Media Regulation

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 11:38 am on 28 February 2012.

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Photo of Helen Goodman Helen Goodman Shadow Minister (Culture, Media and Sport) 11:38, 28 February 2012

I am glad that the Minister is nodding; we clearly have a consensus on that. However, if there is to be more discipline in relation to processes, that obviously requires the institutions, organisations and corporations themselves to have some proper internal management control.

[Sandra Osborne in the Chair]

I am pleased to welcome you to the Chair, Ms Osborne.

I have to say that it was pathetic to hear James Murdoch before the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport saying that he did not know in answer to all the questions that the Committee was putting to him. I am leaving to one side the question whether all those answers were, strictly speaking, accurate and truthful. He seemed to think that not knowing was some kind of excuse, but in a well run organisation, the people at the top should know what is going on. It is not an excuse not to know. I have written about that in more detail, and people can see what I have written on my website. I now want to talk about the move to a new system and the criteria that a new system must fulfil.

My right hon. and learned Friend Ms Harman made a speech in Oxford last month, in which she highlighted three criteria. A new system must be independent, must be citizen-centric and must have 100% coverage of all newspapers. At the same conference shortly afterwards, and very helpfully, Ed Richards, the head of Ofcom, spelt out the meaning of independence. Independence means independent of political influence and independent of those who are regulated. The system needs to be independent of those who are regulated with respect to the decisions that are taken, the governance and the budgetary control.

Mr Richards went on to set out other qualities that a good system should have. He mentioned clear objectives, an investigative capacity, transparency of process, power to sanction and public accountability—something that we have not looked at enough in relation to the PCC, which is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act or all the usual accountability mechanisms of bodies that are pursuing public interests. The system must also be accessible to complainants.

In the light of what has happened, I would like to add four further points. No one should be above the law. The financial compensation that people receive should be related to the wrong that they have suffered, not the depth of their own back pocket. We need to see competent management systems and proper audit trails in the media industries. As Esther McVey said, we need to look across to the new media as well, because otherwise we could simply set up a system or see a system set up that made traditional newspapers completely uneconomic, with everything migrating to the net. We would then have the wild west on the net, which would not be acceptable, so the hon. Lady was right to raise that point.

Obviously, this is a difficult and complex area, and it would be good if the industry could produce some solutions that met the criteria that have been outlined. So far, we have seen some very positive and interesting ideas put forward to Lord Justice Leveson by Alan Rusbridger in relation to the Reynolds defence and the Omand principles, which show what The Guardian has done and how it has kept ahead of the PCC code.

We have also seen proposals from the current chair of the PCC, Lord Hunt of Wirral, who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda reminded the Chamber, takes the Tory Whip in the House of Lords. Lord Hunt seems to be putting forward a convoluted construction of commercial contracts between press and regulator. I would like to ask a number of questions about that proposal. First, is it not the institutionalisation of agency capture? Secondly, if it is based on contracts between the regulator and the regulated, how can the regulator be truly independent? Will not the regulator always be looking over his or her shoulder to see whether membership or income might be lost? That does not seem to meet the criteria for independence set out by Ed Richards in his speech.

My next question is how the proposal can guarantee 100% coverage. Of course, it might guarantee 100% coverage in the short term. It might be that Lord Hunt, who is an extremely persuasive and plausible man, can get people to sign up now, but what guarantee is there that people will not subsequently want to leave such a system? Is it not really designed to maintain the existing “cosy club” style of regulation? Do other hon. Members really believe that those commercial contracts will satisfy the public, given everything that they have seen come out in the Leveson inquiry?

On Sunday, on the television, Lord Hunt claimed that he had the support of political parties for the proposal. I have to say that he does not have the support of Her Majesty’s Opposition for the proposal. Has the Minister met Lord Hunt? Has the Minister agreed the proposal? I believe that we should wait for Lord Justice

Leveson to fulfil the inquiry that the whole House agreed it wanted him to undertake. We all agreed that that was important—that we needed the independence of a senior judge. I hope that the Minister will say that he, too, agrees that we should wait for Lord Justice Leveson to report, and that he does not accept the hysterical criticisms that were made of Lord Justice Leveson by the Secretary of State for Education.