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The burden of the Select Committee's report in this matter was to suggest a strengthening of self-regulation. I am wholly at one with the findings of the Select Committee. It must be right to seek to establish an effective code and system of enforcement which not only editors but proprietors are anxious to see work. Without the participation of the proprietors, the best efforts of the editors may be set at naught. For that reason, I should like to see those representatives of the proprietors who can speak with authority about their views directly represented on the new press commission. I have struggled long and hard to think how self-regulation could be more effective than it has so far proved to be. The Select Committee made a number of valuable suggestions, some of which have already been taken up, but, in this respect, the Committee has not gone far enough. It would be possible to give teeth to the self-regulatory proposals without establishing a statutory ombudsman or commission.
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The commission could extract from the proprietors of the press the payment of a bond, to be deposited each year with the commission, the amount of which would be related to the circulation of the newspapers in question. At the end of the year, the bond would be repayable with interest. In a sense, it would be a bond for good behaviour. I do not believe that that should be done by statute. The press and publishers say they want to make the self-regulatory scheme work. Let them show that they want to make it work.Mr. Gorst : The trouble that we had in the Select Committee was that any such suggestion might well be almost universally acceptable to the press, but not quite. We had to consider the worst case situation in which, for example, a tabloid newspaper editor said that he had no respect for the judiciary or Members of Parliament, but, above all, no respect for his fellow editors. In the face of that, what is to be done if a newspaper, with a circulation of some 3 million a day, says, "Take your bond and put it where the monkey puts his nuts"?
Mr. Maclennan : Then we may have to come back to the issue that was faced by the Committee and look at the alternatives--
Mr. Jessel : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Maclennan : No, I must answer one intervention at a time. The achievement of that would be to isolate the villains. Not many proprietors or editors--
Mr. Maclennan : No, it is not enough. Many proprietors or editors would regard it as hostile to their interests to be seen by their readership to be prepared to stand back wholly from the standards agreed by the rest of the press ; to be proclaimed as the sole newspaper to have no willingness to seek to regulate itself effectively. Given the importance of press freedom, I, at least, am prepared to give that a try. Such a step should be taken before any state intervention to extract fines--and there should be no doubt that that is the purpose of the state-appointed ombudsman.
The Committee has drawn our attention to the existence of other state- appointed--or, at least, state-nominated--ombudsmen ; but I do not believe that they are in pari materia, if I may use the legal jargon.
Mr. Gorst : Why is a grievance felt by someone who approaches an insurance ombudsman--or any other ombudsman--less important than a grievance felt by an ordinary individual as a result of his treatment by the press? A grievance is a grievance, whoever causes it. Why should not that individual be compensated?
Mr. Maclennan : There are two differences between the position of the press and the position of other bodies to which the ultimate sanction is available. First, in all the other four instances mentioned in the appendix, it may prove difficult to establish the facts. If the grievance involved is to be dealt with satisfactorily, it may be necessary to consider what actually happened very carefully.
No doubt the hon. Member for Hendon, North (Mr. Gorst), along with many others, will have encountered difficult legal and insurance questions in his surgeries. In
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my experience, local government ombudsmen must go into considerable detail to discover what has happened before recommending an appropriate remedy. The same applies to the administration of the health service and pensions.Secondly, in most cases involving the public interest--or the private interest, in terms of the invasion of privacy--there is littstablish the truth ; whether what has been done was in the public interest is a matter of judgment. I do not consider it appropriate for that judgment to be made by a state-appointed official, and on that important issue of principle I differ from the Select Committee.
Having said that, I acknowledge the growing sense of public concern about intrusion. I also accept that the vast bulk of the Select Committee's recommendations make a good deal of sense : the Committee's work has highlighted areas in which the press can put its house in order to protect the public from unlicensed intrusions that are unacceptable in a civilised society. If the Government are prepared to entrench the freedom of the press as a fundamental right in our law, I will go much further towards seeking to entrench a right of privacy in the manner recommended by the Committee. Rights must be balanced : in this instance, they must be balanced through the securing of an international obligation in our domestic law. 6.44 pm
Mr. Alan Howarth (Stratford-on-Avon) : Let me associate myself with the tributes paid to the Chairman of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), by my right hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon) and my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, West (Dr. Blackburn). The right hon. Gentleman introduced our report with authority, and his chairmanship of the Committee has been characterised by intellectual quality, civility, humour and the arts of management.
