Abstract
There are many reasons for rejecting the alternative proposal for press regulation put up in April by the newspaper industry. None of them is good.
It's not enough to dismiss it because the papers have behaved very badly or because they are arrogant or because they came to the table too late. If the scheme put forward by the Mail, Telegraph, News International, Express and Trinity Mirror can not only introduce the self-regulation envisaged by Lord Justice Leveson, but also keep the industry united and involved in the process, then it's worth a punt.
We know that newspaper bosses have many unattractive qualities. In the face of their constant bullying, some of us more mild-mannered advocates of a free press have to remind ourselves why independence from statutory control is of such fundamental importance. Small wonder that the first response from Labour and the Liberal Democrats – and even the culture secretary Maria Miller – was to stick with the proposal they thought was agreed at a late night session in March. If you think you've got the beast caged up, the last thing you want to do is let it out again.
Yet the more the circumstances of that extraordinary evening negotiation are explored, the less attractive it becomes to base a new system of press regulation upon it. Why did it take place in the rooms of the Labour leader Ed Miliband? Was the Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin in command of his brief? Who let Hacked Off in? And who funds Hacked Off, anyway? If the group is helping to make our laws, it would be good to know. These are all proper questions, asked in a predictably forceful manner by the newspapers.
It soon became clear that the beast, far from being caged, was not even collared. The industry's alternative proposal, delivered in April and now available as a “Petition to The Sovereign in Council” on the website of the Privy Council, was a clever coup de theatre. That the papers had stolen a march was evident from the speed with which Evan Harris, a former Lib Dem MP and one of the leaders of the pressure group Hacked Off, moved to attack the new proposal: “A section of the industry is trying to reopen a battle that is over, and which they have lost. It is entirely predictable, but what they are doing is putting up two fingers to political leaders, parliament, the judge, the victims and, according to polls, most of their readers.”
Just because the papers are unpleasant doesn't mean they are wrong. The important thing is to avoid pique and, in studying the alternative proposal, go back to those basic questions: what is a new system of self-regulation designed to do? Does this proposal achieve those objectives? On first reading, the newspapers' proposals appear to address the points that Lord Justice Leveson raised and to do so in a way that – through an alternative “triple lock” – frees the British press from the yoke of statutory regulation. New regulation should provide a course of conduct for the future, not punishment for the past – and we shall not get very far if we set up a system in which our main papers refuse to participate. As for previous offences, they are now being addressed with remarkable zeal by the police.
It would be stretching it to say the press has approached any of this in a spirit of humility, but it appears at last to understand that it needs to concede such things as the right to veto members of the regulatory bodies. It is encouraging that the Prime Minister has indicated that this new proposal is up for discussion and that the process is delayed as a consequence. Politicians will do us a service if they approach the new proposal not in a sulky way, but with an open mind. They need to put out of their heads the idea this is some kind of stitch-up and consider it on its own merits. If it's not the answer, they need to tell us why, giving a more convincing reason than that the wicked newspapers are behind it.
As for the press, if this proposal flies, it would do well to avoid any note of triumphalism. In the words attributed to Harry S Truman: “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” To be clear: the press will not have fought a mighty campaign against oppressive government and statutory intervention. It will merely have avoided, at the very last minute, a mess entirely of its own making. Let us hope it will learn from the experience.