House of Commons Hansard Debates for 10 Jun 1993

Mr. Davies : No one underestimates the difficulties, and many of us have witnessed similar harrowing interviews on television. I take the hon. Gentleman's point that consent is everything. If the person being interviewed has consented to that interview, then, harrowing as the experience may be, that certainly justifies the action of the journalist.

In the cases before the Committee, people who wanted their privacy respected could not get away from foot-in-the-door journalists. The journalists were camped on their doorstep, would never take no for an answer and were prepared to go to almost any lengths, with endless telephone calls throughout the night and so on, in order to get their story.

These are, of course, difficult issues. There will always be an area of judgment. In one of the more extreme cases, the editor of The Sun confessed to getting one thing wrong. It was amazing that he could admit to that. He regretted publishing certain photographs of the horrors of the Hillsborough disaster, and the suggestion that, in some

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horrendous way, the fans had brought the disaster on themselves. The Hillsborough disaster still had to be reported to the nation in all its horror, and major lessons had to be learned from it. There is always the difficulty of striking a balance in any disaster, and there is not the slightest doubt about that. I can reassure the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland that the Select Committee did not skate lightly over such issues--far from it. The Committee report was the product of many intensive hours of cross-examination. Great anxiety was expressed about the implications of some of the recommendations until the Committee teased the matters out.

I confess that all along I was sceptical about whether the Committee could produce a report that went effectively much beyond a strengthened code of practice. I saw the Committee's work reflected in what I thought was a more positive response from the press as we proceeded. I should like, however, to reinforce one or two points made by other members of the Committee on just how difficult it might be to rely on self-regulation alone. I hope that self-regulation is the order of the day as far as possible.

All the members of the Committee regarded the concept of the ombudsman as a last resort. They hoped that a strengthened and reasonably enforced Press Complaints Commission code of conduct would largely do the job. I shall quote from that famous occasion when the editor of The Sun graced the Committee with his presence, to the huge entertainment of the nation. He was asked--I am too modest to suggest who by--

"So you are now discontinuing practices which you were conducting or certain members of your staff were conducting prior to the Press Complaints Commission development?"

He replied :

"I think that it would be fair to say that the spotlight is on us in a way which would make us foolhardy to do anything which would attract more organised opprobrium than already exists. So, yes, we do try harder now and, yes, whether the expression is cleaned up our act' or not I am not sure, but certainly we do try hard to make sure that we do not get into a position where our critics can attack us. That does not mean to say we will stop publishing stories about Norman Lamont's credit card but it does mean to say that when we publish something we are 101 per cent. certain that it is 101 per cent. true."

That new development took our breath away, but it emerged from the great pressure of external forces and had nothing to do with self-motivation or self-regulation. When dealing with tabloid journalism on a national level, we must recognise the nature of the tough nut that we are seeking to crack. I do not mean by that that we are seeking to constrain tabloid journalism unfairly ; but we are expecting it to have some respect for the truth and some respect for the privacy of the individual, particularly the ordinary individual. Of course, people who take up public office or hold high positions in the land must be subject to a different kind of challenge-- they ought to be. We all believe that the press has an investigative and challenging role to play, but it has no right to infringe the privacy of ordinary individuals against a generally held code of conduct on the grounds that anything goes and that freedom of the press means a licence to print almost anything.

My remarks have been fairly general because other members of the Committee have dealt with detailed aspects of our proposals. Although I was reluctant to accept the Committee's conclusions and hoped that there would be more self-regulation and less regulation by law,

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I say to the Secretary of State that the case is proven with regard to the development of new technological surveillance devices. They need legislative control. Also, certain sections of the press will have to come to terms with a structure that will be adequate when self-regulation fails.

7.39 pm

Mr. Roger Gale (Thanet, North) :

"Journalism is the vilest and most degrading of all trades because more affectation and hypocrisy and more subservience to the baser feelings of others are necessary for carrying it on than for any other trade from that of brothel-keeper upwards."

I declare my interest as a professional journalist. I first heard that quote from John Stuart Mill about a month ago at a lecture. He wrote it in the 19th century and, as far as I can see, not a lot has changed since. Certainly nothing has changed in the month since I first heard it to make me believe that the journalist as a breed is held in anything much higher than contempt by the British public. I would like to pay my tribute to the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) and all the members of the Committee, most of whom have spoken in the debate already, for the work that they have done on their report. I thought that press coverage of the publication of the report was churlish, but it was, I suppose, to be expected. Whether or not we like all the recommendations--and perhaps some of us do not--the Committee did an extremely thorough job, both in the way in which it took its evidence and in the way in which it presented it. I would extend those congratulations to David Calcutt, his team and his report as well.