How are we to strike an appropriate balance between press freedom and the rights of the individual, especially in regard to privacy? We seek to balance the desirability of a free flow of information and opinion with the desirability of protecting vulnerable people from the invasion of their privacy, unfair and inaccurate representation, bullying, harassment and the abuse of press power. The Select Committee examined privacy in that broad context, and we have sought to base our recommendations on the principles that should apply. I believe that every member of the Committee is deeply reluctant to see the press trammelled. We should remember, however, that the development and history of Parliament is classically about enhancing, and making effective, the rights of the ordinary citizen in the face of the abuse of power, whether the abuse has been perpetrated by would-be absolute monarchs, insensitive latter-day big Government, factory owners, landlords, the robber barons of the middle ages or the trade union, local government and press barons of the 20th century. We cannot neglect that responsibility.
Of course, a free press is itself an essential part of the protection of the citizen. That is why our report proposes an enhancement of the rights of the press--and, therefore, the rights of the public--to have access to information. We
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dealt with the subject briefly. It is a huge subject which warrants a whole report of its own, and in any event Parliament is already dealing with it in considering the Right to Know Bill presented by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher). I welcome the serious consideration that the Government are devoting to the issue : we look forward to seeing the first fruits of their thinking before very long. In a mature democracy, a Government entrusted by the people with the task of acting on their behalf will treat the people with respect ; a Government who do not trust the people--who patronise them--will discourage responsible attitudes in public life.If the press is systematically excluded from knowledge of the factors that go into Government decision making, the quality of public debate is liable to suffer. Government secrecy tends to make serious, responsible debate more difficult in our democracy. In the absence of information, gossip rules. Even the quality press is driven increasingly to speculate, to dwell on the marginal and the trivial and to personalise. Governments can then hardly complain when the press does not report fairly and constructively the policy issues to which they must address themselves.
While the press should always be disposed to scepticism in relation to Governments, it should not be cynical. However, if it is systematically denied information while at the same time being manipulated by unattributable briefings and guided by politicians and those who assist them, how can the press be objective, authoritative, fair and magnanimous, as we would prefer it to be?
The improved debate that would result from freedom of information would assist Ministers : they would have more opportunities to check official advice, and more alternative advice would be available to them. They would have more chances to pre-test options at the bar of independent expertise and the bar of public opinion.
No member of the Select Committee has any illusions that there would be a damascene conversion on the part of the press in the event of the introduction of freedom of information legislation. There are other factors and temptations that may lead the press towards trivialisation, bias and taking risks with the truth. I hasten to add that the press does not universally succumb. Much of our press, for most of the time, is responsible and of high quality. But more freedom of information would lead to better possibilities for debate and decision making within our polity.
Freedom of information would enhance the status of the press. In the absence of a first amendment and of the incorporation of the European convention on human rights into our domestic law--there are powerful reasons why the convention should not be so
incorporated--freedom of information would give the press a higher status and enhance its sense of responsibility. In time, the culture would improve.
We would need to fortify that process through the education of the public and of journalists. I attach importance to the recommendation in paragraph 70 of our report that the press commission should exercise some supervisory responsibility over the training of journalists, particularly in ethics. I should like to see more and better schools of journalism in this country. We do not have any equivalent, for example, to the Columbia school of
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journalism. It is worth reflecting on what more could be done about that, and I hope that the Higher Education Funding Council will address itself to it.I am glad that the teaching of media studies is increasing in our schools and that the national curriculum promotes it. Above all, those who are educated in our schools, colleges and universities need to study good literature and criticism. It is perhaps even more important today than ever that education should help to develop a common readership within our democracy, readers who are capable of distinguishing the phoney from the genuine, sloganising from reasoning, assertion from debate, propaganda from truth and rubbish from quality. We need to equip our citizens for our democracy so that they are able to exercise the appropriate discrimination when they confront the utterances of journalists and politicians.
Our recommendation that freedom of information should be increased is fundamental in our report and is of enormous potential importance to our press and the quality of our democracy.
