‘Leveson 2’ plan is threat to press freedom, senior peer warns

PLANS to force a second Leveson inquiry into newspaper standards risk curbing Britain’s free press, a senior peer has warned.

Lord Bew, a cross-bencher, said he was “very uneasy” about attempts to establish a so-called “Leveson 2”. “I have a strong bias in favour of press freedom,” he said. His comments came as peers launched a second bid to secure an amendment to the Government’s Data Protection Bill, which would effectively override a Conservative manifesto commitment to dropping the second stage of the inquiry.

Last week, a similar amendment, tabled by Ed Miliband, was defeated in the Commons by nine votes, after Matt Hancock, the Culture Secretary, insisted that the first stage had been a “diligent and thorough examination of the culture, practices and ethics”.

Newspapers have said that another inquiry is “unnecessary, open to exploitation by those seeking to destabilise media investigations, and would inevitably result in more recommendations damaging to freedom of speech.”

But Baroness Hollins, a crossbencher, has tabled an amendment to be debated tomorrow when the Bill re- turns to the Lords as part of “ping pong” between the two houses, in the final stages before it becomes law.

The amendment would require the Government to “establish an inquiry… into allegations of data protection breaches committed by or on behalf of national news publishers and other media organisations.”

Lord Bew, who chairs the Committee on Standards in Public Life, but was speaking in a personal capacity, said: “I am reluctant to engage in anything at all that looks to have even the slightest possibility of curbing the press.”

The peer, who sat on the joint Commons and Lords committee that scrutinised new libel laws in 2011, added: “One of Parliament’s achievements in recent years is to enhance press freedoms and I would be uneasy about anything that hinted of being Leveson 2.” Many of the cases that the second part of the inquiry was designed to consider have already “been acted on”, Lord Bew said. Last week’s defeat of Mr Miliband’s amendment, which was backed by the Labour front bench, came after the Lords approved a similar measure, also sponsored by Baroness Hollins, by 238 to 209 votes in January.