At the invitation of my local radio station, I took part in a broadcast on this subject earlier today. In theory, lined up against me was an official of the National Union of Journalists, my professional association. The interviewer asked him, boldly and straight out, why journalists reported untruths. I imagined that the representative of me and of other hon. Members who are members of the NUJ would leap to our defence, but not a bit of it. He said, "We have to, because if we didn't we'd lose our jobs, because the proprietors of the newspapers make us report untruths."

Having agreed to take part in the programme and to exercise some small criticism of the press and suggest how it might improve its practice, I found myself instead in the bizarre position of having to leap to the defence of my journalist colleagues. They have always struck me as a robust breed, well able to look after themselves. Perish the thought that a professional journalist would be browbeaten to the extent of going away and writing untruths because his lord and master told him to.

I put this thesis to Andrew Neill of The Sunday Times some time ago, when I suggested to him that the Murdoch chain of newspapers had a vendetta against the royal family, that this was an edict from the top and it was why they were doing it--because I could not think of any other reason why they should do it. The wrath of God, or at least of Neill, fell on my head. Did I seriously think that he and his colleagues were for sale like that? I do not know the answer, but he did not think so.

The NUJ representative on the programme pointed out that the journalists that I talked to were lobby correspondents. I must confess that there was a faint self-interest in this. I thought that, if I said nice things about journalists on the radio, I might be reported well. That is the way we work, is it not? All I can say to the

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lobby correspondents--if there are any left in the building at this time of night--is that the officials of the NUJ do not appear to regard lobby correspondents as "real" journalists. Somewhere out there is apparently another breed of journalist writing "real" stories for newspapers, and those stories are the ones that they must write, even though they are untrue, because the newspaper proprietors say they must.

So we come back to the standards of the press. As a professional journalist, I have experienced a growing sense of concern, not just over recent months but over recent years. There is not much doubt in the minds of many that the standard of written journalism has fallen. It is that concern which led to threats of action--threats of action by Calcutt, threats of action by hon. Members, such as the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) in his Bill, and threats of action by the Select Committee in its report.

What is the response of what used to be called Fleet street to these threats of action? Self-righteous indignation. We have heard the quotes from the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) and from my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth). The headlines--in so far as one can call them headlines--that came out when the Select Committee published its report were universally critical. There was scarcely a word of praise, not even for the workmanship of the report itself. The only greater squeals that I heard from the press came when there was some vague suggestion that they might be faced with value added tax on newspapers. The self-righteous self-interest of the press over these issues beggars belief.

We have been discussing people in public life. Exceptionally for me, I have agreed with most of what has been said by most hon. Members but I want to take issue--courteously, I hope--with the slight hint of humbug when hon. Members on both sides of the House have referred to "ordinary people", and have said that it is the interests of ordinary people that they are trying to protect.

I believe that. I too want to protect the interests of ordinary people. Like every other hon. Member I represent thousands of them. But I believe that there is a case for protecting the interests of those who are apparently un-ordinary people, people in public life. I think that they have a right to protection.

No one has said that today, because we know perfectly well that such a sentiment will not find favour with the press. It will be regarded as self- interest, and the press will suppose that, because we are trying to protect ourselves, we have something to hide. It is not quite like that.

The right hon. Member for Gorton has returned to the Chamber. I paid what I hope was a kind tribute to the work that he and his Committee had done, and I would like to repeat it for his benefit now that he is here. The only quarrel that I have with his speech was when he said that we are all politicians and that we have to dish it out and be ready to take it.

I know what he means and I agree with him. Of course we dish it out. We dish it out across the Chamber day after day. We hammer away at each other like blazes. That is the cut and thrust of politics. That is why we are in an adversarial Chamber. It is why there are two red lines on the carpet two swords' lengths apart. That conflict is the stuff of our lives, and we have to be ready to take it. We

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have to be ready to take it from the Opposition Benches. The Prime Minister has to take it from the Leader of the Opposition, and the Leader of the Opposition has to take it from the Prime Minister. We expect that.