We have also sought to balance any proposed new rights for our citizens with rights for the press. In particular, we have proposed that there should be a public interest defence that the press could plead in the event of being challenged under the legal changes that we have envisaged. Definition of the public interest is a difficult task, and I believe that it is best achieved through an accumulation of adjudication and a growing body of jurisprudence, on the part of the voluntary regulators of the press as well as the ombudsman and the courts.
One of the reasons why there has been dissatisfaction among those of us who have looked at the performance of the Press Complaints Commission is that its record on developing a body of jurisprudence has been so flimsy.
Mr. Jessel : My hon. Friend referred to the difficulty of defining the public interest. Does not that become much easier when one realises that the words "public interest" are ambiguous in that they can mean either interesting to the public or to the public's benefit? When one has decided which is which, there is relatively little problem about definition.
Mr. Howarth : My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is an important distinction which is too often ignored by members of the press.
Parliament and the press should be allies. We share an indispensable role and duty to scrutinise the Government of the day through questions, debates and commentaries. It is the job of both Parliament and the press to seek to restrain misjudgment on the part of Governments and to restrain the abuse of power. It is equally the responsibility of Parliament and the press to patrol and prevent the abuse of power elsewhere in our society.
That presents a dilemma for Parliament in its dealings with the press. A free and powerful press is a pillar of our democracy, but from time to time, because it is powerful and human, the press abuses its power. Parliament needs to satisfy itself that the scope for such abuse is curtailed to an extent consistent with the press being able to play its proper part in our policy. Parliament must also provide remedies for the aggrieved citizen--the victim of the abuse of press power.
The worst of such abuse is inaccuracy. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) has been absolutely right to concentrate his attention in his Bill on
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the evil of inaccuracy by the press. As I explained during my speech on Second Reading of his Bill, I disagree with some of the methods that he has proposed, but I applaud his essential purposes. Another abuse is the invasion of privacy. That was the Select Committee's starting point in its consideration of the issue of the freedom and responsibility of the press. Let us be in no doubt that there is a problem. Hon. Members who have contributed to the debate have spoken eloquently about the horrible experiences at the hands of the press of the widows of soldiers murdered by the IRA and of a victim of rape who gave evidence to the Select Committee. We also need to take immensely seriously the written evidence submitted to the Committee by Victim Support. I welcome, by the way, the extension of its network of counselling. I hope that in time Victim Support in this country will be able to achieve an extensive network of counselling, advocacy and assistance in relation to the press in support of victims of crisis as well as crime, on the same pattern as the National Organisation for Victim Assistance in the United States.In the case studies presented to us by Victim Support, the father of a murder victim is quoted as saying :
"They are trespassing on our grief."
The case studies are vivid, poignant and shocking and they represent unacceptable journalistic practice. How often can there be a true public interest in detailed reporting of personal unhappiness?
I accept that cases of abuse are not numerous and that the code of practice has gone a long way towards defining proper standards and, even now, is being further strengthened. I accept that most journalists act with restraint and responsibility and that many of them deal with sensitive and difficult matters admirably. I accept that most of the press is seriously determined to root out the abuse that exists. I acknowledge that coverage of tragedies can be therapeutic for those who have suffered from them, and it can be therapeutic for our society if such horrors are exposed and public shock, anger and grief can be expressed.
Mr. Robin Corbett (Birmingham, Erdington) : One of the problems is that the existing code of practice is contradictory. It talks about intrusions into private life and makes the public interest exceptions. However, instead of the original recommendation that that should not be done, paragraph 10--
"Intrusion into grief or shock"--
admits that intrusion can take place and says simply that approaches should be
"made with sympathy and discretion."
Does not that start by getting the press into trouble?
Mr. Howarth : The sentiment in paragraph 9 of the Press Complaints Commission's code of practice on intrusion into grief or shock is admirable. However, the hon. Gentleman is right to observe that the code of practice promulgated by the Press Complaints Commission was, in important respects, a dilution of the code of practice originally recommended by the Calcutt committee on privacy and related matters. He will have noted the comparative texts of alternative codes given in the Select Committee's report. I am pleased that there is some recognition in the industry that the code needs strengthening and that, where there are confusions, they should be ironed out.
