painful though some of the intrusions into privacy may be, it is open to question whether they have seriously damaged the victims of them. The censorious attitude often displayed towards public figures is not necessarily shared by the public. There have been a number of occasions recently when the press has been remarkably out of line with public thinking.

As I have said, the protection of the freedom of expression must be the cornerstone of any policy concerning the media, print or broadcast. The Calcutt report was too cautious when it addressed the current legal protection of freedom of expression. The common law does not adequately afford sufficient protection ; nor are judges able adequately to take account of the provisions of the European convention on human rights.

I draw attention again to the view in the higher ranks of the judiciary--it must be recognised that it is a changing view--that the time has come to incorporate the European convention. Sir Thomas Bingham, the Master of the Rolls, expressed that view in his address to the Bar Council last autumn. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Taylor, has expressed the same view.

As I have said, the incorporation of that convention would import a law of privacy into this country and at the same time import a secure bulwark against the erosion of the freedom of the press. Perhaps it would enable a jurisprudence to develop which answered the kind of question just posed to me across the Chamber about where the boundary should be drawn.

It is probably easier for the courts to determine what is justifiable in the public interest than it is for us in the House to seek to legislate in advance to describe the precise circumstances where the public interest should be protected. In that area, I favour broad categories of definition rather than attempting a Bill, running into many clauses and subsections, to answer the sort of question

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raised by the hon. Member for Thanet, North. I do not believe that we as legislators can foresee the circumstances in which we would wish to intervene to curb the freedom of expression because it is an unjustified invasion of privacy.

I also think that the law should be reformed in the context of a proper examination of the whole area of information law. The assorted laws that we have in that area are in a pretty lamentable state. We have piecemeal legislation dealing with the protection of journalists' sources which is not based on a coherent or principled approach to information law. Such a review should include defamation and contempt of court, blasphemy and incitement to racial hatred, to name but a few of the matters requiring consideration.

A number of measures--this is the burden of the Select Committee's report-- fall to be considered as a matter of urgency to deal with the question of intrusion and how far the rights of the press in that matter should be curbed, and how we should seek in so doing to avoid hindering the legitimate investigative role of the press. The Select Committee identified a number of changes to the law on intrusion which mirrored the views of the Calcutt committee. It recommended that three forms of physical intrusion should be criminal offences in England and Wales--entering private property, placing a surveillance device on private property and taking a photograph or recording a voice of an individual on private property without the consent of the lawful occupant and with intent to obtain personal information with a view to its publication.

The Government accepted those proposals in principle some time ago. The Secretary of State may have something to say about where the Government stand now on those matters. I would not wish to see legislation give effect to those recommendations in the absence of some further legislative underpinning of the freedom of the press of the kind that I have mentioned. If they are practicable, those are sensible recommendations, but they are acceptable only if the general protection is provided.

Having said that, I come to the question of self-regulation and how it can be made more effective. The Select Committee proposed the ultimate sanction of a press ombudsman, established by statute, following the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor--I am not sure that it was exactly his recommendation, but he described how it might be done.

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