Examination of Witness (Question Numbers
1072-1079)
BARBARA FOLLETT
MP
2 JUNE 2009
Q1072 Chairman: For the final session
this morning can I welcome the Minister for Creative Industries
from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Barbara Follett.
We were speculating as to whether or not the press could fall
under the definition of the creative industries, which might have
some bearing on our inquiry!
Barbara Follett: I will resist
that one, Chairman!
Q1073 Mr Sanders: How does the Government
support the freedom of the press whilst ensuring that press standards
are maintained?
Barbara Follett: Mainly by not
interfering in their regulation in any way at all. The press is
bound by the law just as we all are bound by the law. What my
Department does is to monitor any new legislation coming in from
Europe to make sure that as a government we are not inadvertently
placing specific restrictions or demands on the press and other
media that do not apply in the wider population. I have been a
practising politician now for 50 years. The first half of that
time was spent in apartheid South Africa where the press was most
definitely not free. I know the difference that it makes to have
a free press and freedom of expression. I and my Department are
very committed to maintaining that freedom.
Q1074 Mr Sanders: Does your Department
have contact with the PCC? How do you communicate with them?
Barbara Follett: We do not have
formal conduits of contact but we have a great deal of informal
contact, particularly when answering letters from people who are
dissatisfied, say, with something the PCC has done or with something
that has appeared in a local or national newspaper. We quite often
refer it back to them. So although there is no formal conduit,
there is a great deal of informal contact.
Q1075 Mr Sanders: So if you are getting
complaints about the failure of the regulatory system, is self-regulation
of the British press working, or has the time come for a statutory
regime?
Barbara Follett: Let me answer
the second part of that first. At one point I was almost willing
to give my life up to make sure that the press was free and it
was not governed by lawyers. I believe that the best way of governing
anything is for that governing to be internalised, to be something
that you do yourself. I think the system of self-regulation works.
It has worked better since 1991 when we got in the PCC. Obviously
there are times when it could work perhaps more tightly. I really
value what this Committee does on an almost annual basis to get
us to stand back as a government and as the press and look at
where we are and where we are going.
Q1076 Mr Hall: We have heard evidence
from Gerry McCann who successfully sued the Express Group for
a reported £550,000. In his evidence to the Committee, when
he was asked why he did not go through the press complaints procedure,
he told us he had been advised both by his lawyers and by the
PCC that that would not be the most effective way. Had he gone
to the PCC the Express may well have been censored, but
that would have been about it.
Barbara Follett: I listened to
Mr McCann's evidence as it was given to this Committee and read
it with great interest. What he wanted was the Express
to stop doing what it was doing and in that case the best recourse
is to the law. We have a whole series of laws in this country
which do defend the individual and he used those laws. The Press
Complaints Commission is very effective in getting something changed
or an apology into the press. Here is one area where I personally
feel more attention should be paid to, although I welcome the
attention the Press Complaints Committee has given to it over
the past four years, which is where the apologies are situated
in the newspaper and the size of type that they are situated in.
From my own personal experience, the offence can be on page two
in large type and the apology basically somewhere around the ads
in very small type, and that is something which I would like to
see changed. The McCanns went to the law. You have two things
available to you in the British system and he chose the second.
Q1077 Mr Hall: He also said in evidence
to us that he was deterred from going to the PCC because it is
so aligned to the newspaper industry and the editors actually
serve on the PCC. Even though the Editor of the Express
was in conflict with the PCC, that was one of the reasons given
by Gerry McCann for not going down that route. What is your view
about the fact that it is so aligned with the newspaper industry
that this self-regulation can appear to be less than credible?
Barbara Follett: I come back to
the point that I made earlier, which is that if you are going
to maintain the freedom that is done by the press they have to
recognise the wrong, they have to correct it. I am glad that the
Press Complaints Commission has changed the balance of professionals
and lay members on the Commission. Previously it was 50:50 and
now it is 66:33 and I think that is healthy. I would expect—and
I think this does occur—that if a complaint is made against
a particular newspaper, in this case the Express, then
the editor of that paper, if he/she was on the Commission, would
excuse themselves at that point and it would be dealt with by
his/her peers.
Q1078 Mr Hall: If the PCC ruled against
a particular newspaper, do you think that should then disqualify
the editor of the newspaper from serving on the PCC?
Barbara Follett: It would really
depend on the case. If it could be proved that that editor had
knowingly and willingly flouted the Code—and I think it
would be quite difficult to prove that because I believe that
most editors ever since 1991 do pay attention to the Code—then
I think there might be a case for the Press Complaints Commission
looking at doing that.
Q1079 Mr Evans: Minister, you said
that sometimes they will splash a story which they may even know
to be inaccurate simply to get the circulation and yet the apology
that comes several days later is hardly noticed because it is
so small. Would you like to see legislation put in place that
says that when a newspaper gets it wrong the apology should be
of equal prominence, on the same page where the original splash
was and roughly the same size to make sure that everybody knows
that what they did originally was wrong?
Barbara Follett: Can I correct
something first? What I said is that the apology is generally
far smaller and far more remote in relation to the story. I did
not say that they knew it to be inaccurate. Saying sorry is something
that is done towards the back of the paper in quite small type.
I do not know if it is necessary to legislate. What we should
do—and I know the Press Complaints Commission have looked
at this and have been much more proactive about it in the last
four years—is to get them to realise that that is the way
to build trust with their audiences and with people. I do not
know if you always need a law for that. I am not ruling a law
out. When the Secretary of State for Justice gave evidence to
this Committee he said he does not rule it out but it is only
when the balance goes badly off. We have got a system that is
quite complex and quite well balanced and I am proud of that system.
It has its successes and it has its failures. What we have to
do is to try and get the system to work. It would be a failure
if we had to put in a statutory measure.
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