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Abuses have occurred, even since the code was promulgated. The problem is that some members of the press are shameless and will observe no standards of civility. It is inescapable, therefore, that Parliament has a duty to strengthen the protection afforded to the citizen. I regret that the industry has reacted so negatively to our proposals. I have been worried that the Press Complaints Commission and editors have been remarkably complacement about the extent of the abuses. They have tried to rest their case on the paucity of complaints to the PCC, which is a disingenuous argument and one with which we cannot be satisfied. There was a very disturbing complacency in the evidence given by the PCC to the Calcutt review.The Committee has approached the issue in two ways. We recommend that the law--civil and criminal--be strengthened to provide new statutory rights to privacy. It is preferable that there should be civil remedies in this field. I also believe that it is preferable that the law should be of general application and not bite discriminatingly or exclusively on the press. That part of the Calcutt review which sets out a number of recommendations for new criminal offences and qualifies each with the notion that they should be offences only when the activity had been carried out with a view to publication was surprising and unsatisfactory.
Abuses by the press need to be seen as a sub-set of wider problems. For example, harassment is perpetrated not only by reporters and photographers. There are other types of harassment such as sexual harassment, noise harassment and spying. It is therefore right that paragraph 48 of our report recommends that the tort of infringement of privacy should cover
"violating the peace of another by intruding upon him, or persistently communicating with him."
We had in mind not only abuse by journalists.
The British people value privacy. We have a tradition whereby an Englishman's home is his castle. Privacy has always been important to us, but it is becoming even more important and more difficult to secure because of changing technology. Some aspects of the legal protection of privacy need to be enshrined in the criminal law. I am pleased that there has been little or no demur that bugging, the use of long-range photography and a number of activities made possible by relatively recent technology should be criminal offences. It is good, too, that the code is being modified to take account of such matters.
I am sure it is also right that there should be a criminal offence of harassment. A person who is bullied and besieged, in the aftermath of a traumatic shock, may not be in a position to take action on his or her own behalf or even to identify his or her assailant. The police should have the power to intervene directly to prevent such harassment.
It is essential that legal aid should be available to enable people of modest means to avail themselves of the remedies provided in law. There should be legal aid for privacy and libel actions. Of course, I appreciate that the cost of legal aid has been rising. The Lord Chancellor estimates that, in 1994-95, public expenditure on legal aid will be £1.4 billion. That is indeed a great deal of money, and the Lord Chancellor is right to seek to reduce the cost of legal process. However, our society is founded on the rule of law. We must protect the weakest. It is not acceptable that there should be one law available for the
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rich and another, or none, for the poor. Taxpayers must pay what it costs to preserve freedoms under the law which were intended to be provided for all citizens.The press has always had to operate within a framework of law--laws relating to defamation, data protection, obscenity, contempt of court and confidence, to name but some. There is therefore no new principle involved in our argument that the press should be subject to a new law of privacy. The press itself is quick to claim the protection of the law and our traditional constitutional liberties, so it should also be willing to abide by the law and respect the legal constraints which protect and bind all of us.
The third strand in our recommendations is the strengthening of voluntary regulation. I am sure that all of us believe that it is preferable to achieve effective regulation on a voluntary basis. Is it naive to hope that we can do so? Sir David Calcutt concluded that it was naive to hope so by this stage. He believed that the bluff had at long last to be called.
We do indeed face the problem that, in the 40 or so years since the foundation of the Press Council, the industry has invariably done too little too late to put its own house in order. It is only about two years ago that it adopted a code of practice. Journalists have known that Parliament is reluctant to legislate to limit their freedoms and, in some cases, they have exploited our reluctance, which was in the interests of the preservation of a free society.
I do not share Sir David's conclusion. The PCC has been a weak vessel and some of the press are unrepentant, but I believe that the resources of voluntary regulation are not exhausted. I am encouraged, as other hon. Members have been, by the fact that since our report was published the code has been strengthened. Membership of the PCC and the appointments commission has been modified. Steps have been taken to introduce a helpline. Some newspapers are introducing readers' representatives who have real independence. The industry is moving towards the adoption of contracts of employment which would require journalists to observe the code. Steps are also being taken to prevent jigsaw identification of crime victims.
