The poisonous trap set by the enemies of British free speech
A passionate plea to repeal laws to shackle the press, before we’re caught in...
IMAGINE a world in which the rich, the influential and the plain malevolent are no longer subject to proper public scrutiny – where corporate executives in the luxury of chrome and glass towers are, like the landlords of uninhabitable slums, free to break the law without fear of question, let alone criticism, from the press.
It is one in which the MPs expenses scandal would never come to light, in which the threat of the libel courts would be enough to kill all journalistic enquiries stone dead.
Far-fetched as this might sound, it is the world we are about to enter. If they are not repealed, new laws will take effect next month which will undermine the tradition of free speech that has served Britain well for 300 years. Press freedom in Britain faces a dire and immediate threat. Here in the UK we face the prospect of a state-sanctioned regulator, backed by Royal Charter, exercising ultimate control over what we can read in our newspapers. Abroad, campaigners for freedom of speech, who consider this country’s tradition an example to emulate, face grotesque betrayal.
The reason? A poisonous trap, left on the statute book in the aftermath of the Leveson Report, is about to snap shut. If it closes it will impose the most severe restrictions on the freedom of the press in any advanced democracy.
A series of legal measures including clauses under the Crime and Courts Act 2013 and the consequences of the Royal Charter (all due to be implemented in the coming weeks) include imposing punitive legal costs against newspapers that refuse to submit to supervision by the State; limits on contacts between the police and journalists that may endanger the administration of justice, and new ways for the powerful to prevent reporting about their affairs.
Under the Act, judges will even be able to impose costs and damages on newspapers that win libel cases.
A paper might prove its allegations but still be punished because it has not signed up to the Royal Charter on press regulation. Of course, not a single newspaper – national or local – will sign. To do so would be such a blatant breach of democratic principle that it is simply unthinkable.
But the effect of not doing so will be chilling. Take the press exposure of MPs’ expenses. Faced with the threat of hundreds of libel suits from
An appalling outcome that’s not supported by most MPs
hundreds of MPs, no newspaper could possibly think of running such a story because – win or lose – the costs would be prohibitive.
It threatens, too, the sort of work which local newspapers can and should do: investigating employers who maintain unsafe, unhealthy workplaces, perhaps. Again, the mere prospect of legal action would mean such stories are too risky to pursue.
Our newspaper industry sets an example watched closely around the world. We owe it to people struggling to win freedom of speech not to set an example that will undermine their efforts.
Yet even now, British newspapers are under assault. An appalling example – a direct result of the Leveson Inquiry – is the police’s Operation Elveden investigation into payments by journalists to public officials. This cost £20million and achieved the conviction of only one journalist out of 34 arrested or charged.
It ended only when the Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, announced a humiliating climb down. The malicious zeal with which the police pursued journalists simply doing their jobs was a national disgrace.
Britain faces a crucial choice. Since the abolition of press licensing in 1695, our newspapers have been free from interference by government. Now our Parliament is preparing to restrict editorial independence.
I do not believe a majority of MPs want this appalling outcome. The principle that journalists should work according to the law, but entirely free of supervision by the State, has been cherished since the reign of Queen Victoria.
Tragically, the moral panic created by phone hacking persuaded politicians in the last parliament to ignore hard-won freedoms. Instead of treating phone hacking as a criminal offence – which it was, and remains – they allowed themselves to be fooled by an ideological cabal determined to tame the press through regulation.
Operating under the banner of the Hacked Off campaign and helped by celebrities such as Hugh Grant, these enemies of popular newspapers insist a regulator sanctioned by the State should make the final decisions about what you are entitled to read.
Under various different flags of convenience, the same sanctimonious zealots have sought the same atrocious restrictions since 1979. They remain dangerously wrong. No matter how ostensibly well intentioned, regulation of the press by any organisation authorised by the State creates the polar opposite of true press freedom.
The threat those failed Elveden prosecutions exposed is far from dead. Leveson recommended restrictions on everyday contact between police officers and journalists. He blithely underestimated the extent to which such contacts have helped to solve crimes by encouraging witnesses to come forward. They also prevent the totalitarian horror of secret arrests.
If Parliament allows these recommendations, whistleblowers may choose not to reveal what they know. Then we will all be losers.
I pray that, instead of allowing the toxic legacy of Leveson to damage freedom of expression, Parliament will install legal protection for newspapers in, for example, a new British Bill of Rights. If they do not, Britain risks being humiliated internationally.
It is time for MPs to shake off any lingering resentment that newspapers exposed their lavish expense accounts and do their duty. Winston Churchill said: ‘A free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize… the vigilant guardian of the rights of the ordinary citizen.’
We cannot afford to forget it.