But what is this "it" that we have to take? Is it the political sparring in here, is it genuine political conflict, or is it the God-given right of the press to take anybody in public life, of any standing and in any circumstances, say about them any truth or untruth and demolish them? If that is so, I do not believe that people in public life have to take "it".

The royal family has been subjected to this over the past 18 months or so in particular. No hon. Member could reasonably stand, hand on heart, and say that the royal family has never done anything worthy of criticism, that we should be totally subservient and utter no word against them, in the press or elsewhere. That would be quite wrong. On the other hand, I may be naive but there seems to me to have been a concerted effort on the part of certain sections of the media coldly and calculatedly to seek to demolish an institution that means a very great deal to a very great number of people.

I met three News International senior executives in the House recently and laid into them on the subject. They asked me why I was being difficult and having a go at them about cross-media ownership. I said that it was because I knew that was the only way that I could hurt them, as it was their Achilles heel. I said that they were hurting people of whom I was fond and I felt that I wanted to hurt them back. That may not be a noble sentiment for an hon. Member to feel, but I felt it in my guts.

One of the three News International representatives was an American, and I said that I would explain to him exactly how I felt. I said, "It is as though I come to see you, take the American flag, pee on it and burn it on the White House lawn. That is what you are doing to my royal family." I believe that, and he understood my feeling as I had translated it into language that he, as an American, could understand.

I wonder whether attacks on senior Members of Parliament are as justified as we pretend we believe them to be because we are supposed to take them. I wonder whether it is in order for someone like my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor) to be dragged, with his family, through the dirt, day after day and month after month until he breaks--not personally, as he is too tough for that--but politically? I shall not be party political as I am not defending merely my hon. Friends. I hope that Opposition Members understand that. Were the political ball to bounce the other way, what I am saying could apply as much to Opposition Members as to my hon. Friends.

Yesterday, I listened to a speech in the Chamber delivered by a bitter man- -it saddened me enormously. He may not prove to be proud of that speech, which I did not think was dignified or fair. It was a bitter speech, and I understood why. If, day after day, not only I and my economic policies-- which are fair game for the House and the press--but every detail of my private life, my credit card, the booze that I did not buy, the girl friend that I did not have, were dragged through the press while my family were trying to take O or A-levels, I would feel bitter and, ultimately, I would break. That is what happened to my right hon. friend. If the leader of Her Majesty's

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Government--presently a Conservative Government--is relentlessly attacked over a period, ultimately he or she will break.

There is a grave danger that we in this country will find ourselves, to a greater or lesser extent, in the position of those in the United States. Relentless exposure in the media, particularly television, but also in print journalism, creates the danger that, unless one is the archangel Gabriel, one will break. Eventually, only men and women of no calibre will stand for public office. That is why I believe that we have a duty to protect, not only ordinary people, but those in high office.

Mr. Maclennan : I have been listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman's words. He referred to the case of the right hon. and learned Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor). We could seek to prevent the press expressing its opinion and drawing things out month after month. I thought that the action of the press in the case of the right hon. and learned Member for Putney was repulsive. I think that I am the only Member of Parliament, other than the Prime Minister, who declared that publicly before the right hon. and learned Member went from office when I wrote a letter to The Independent in support of him. Therefore, I accept what the hon. Gentleman has said about such pressure becoming an intolerable burden.

However, would it not be better for people to say, "It does not matter--the issue relates to his private life, not his competence"? Until people are prepared to do that, we shall face the problem described by the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Gale : I agree with part of what the hon. Gentleman said. In another country in Europe, somewhere further south, where people's private lives are treated by the public and the press in a more relaxed and, perhaps, less hypocritical and more honest fashion than in this country, it would not matter. In many respects, this country is still extremely puritanical.

Earlier in his speech the hon. Gentleman referred to the suggestion--but did not pursue it to its logical conclusion--that the fourth estate was beginning to regard itself as the Government of this country. No matter who is elected, the general media--not just the press and print journalists-- engage in feeding frenzies and regurgiate their own stories.

They believe that they can not only decide what policies should be pursued- -any journalist is entitled to speculate and have an opinion on a subject on which he or she is an expert--and not only who should be Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, Leader of the Opposition, or leader of the Liberal party, but to make a sustained effort to bring that about.

