Peers vote for inquiry into press standards
Government now plans to force a vote in Commons next week to overturn the Lords amendment
The House of Lords defied MPS by voting to order the start of the second part of the Leveson inquiry. The Government narrowly saw off an attempt to implement the statutory inquiry into press standards but the proposal was revived in an amendment to the same Bill in the Lords.
PEERS have risked a constitutional wrangle by defying MPS and voting to order the start of the second part of the Leveson inquiry.
Members of the House of Lords voted by 252 to 213 – a majority of 39 – to order a statutory inquiry into press standards. The vote means that the Commons will have to vote again, possibly as early as Tuesday, to reject the Lords’ amendment.
Last week the Government narrowly saw off an attempt to implement the second stage of the Leveson inquiry in the Commons by 304 votes to 295.
The proposal was revived in a similar amendment to the same Bill by Baroness Hollins, a crossbench peer, being brought before the House of Lords.
Lady Hollins said: “The illegal conduct which led to part one of Leveson is now known to be far more extensive and to go beyond phone hacking. More revelations emerge every week. It’s an inquiry into criminality, corruption and abuse. In any other industry the press would be demanding an inquiry and yet their opposition is uniform.”
Three former Tory ministers voted against the Government: Lord Blencathra (who as Conservative MP David Maclean sought to weaken Freedom of Information laws a decade ago); Baroness Warsi; and Earl Attlee. Last night Matt Hancock, the Culture Secretary, said the Government would force a vote in the House of Commons to overturn the Lords’ amendment.
The attempt to force a rethink was condemned during the three-hour debate in the House of Lords.
Lord Grade of Yarmouth, the former chairman of ITV and BBC, pointed to important journalistic reports which had uncovered serious wrongdoing, such as The Daily Telegraph’s exposure of the MPS’ expenses scandal.
He added: “What lies behind the amendment is another attempt to exercise some statutory controls or levers over our free media. Any inquiry is
‘What lies behind the amendment is another attempt to exercise some levers over our free media’
bound to produce recommendations with the risk to free speech of some statutory device – overt or covert – buried in the recommendations.”
Lord Black of Brentwood, the deputy chairman of Telegraph Media Group, pointed out there had been a “wholesale change in press regulation” since the Leveson inquiry in November 2012.
He said newspapers were engaged in a “struggle for survival on a day-to-day basis” which would be “made more complicated by having to wind the clock back 10 or 15 years to rake over a world which frankly no longer exists”.