Attack on freedom

SINCE the Leveson Inquiry, Press freedom in Britain has suffered its worst buffeting for 300 years, with most mainstream publications – including the Mail – now signed up to the toughest regulatory regime in the free world, policed by the independent body Ipso.

Yet from today, unelected Peers will seek to impose even more draconian curbs, with plans which would offer criminals, terror suspects, corrupt business leaders and cheating MPs protection from exposure, further undermining the public’s right to know.

Under a proposed amendment to the Data Protection Bill, planned legal safeguards for journalists and whistleblowers would be stripped away, forcing papers to reveal information they hold on subjects under investigation, who may then prevent publication. Another amendment would see the public interest in exposing wrongdoing trumped by an individual’s right to privacy.

Meanwhile, a third would limit journalistic exemptions for print publications to those subscribing to the state-approved regulator Impress, which covers just a handful of local papers and blogs and depends on money from the ex-F1 boss Max Mosley. Thus, Peers such as Lord Skidelsky – biographer of Mr Mosley’s father, fascist leader Sir Oswald, whom he has described as his ‘hero’ – hope to coerce papers into accepting curbs dictated ultimately by the state.

This paper makes no apology for raising the concerns of our own industry. For a free Press is an essential pillar of democracy and public safeguard against corruption in high places.

These amendments would dangerously undermine it – and that is a matter of fundamental concern to everyone who values liberty.