No to Leveson 2

Just days after the Commons defeated Ed Miliband’s attempt to trigger yet another inquiry into the press, the Lords will debate it all over again tomorrow via a fresh amendment to the Data Protection Act. There is no case for a Leveson 2. Nearly £50million has already been spent on press investigations; the genuine offenders, who were very few in number, have been punished. The vast majority of newspapers, including this one, now operate under a rigorous new independent regulator called Ipso.

Given that a Leveson 2 is completely unnecessary, one can infer two reasons for why some people seem determined to push on with the debate at any cost. First, there was a separate but related effort last week to corral the press into the state-approved regulator Impress, under the threat of having to pay all legal costs for complaints brought against publications, whether they succeed or fail. There is an unfortuantely authoritarian streak in our body politics that wants to regulate newspapers by statute and thus expose them to political scrutiny and control.

Second, this is about retribution. It is true, of course, that some individuals have legitimate grievances about how they were treated in the past. But while there certainly is crossbench support for Leveson 2, some of its loudest backers are part of a Left-wing that believes it would have won every election since 1951 had it not been for a few embarrassing press headlines. This is a fantasy. The press investigates, exposes and holds the powerful to account – and that, ultimately, is why some men and women hate it so much. It’s up to the Government to inform them politely yet firmly that they are wasting Parliament’s time.