SMALL-MINDED EMBITTERED POLITICIANS AND A MONSTROUS INVERSION OF JUSTICE

DESPITE the shameful phone hacking by red-top tabloids more than a decade ago and despite the financial hardship suffered by all newspapers as a result of the internet, the irony is that the last few years have been a golden period for Britain’s free Press.

Major investigations into child abuse in Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford, exposés of how charity workers w ere d emanding s ex f or a id and the Mail’s great campaign against plastic pollution have made Britain a better country to live in.

Indeed, we are proud of our record. We have fought to improve-knowledge of sepsis andprostate cancer, exposed the way charities target vulnerable old people and were at the fore front of the battle to achieve justice for the Windrush generation.

We forced a rethink on the routine deployment of armed police on Scotland’s streets and led the way on a bottle deposit scheme that will slash pollution.

Our G KN campaign forced a whole string of concessions that will ensure the engineering giant’s new owners can’t sell off vital defence assets without ministerial approval.

We exposed the disgraceful hounding of British soldiers by unscrupulous l awyers, h elped s ecure the freedom of jailed Marine Sgt Alexander B lackman a nd p rompted the Government to fund a massive new research programme into prostate cancer.

And more than anyone, we have uncovered the anti-Semitism and thuggery prevalent in labour’s ranks.

In short, we and the rest of the-Press have been doing our job – rooting out in justice-and- holdingthe powerful to account.

Yet instead of celebrating the vital work of the Fourth Estate, the small-minded, venal and frankly second-rate individuals who too often form our political class are determined to destroy us.

The Commons votes today on two amendments to the Data Protection Act which not only seek to bring the Press under state control but could drive many smaller regional papers out of business.

The first mirrors the notorious Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act, which Culture Secretary Matt Hancock wisely refused to implement.

It would force papers not signed up to the state-backed regulator Impress (ie every national and nearly every local paper) to pay the legal costs of both sides in any data protection case – even if they win. Sleazy celebrities and dishonest businessmen would be given a licence to persecute those who expose t heir wrong-doing A ND m ake them foot the bill. In any just society, this is simply wrong.

The second amendment calls for yet a nother i nquiry i nto t he c onduct of the Press – as if the original eight-month-leves-on-inquiry-and-subsequent string of failed criminal trials (estimated cost, £49million) weren’t more than enough.

Significantly, the men behind these proposals are embittered failures. One is labour’s Tom Watson, who shamelessly whipped up the VIP paedophile hoax and is funded by Max Mosley, devotee of German-themed orgies and bankroller of Impress, w hose d ark r acist p ast t his paper recently exposed, raising the disturbing question of whether he had perjured himself during the News of the World ‘orgy’ trial.

The other is Ed Mi lib and, the most inept labour leader in living memory andaman whose lack of self knowledge and judgment is matched only by his hatred of the Press.

They are being cheered on by an ex-editor of the Guardian (which – surprise, surprise – Mr Watson has exempted from his Section 40 amendment). Having virtually destroyed his own paper, he’s now trying to do the same to the rest of the Press.

The truth is there is no need or public appetite for another inquiry. Phone hacking is history. It was dealt with under existing laws and the journalists responsible jailed.

With almost all major papers now signed up to the tough new independent r egulator I PSO, s tricter privacy and data protection laws-andpunishing libel damages, the-Press is more controlled and accountable than ever before.

By contrast, the internet ( which, in a monumental m is judgment ,leveson all but ignored) drips with fake n ews, p ornography a nd t errorist propaganda, for which billionaire, tax-avoiding social media tycoons are allowed to escape responsibility. Meanwhile newspapers, which have to deal with massive legal and regulatory c onstraints t hat a rguably already inhibit their freedom to expose and investigate, fight to produce accurate, responsible journal is mina shifting, mendacious world.

Today’s amendments pose a still greater threat to their ability to do that. The tragedy is, we have a political class that, by and large, just can’t see that.