The press will say that I am paranoid and raving mad, but I am concerned about the problem. I wonder whether we in public life will be able to sustain the job that we want to do on behalf of the ordinary people to whom so many colleagues have referred. If we have to spend all our time worrying about the subjects we are now discussing, ordinary people will miss out on a range of issues. The Government of the day, of whatever political persuasion, will find themselves in a relentless battle against those who think that they are the real Government of the country, not the elected Government. It is interesting how Lord Rees-Mogg, who has never been elected to anything in his life--except, possibly, a club--

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Mr. Jessel : It is a very good club.

Mr. Gale : I am ashamed--my hon. Friend says that it is a good club, and he is wearing its tie tonight.

Mr. Jessel : My hon. Friend is also a member.

Mr. Gale : I was going to say that I am about to resign from it. We have a genuine cause for concern. The net result of what I have been saying is that the press will say that I want to gag free speech. I do not--I am a journalist, and write and broadcast on a reasonably regular basis. I enjoy doing so and have earned my living through it--not now, but I did for a long time. As far as I am aware, I have nothing personal to hide, apart from the things that most of us want to hide, like overdrafts.

However, the problem is not confined merely to people in public life. I have chosen to defend people in public life because it seems to be the one sector that has been neglected throughout the debate. When one speaks at this time in a debate, most of the good comments have been made. It is nice to be able to say something different. In a Gallup poll in The Daily Telegraph published in February, only 10 per cent. of the respondents said that they had any confidence in the press. That number is down from 32 per cent. 10 years ago--

Mr. Corbett : It is still very high at 10.

Mr. Gale : It was published in February ; perhaps the most recent figure would be different.

My friendly NUJ official says that this is due to market forces. Newspapers have become very commercial and journalists have to tell lies--they have to do what their editors want them to do. The style of newspapers has changed. It certainly has. But I am not so certain that that has to do with the big bad barons of the press, as at least one Opposition Member thinks. It might have a lot more to do with competition from the mechanical media. The hon. Member for Oldham, Central and Royton (Mr. Davies) rightly said that most people get their news from television and radio, so newspapers are having a harder time. Why buy one at all?

Dog is eating dog : the circulation war is critical. Because of changes in working practices and the introduction of new technology, newspapers could be much more profitable now, but the competition between them is also much greater, and it would be foolish to deny that that has had some effect.

This morning on the radio, I asked my NUJ friend, who will own the newspapers if not the barons of the press. Will they be run by workers' co- operatives? He held up The Independent as a shining example. My answer was that it is not independent.

We need a free press in a free society. The free press must have the right to question the establishment, but with that freedom must go responsibility. I believe that the Press Complaints Commission has failed dismally and become discredited. If it was not before, it became discredited the day it was revealed that Lord McGregor had information about the royal family that was in the interests of the press but he failed to publish it. I cannot see how the PCC in its present form can continue.

I carefully read the Select Committee's suggestions. I am not certain that I would like an ombudsman. I certainly do not want the statutory Calcutt tribunal. But it is necessary to recreate a genuinely independent commission

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that can promote a code of practice of the sort that the Select Committee annexed to its report. I should like that code of conduct incorporated in contracts of employment.

Training is the bedrock. Several hon. Members have referred to the quality of local papers. Of course we would do that, because we want to keep in well with our local papers even if we fall out with everyone else. Nevertheless, the quality of local papers is in some ways much higher than that of the national press. Standards of reporting are high because local editors usually jump up and down on trainee journalists and make certain that they get their stories right--because if they do not, people will write in to complain that their names have been spelt wrongly in a report on a local funeral. Editors can do without that sort of hassle.

I have much sympathy with the views of editors who have told me--and no doubt the Committee--that we should not pick on them : we should be pursuing the tabloids which are creating all the trouble. I do not want to pick on them. An independent commission capable of promoting a code of practice within contracts of employment and of promoting training for young journalists would, I believe, do the job. The Press Complaints Commission is widely regarded as the creature of the press, which owns and pays for it and effectively decides who will sit on it. At the eleventh hour, after all this fuss, the Commission has, in theory, tipped the balance in favour of lay members--but we all know that that is not enough.

We are talking about professionalism, but I strongly believe that electronic eavesdropping and telephone tapping, and trespassing on and entering peoples' property and homes--not to mention intrusive photography using long lenses--are all unacceptable in a free society.