I do not believe that there would have been such movement had the industry not felt the hot breath of regulation on its neck. The industry still needs to move further. Editors and proprietors have other issues to consider. There should be redress for grievances, and the industry should agree that the PCC should have the power to fine and require payment of compensation. Serious arguments were put to the Select Committee against such ideas. Although I respect those arguments, I do not find them persuasive.
The press wants to avoid a tribunal on the model recommended by Calcutt. It wants to keep out of the courts. But, at the same time, members of the public with justified grievances must be entitled to compensation, and scandalous offences should be disciplined under a system of voluntary regulation. The commission should have those powers.
There have been vociferous and even hysterical reactions by the press to our recommendations. A leader in The Independent said that the proposals would amount to censorship. The Daily Mail talked of "fetters", and Ms
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Patsy Chapman, the editor of the News of the World but enjoying the hospitality of the columns of The Times, wrote of "Kaufman's kangaroo court". The most extreme was Mr. Andrew Neil, the editor of The Sunday Times. He was quoted as saying that the Committee's recommendations would involve a degree of intrusion into the freedom of the press"greater than anything that existed under Nazi Germany." Particular criticisms were vented against our recommendation that there should be an ombudsman. The more I read the press coverage of our report, the more I was persuaded that there was a very strong case for the institution of an ombudsman. The report states that we envisage the ombudsman as a "bulwark" to support voluntary regulation. The history of the Press Council and the Press Complaints Commission has been disappointing, and I believe that the successor body will need the reinforcement that an ombudsman would provide. It is not such a terrible idea to contemplate. Since the 1960s, ombudsmen have been successfully introduced into various fields of our national life. Each field is different and, of course, the press is unique. However, it is fair to observe that it is no less important that the legal profession and legal services should be independent of politics and Government than it is that the press should be. The legal services ombudsman, statutorily created, has proved of benefit to the profession and the public.
The press ombudsman, as we envisage him, would be invoked by way of appeal by dissatisfied plaintiffs--those dissatisfied by the remedy offered them by the press commission--or by the press, being itself dissatisfied with a judgment of the press commission. The knowledge that such a recourse, a right of appeal, existed would usefully challenge the press commission to make a success of its task. As we say in the report, the best test of the success of voluntary regulation by the press commission would be that the ombudsman's role would be virtually non-existent.
Two main criticisms have been made of our recommendation of the institution of an ombudsman. There has been objection to our suggestion that he should be appointed by the Lord Chancellor. The Select Committee found it a delicate issue to decide how the ombudsman should be appointed. The case for the Lord Chancellor making the appointment is that he is a respected authority who would make the appointment in a non-political capacity. The industry is not justified in its fear that, because he was appointed by the Lord Chancellor, the ombudsman would somehow be the Government's nark. The second question that has raised difficulties concerns the powers that the ombudsman should exercise and the basis of those powers. Other ombudsmen proceed on the basis of moral authority and suasion, whereas the press ombudsman's powers--for example, to insist on corrections, apologies, the publication of names to
institutionalise shame, and to require compensation and the payment of fines--would be created by statute. But it is important to note that in our recommendations we have not suggested that the ombudsman should have independent powers of enforcement.
In the event that a ruling by the ombudsman was not observed by a newspaper, it would be necessary to apply to the High Court for remedy of the grievance. Equally, if a newspaper did not accept a ruling of the ombudsman, the newspaper could apply to the court for the discharge
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of that ruling. So our recommendations embody the essential character of an ombudsman rather than of a tribunal, and they are profoundly different from the Calcutt recommendations.We have sought to provide a series of protections for the citizen and, at the same time, to enhance the rights and status of the press. The first protection for the citizen should lie in the responsibility of the individual journalist seeking to balance the obligation to provide information and to behave decently. The second defence of the citizen lies in the responsibility of the editor. We then envisage the readers' representative being brought into play. Only thereafter would we wish to see appeals made to the press commission, and only in the event of the commission failing to provide satisfactory remedies would the plaintiff have occasion to go to the ombudsman, and ultimately to the court.
