The need to Impress

To The Observer

Nick Cohen is right (“We need a special court for free speech, delivering justice to all”) to call for an inexpensive court, but if he looks at the inquiry report he will see that is precisely what Leveson has proposed.

A newspaper, said Leveson, did not have to belong to a recognised regulator, and thus an inexpensive arbitration scheme, but if it didn’t, and insisted on using the courts, it could be ordered to pay the costs of both sides if this were “just and equitable in all the circumstances of the case”.

Is that not fair? If you and I are going on a journey together and I can only afford the bus, surely you should pay if you insist that we both travel in a Rolls-royce?

A large part of the national press hated this. The last thing they want is to eliminate the financial barrier that prevents most people challenging them. So they decided to ignore the Royal Charter and set up a virtual copy of their old, wholly discredited Press Complaints Commission, but with a slightly more credible chairman.

In response, a small group led by Jonathan Heawood set up a Royal Charter-compliant regulator, Impress, with the intention of securing recognition. But Impress had a financial problem. With the help of lawyers, a structure was set up to enable money from our family charitable trust to reach Impress in a way that gave me no influence or control. This was challenged by the major newspapers. Eventually, it reached the High Court where two judges said there was “nothing” to the newspapers’ claim that Impress was not fully independent. Max Mosley, London