We hear a great deal about freedom of the press ; we must also protect the freedom of the individual. I hope that that will be done, not in a press Bill, but under the criminal law in the next Criminal Justice Bill. I do not want, now or ever, one law for journalists and another for everyone else.

8.5 pm

Mr. Clive Soley (Hammersmith) : I very much welcomed the Select Committee report, which is a thoughtful document. I have a number of reservations about it, however. It comes close after the Calcutt report and my own Bill. I believe that a new agenda is emerging from all the debates that we have had in recent years--an important agenda.

all in favour of some type of regulation ; the questions that concern us are : what type of regulation, and how should we achieve it? I am increasingly of the view that we need to widen the debate to include electronic media. The Broadcasting Act 1990 no longer works well, not least because of technological changes. My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) said that 19 M Mr. Kaufman : What I sought to say was that as legislation is required to give the Government power to allocate frequencies, it is inevitable that that legislation

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should entail some form of regulation of television and radio. My hon. Friend is right to say that as we get 500 channels and as the Government find it difficult to be involved in that, so regulation of the electronic media by legislation will become more and more difficult--until, perhaps, it becomes impossible.

Mr. Soley : I am grateful. That fits in well with my argument. There are those who argue that, because of new technology, we should remove all regulation of the electronic media. But if we do, we shall run into the same sort of problems as we have with the press. What sort of regulation should we go for? I have been making the following argument for many months because I regard it as central, even though it runs contrary to what people might expect me to say. The problem, in Britain particularly, is that the press and the media suffer from excessive regulation of the wrong type. Our type restricts good investigative journalism, but permits enormous abuses of people's rights. We must address that problem. We were warned by international bodies that we were losing some of our press freedom precisely because we had passed many laws in this century, and especially in the past 10 to 15 years, that seriously restricted press freedom. That issue is specially important.

It is not right to say, as some people have claimed from time to time, that we do not regulate the press. We have been regulating it by law for at least 100 years and the rules are in statute for anyone who cares to look at them. The press is mentioned and some of the rules protect press freedom. For example, journalists have the right in law to report some local authority committees to which the public do not have access. Press rights on Select Committees date back to legislation in the last century.

The other side of the coin is that there are restrictions on journalism and the media generally, such as the broadcasting ban on some of the groups associated with the paramilitary campaign in Northern Ireland. Every country in the world regulates its media. Britain does not have a general defence of press freedom or a freedom of information Act. The Select Committee report is right to recommend that there must be a freedom of information Act before there is any other restrictive legislation on the press. I am glad that that recommendation received all-party support.

I would go further because I have said in recent months that I should like to see not only a freedom of information Act but a general defence of press freedom. The British legal system does not normally contain such a positive defence, but I remind the House that Britain wrote most of the legislation for the European Court of Human Rights, including article 10 of the convention which deals with freedom of expression. We often say, "Don't do as we do ; do as we tell you." Although others follow that advice, unfortunately we do not. If we adopted article 10 it would be much easier to adopt article 8, which deals with privacy. I have some reservations about the wording of articles 8 and 10. In many respects, article 10 is restrictive, but if it and article 8 were on the statute book, many of the problems that the debate has addressed would not be so serious.

As I have said, all countries regulate the media, but the question that arises concerns the type of regulation and how to implement it. Britain is not now as forward on the defence of press freedom as it was in the last century. I have given editors some tough times in discussions with

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them when I have told them that editors have been among the most weak-kneed and ineffectual in standing up for press freedom. They got wise over "Spycatcher" and on that they were good. Throughout the 1980s, I warned the press that press freedom was being seriously eroded.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton was an Opposition Front-Bench spokesman on home affairs, and I was his deputy when the effects of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 were being felt. That Act allows the police to seize journalistic material. With one or two honourable exceptions, the press ignored that legislation and its impact on press freedom, which was serious.

The press ignored the prevention of terrorism legislation which required journalists to name their sources. We saw the effect of that when last year Channel 4's Box Productions was fined £75,000 and warned that if it did not name its sources on future occasions it would face a much heavier punishment. We can no longer say that we have been defending press freedom.

I think that it was a deputy editor of The Times who once said to me, "Why do you think that you can defend press freedom better than we can? We can do that ourselves." They have not and they do not. A damning criticism of the press throughout the 1980s--a period that was not good for the press generally--is that it was weak-kneed about press freedom. We need a stronger voice and that is why my Bill tries to have press freedom included on the political agenda. Obviously, the best way to do that is to have a freedom of information Act or a press freedom defence at law. I should prefer both and only the Government can provide them.