The powers that would be vested in the press commission by the industry--to impose fines and require compensation--would help to ensure that problems were resolved informally and early. Ms Chapman described our recommendations as
"layer upon layer of red tape."
I regard them as sensible, practical, mostly familiar and readily intelligible. They are a serious attempt to provide remedies and, at the same time, to strengthen the standing of the press. I hope that the press will increasingly appreciate and accept that to be the case. Initially, the press marginalised our report as a news story and rubbished it in editorials.
The press mediate information, including the debate on this issue, to the public. It is a responsibility of the press to see that the public have a fuller and fairer opportunity than they have has so far to consider our recommendations and articulate their own response. I hope that the Government will accept our recommendations. Whatever the forthcoming White Paper and prospective legislation may contain, the Select Committee, on behalf of Parliament, will continue to attend vigilantly and regularly to these issues, which are of great and enduring importance to our democracy and culture.
7.14 pm
Mr. Bryan Davies (Oldham, Central and Royton) : When the Select Committee, on which I had the honour to serve, began its study into the press and intrusion on the privacy of the individual, I had a fair degree of scepticism about the wisdom of the task that we had set ourselves. I wondered whether we could achieve results that would prove significant for effective legislative action.
I was sceptical for several basic reasons, the first being that the press in Britain is already extensively regulated ; indeed, the British press is among the most regulated in the western democracies. The legislation regulating it applies to contempt of court, official secrets, the prevention of terrorism, police and criminal evidence and the law of libel. The laws provide a battery of constraints on journalists in general and on particular types of investigative journalism.
It is obvious that some restrictions are available predominantly to the wealthy--that particularly applies to the law of libel--and do not provide an extension of freedom for the ordinary individual. Other restrictions are imposed by government agencies and, to that extent, distort democracy by adding an authoritarian element to the relationship between government and the press.
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I share with the overwhelming majority of hon. Members a respect for the significance of a free press as a crucial element in our democracy. Striving for a free press in western Europe has been critical to the dismantling of autocratic regimes and their replacement with democratic ones. Even today, those seeking to impose autocratic regimes on society move rapidly, and with such force as they can muster, on radio and television stations and newspaper offices. Control of the media is crucial to autocratic politicians. A free press developed out of 19th century ideas of classic liberalism--for example, the free press of diverging opinions and conflicting analyses of John Stuart Mill and today it is the oligopolistic press of the late 20th century. Our problem when we talk about the press--I am not sure that we have identified the point clearly enough during the debate, so I shall spend some time on it--is that we relate differently to the various models of the press that we have in mind.Most hon. Members who have a close relationship with the organs of information in our constituencies--in particular, the local and regional press--are aware of the generally high standards that are adopted. Most of our proposals, including the code of conduct and even the strengthened code, are regarded by most local and regional journalists, particularly those in training, as a matter of course. They say that that is how they conduct their business, and when representatives of the regional press came before the Select Committee, they pointed out that the abuses to which we alluded were foreign to their activities.
A dimension of the press not to be overlooked is the glory that we in this country can take in our quality newspapers, which bear comparison with any in the world. When I went to the United States, it was the first time that I had been engaged in a serious study of Washington and New York newspapers. I was very impressed with them and with the framework within which they operated, but I still would say that, in terms of entertainment, informative value and quality of journalism, the best newspapers in this country bear comparison with any elsewhere.
There is, however, another big category of the press to which nearly all this debate is directed--tabloid journalism. That is what we are talking about predominantly. We are talking about that element of the press that seems to be totally resistant to and contemptuous of public opinion when it goes about its business of entertaining, and occasionally informing, the nation.
That section of the press is under considerable pressures. We should recognise that they are the pressures of the major combines, the media empires that have developed at this stage of our history. Those media empires, into which entry by any free agent or competing force is exceedingly difficult, those colossal operators in the industry of newspapers, have substantial power, but they collide with each other like great dinosaurs of the past.
