MR GRANT’S WILD CLAIMS . . . AND THE TRUTH
YESTERDAY, on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme, Hugh Grant made a string of allegations about Press regulation. Here, Home Affairs Editor JAMES SLACK examines the actor’s claims:
CLAIM: Our executive (the politicians) are in hock to the big newspaper barons.
REALITY: On the contrary, Hugh Grant’s lobby group has been allowed to call the shots at Westminster. The Royal Charter Mr Grant wants to impose on the Press was cobbled together over 2am takeaway pizzas in Ed Miliband’s office, with Hacked Off in attendance. Britain’s 4,000-plus newspapers and magazines were not even told the meeting was taking place.
CLAIM: A small rump of the Press – the Telegraph group, the Mail and News International – refuses to accept any system that would make them accountable for their actions.
REALITY: Not a single national or local newspaper has signed up to the politicians’ Royal Charter. It is a nonsense to suggest newspapers do not want to be accountable. The alternative regulator proposed by the Press would have the power to ensure up-front corrections and impose £1million fines for ‘systematic wrongdoing’.
CLAIM: The Hacked Off-backed Royal Charter has been voted upon by both Houses of Parliament. To frustrate its progress is a subversion of the democratic will.
REALITY: The charter put forward on March 1 8 was never debated in Parliament, which merely had before it a motion that day to ‘consider … the Prime Minister’s intention to submit the Charter to the Privy Council’. There was no division on a substantive motion. The only vote that took place was on a technical timetabling motion relating to clauses on exemplary damages in the Crime and Courts Bill.
CLAIM: Politicians are terrified of the Press and do everything they can to oblige the Press barons.
REALITY: If Ed Miliband, David Cameron and Nick Clegg are scared of anyone, it is Hacked Off – they’ve given them everything they want. If they are scared of the Press, why are they imposing – in the face of fierce opposition – a system that not a single newspaper supports?
CLAIM: Any further compromise to the Royal Charter promoted by Hacked Off would be a betrayal of the victims of Press intrusion.
REALITY: To date, there has been no compromise at all. The Royal Charter currently before Parliament is unchanged from the deal agreed by Mr Grant’s friends over pizza in March.