The hon. Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) and some other hon. Members spoke about the way that the press attacks certain people. The hon. Gentleman gave the example of the former Chancellor of the Exchequer. The difference between the tabloid, mass circulation and other media is that those papers need to attack people or organisations that are unpopular. That is because they are driven by the market. A Chancellor who was immensely popular but whose economics was badly out would not be attacked in the same way, because mass-circulation newspapers are competing with each other at the very edge and have to fight desperately for the last inch of circulation. I shall shortly come to the way in which that affects the salacious details of stories.

I became deeply concerned about press freedom abuse in the 1980s when I saw the mass circulation tabloid press attacking minority groups. I agreed with some of those groups and disagreed with others, but I am basically a democrat and I believe that democracy is not just about the majority's right to rule but about the right of minorities to be protected. A tabloid monopolistic press, in the sense that it consisted of a few powerful groups, attacked individuals and organisations who were vulnerable and often unpopular.

I have mentioned previously the people who spoke up for those who were wrongly convicted of the Birmingham and Guildford pub bombings and the Broadwater Farm offences. Some of us were convinced at the time that people had been wrongfully convicted, and those who spoke up for them were attacked. Allowing that to happen is the modern equivalent of burning a witch at the stake. Sometimes people in minority groups are bad, sometimes they are mad, and sometimes they are sad. But sometimes they are right, and the important rule of news broadcasting

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should be to report their views and attitudes accurately. That is one of the reasons why accuracy is so important. The Secretary of State has heard me speak about this matter many times and I commend him for sitting through yet another of my speeches.

Accurate news reporting is the oxygen of democracy and the larger and more powerful our democracies become, the more important it is not to poison that oxygen. To do so is to poison democracy. Sometimes editors talk to us and to everyone else as if freedom of the press belonged to them and the press. It does not ; nor does it belong to Ministers or Members of Parliament. It belongs to the people. The freedom of the press is a collective right and such rights are extremely important. As with all rights, they need to be balanced against others with which they may conflict.

An individual has rights too, and one of them--which is also a collective right--is the right to expect news to be reported accurately and to have an independent means of settling a dispute if it cannot be settled in the normal way. I again urge the Secretary of State to bear that in mind when formulating policy. That collective right of the freedom of the press, which is so important to each and every one of us, has to be balanced by the rights of individuals which involve accuracy.

I am not saying that privacy is not important, but it is easier to deal with. I gave the examples of article 10 and article 8 of the European Convention. Although privacy produces some pretty horrendous cases, it represents a minority of the complaints about the press. The great majority of complaints about the press are about accuracy. The hon. Member for Thanet, North said that only 10 per cent. believe the press. One of the tragedies of the British press that people do not believe it. That is sad. Journalism should be an honourable trade. If we cannot believe what we read in the paper, something has to be seriously wrong.

We make another error of judgment about the tabloids ; they are not actually bad papers. They may be bad newspapers, but they are not bad papers. They provide information that people want, in an attractive, well- produced way which makes them attractive and people buy them. In doing that, they abuse the news and often use individuals to drive up circulation and profit from it.

Mr. Alan Howarth : The hon. Gentleman is eloquently making the case for the importance of all of us as citizens having a press that is honest, accurate and decent. Does he agree that, in a system of voluntary regulation, it is important that third-party complaints should be received and scrutinised? Does he agree that the problems of inaccuracy and invasion of privacy are not confined to the tabloid press?

Mr. Soley : I agree absolutely, certainly on third-party rights. The hon. Gentleman and I have been at one for some time on that. The hon. Gentleman says that the problems are not confined to the press. When I first drew up my Bill, I wondered whether I should restrict it to certain mass circulation newspapers and legislate for a cut-off point at a circulation of 1 million, for example. I accept that local papers tend to be much better than tabloids, but, when I thought it through, I realised that what really matters is the citizens' right to accuracy, and even the best paper can get it wrong.

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Good journalists should not take it as a slight that they get it wrong. It is hard to get it right all the time when one is working against deadlines. What matters--this is where the press is its own worst enemy--is that newspapers ought to be much more ready to say, "We got it wrong," and make corrections so that people have more confidence in them. I shall return to that point in a moment. Sir David Calcutt's report interested me considerably, but it scared the pants off me. It is far too draconian. A number of people have not recognised just how draconian it is. Paragraph 7.6 for example, refers to editors being charged with the conspiracy laws if they collude in the publication of something that has been obtained by a breach of one of those laws.