One of the great functions of that kind of popular journalism has almost gone. It is not greatly in the business of conveying news. Where does the ordinary member of the public get his or her news? It is predominantly from the electronic media. I was brought up in a household in which the News Chronicle was a highly valued newspaper. It was greatly appreciated because it was a popular paper which informed and carried really effective news coverage--
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[Interruption.] Well, hon. Members are calling out some of the more attractive features of the News Chronicle. It had, of course, its lighter side, but it was a newspaper that informed its readers ; it was a serious newspaper, while having considerable popular appeal.Why is it that today it is much more difficult for the Daily Mirror, Today, The Star or--dare I say it?-- The Sun to achieve that kind of balance? The answer is straightforward : they are not largely in the business of conveying news. Television has taken that function away from them, as radio did to a degree in the past. Watching television news is the way in which people keep up to date with what is going on in the world.
The tabloid newspapers are rather more in the area of comment and entertainment. Indeed, the editor of The Sun said with great assertiveness when he appeared before the Select Committee that he is in the entertainment business, that his paper is a lively read. The problem with that is that anything goes. For many newspapers, locked into circulation wars, the kind of standards set by C. P. Scott are almost totally irrelevant to the economic exercise in which they are involved. As a consequence, we have the development of newspapers which, on occasion, exploit ordinary individuals.
We have heard today from members of the Select Committee of the extent to which there are gross and damaging intrusions into the privacy of ordinary individuals ; I do not want to recall those cases, because they have been well identified. It is not politicians, not people of power, not the great, the good or even the bad, but ordinary people who get caught up in news stories.
We should all recognise--the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) referred to this--that privacy is a human right. I am not sure that we in this country are sufficiently appreciative of the fact that certain aspects of privacy are under gross invasion from technological development.
I am sure that we are all greatly relieved that parts of our shopping centres may be giving extra protection against terrorist outrage through surveillance devices. But such devices, extended right across the land, have a real danger implicit in them. After all, George Orwell's "1984" was based on the premise that technological devices would be developed that would give the authorities the opportunity for surveillance at all times. I am not seeking to deny the extensive efforts that must be made to protect our people against the terrorist outrage. I am merely saying that technological developments have an implicit danger.
There is no doubt that the members of the Select Committee were shocked when we saw the range of devices available. That which only 10 or 15 years ago belonged to the fantasy world of James Bond now seems to be purchasable at the local store for a quite modest sum. I do not think that, at the moment, members of the public can buy some of the more esoteric models, such as the tiny little camera that photographs with great accuracy, in enormous detail and from a great height, and is carried in a small model aircraft--which my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) suggested could be flown by remote control over Buckingham palace. I can think of many other areas where that device might be used with even greater effect.
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Mr. Peter Bottomley (Eltham) : I just want to remind the House that one cannot even trust a cricket stump nowadays.
Mr. Davies : Indeed, views from certain cricket stumps have added to the embarrassment of English batsmen who cannot recognise a leg break, let alone cope with a camera.
Such is the intrusion on the privacy of individuals through bugging and surveillance devices and the anxiety of the nation that the case has been made in the Select Committee report for the Government to recognise that early action is necessary. Such laws should be directed not against the press, but towards restricting anyone from using those devices unless it can be shown that there is good cause, on the basis of the public interest, for such use.
There is, of course, a public interest in permitting certain use of these devices. I say nothing about the state authorities and security services, but we must be careful not to restrict investigative journalism. Some of our outstanding television programmes and journalism have been based on the justifiable use of devices against criminals, where their criminal activities would not otherwise have been revealed. Through the use of those devices and through intelligent action by journalists, those abuses have been exposed.
Mr. Maclennnan : Did the Committee give serious consideration to the difficulty of drawing the line between what is in the public interest and what is not, even where intrusion into grief is important?
It seems that in citing the most obvious cases of where intrusion into grief was unacceptable, the Committee may have overlooked a difficulty. I recall a case in the north of Scotland many years ago. The BBC interviewed the wives of some fishermen who were missing at sea. It was a harrowing interview to observe and many people might have said--as I did at the time- -that it was tasteless and unwise. The BBC was criticised for broadcasting the interview.
But it was also clear that some of the ladies thought it right to talk of their harrowing experience to bring home to the public the appalling risks that fishermen face. Perhaps that would have rebutted any allegations that the interview was an unacceptable intrusion. It seems that a case is not always automatically clearly on one side or the other of the line.
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