The conspiracy laws are extremely serious and contain long sentences of imprisonment running into many years. If they are to be used on editors, one can envisage sliding down the dangerous road of press regulation in such a way that editors and journalists become fearful of running difficult stories. We should not be putting them off, because they might be good investigative journalists who do a good job and protect the rights of society.

I want to emphasise to my right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton one of my comments on the Select Committee report. I do not think that my right hon. Friend can argue that he is not recommending statutory control. He is. The ombudsman that he would appoint would have statutory powers.

I recognise that my right hon. Friend hopes that that statutory person and body would not be used because the press would reform itself. When I heard him say that for the first time some months ago, that delightful phrase sprang to my lips about the triumph of hope over experience. Because of the market-driven nature of some tabloids, I do not think they can discipline themselves in the way that he would like. Therefore, we would have statutory control.

I asked myself what are the differences between my right hon. Friend's approach and mine. There are a couple of interesting differences on that narrow point because there is a great deal of overlap between what I was trying to achieve and what appeared in the Select Committee report.

My Bill proposed that there should be a statutory committee as opposed to a statutory ombudsman. One of the differences in favour of not restricting the press by legislation was my right hon. Friend's suggestion that the complainant should be required to go first to the voluntary body and only if that fails to go on to the statutory body. That was not the case in my Bill, although I would have been quite happy to amend my Bill to make that case, as it seems a sensible approach. I am not convinced that it is necessary, but it is certainly not a bad idea.

The difference between my right hon. Friend's approach and mine is that his required an adjudication by just one person. That is one of my reservations about the ombudsman system.

Mr. Corbett : At the end of the day.

Mr. Soley : My hon. Friend on the Front Bench says, "At the end of the day." If we are to have adjudication by

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a statutory person, in this case the ombudsman, that person is going to adjudicate on cases. If it is in statute, we must assume that it will happen.

One reason why I wanted a committee is that it is vital to balance the views of the complainant with the need for press freedom. One proposal put to me was that my committee needed to be split into two, with one half dealing with press freedom and the other half dealing with complaints. When difficult cases occurred, the two would adjudicate jointly, thus balancing the press freedom argument with the press responsibility argument. One of my reservations about the ombudsman, which, in many ways is an attractive option, is that it is one person. We have to think about that carefully, because we then come to the second difference between my right hon. Friend's approach in the Select Committee and mine.

The ombudsman has power to award compensation on any breach of the code. I carefully excluded a financial penalty until the last stage of a court case, if it got that far, except on accuracy. The press would have to correct accuracy, and if they failed to correct it or if the editor wanted to challenge it, they could go to court and only at that stage would a financial penalty become possible. The only requirement would be correction, and a financial penalty could not be imposed for any other breach of the code.

One of my anxieties about Sir David Calcutt's approach and that of the Select Committee is that, if a potential financial payment is involved, be it compensation or fine for any breach of the code, and if the code is 40, 50 or 60 clauses long, what does a good investigative journalist do? He is not only looking over his shoulder at the libel laws, which are grossly draconian and need to be reduced to protect press freedom, but has to consider the possibility of a fine or compensation for any breach of the code.

It then becomes difficult for a good investigative journalist to take risks unless--this is one way we might be able to get out of the trap--we have a strong defence of press freedom at law. That is why it is not just a matter of freedom of information, but a general defence of press freedom.

On that basis, we might be able to say that there should be compensation for any breach of the code, but there should also be a separate law which stands in its own right which, because we know the example best in the United States, as our countries are so close on these issues, is something equivalent to the first amendment. That is one way of addressing that problem.

Mr. Corbett : I understand exactly what my hon. Friend has said. However, would he also take on board the fact that there is no desire among journalists or editors for any special laws to give them special positions? That is one of the main points of the report of the National Heritage Select Committee and other reports on the topic. That is why the public interest defence is so important, because it can apply not just to journalists, but to every citizen.

Mr. Soley : I understand that, but a number of cases have been quoted today--for example, the case of the right hon. and learned Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor)--and all of them would be allowed, as far as I can see, under the Select Committee approach, the Sir David Calcutt approach and most other approaches.

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