13 Jun 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has called for statutory backing of a reformed press regulator, while making the case for protecting press freedom.
Clegg told the Leveson Inquiry this morning that public confidence needed to be restored in the British press following the phone hacking scandal, but said a solution could “work in parallel”, noting that reforms to press regulation should be “balanced against those enshrining the freedom of the press and the ability of journalists to go after the truth without fear or impediment.”
“A little tweak here and there of a fundamentally flawed model is not going to solve this,” Clegg said, adding later that the recommendations Lord Justice Leveson is due to make in the autumn must lead to change that would celebrate and protect press freedom rather than denigrate it.
The Lib Dem leader said a statutory role should be in the “background” of any regulatory reforms, suggesting statute could play a part in incentivising or cajoling media groups to join into a reformed regulator.
Clegg said he had not yet seen a “convincing case for independent, voluntary regulation of the press” be made, referring to the Irish model as a “fascinating” example.
He made a strong case for supplementing regulatory reform with a stronger definition of the public interest to help guide and protect reporters. “If the press has confidence in a public interest that protects them,” Clegg said, it would “allow them to be a bit more comfortable with the unavoidable reforms of being held to account that they are anxious about.”
While he admitted that a “chilling effect” on press freedom would mean the country would be “losing something very precious”, he branded the claim — as alluded to by education secretary Michael Gove — that the Inquiry is chilling journalists as “preposterous”.
Despite asking his party to abstain on a vote in the Commons today over the future of Jeremy Hunt, Clegg defended the culture secretary’s handling of the £8bn BSkyB bid, arguing that Hunt had given the Inquiry a “full, good and convincing” account of how he handled the bid for the takeover of the satellite broadcaster.
Yet, reminiscent of business secretary Vince Cable’s claim that “veiled threats” had been made to the Lib Dems in connection with News Corp’s takeover bid, Clegg told the Inquiry that his colleague Norman Lamb had told him he had been warned that the party could expect “unfavourable treatment” from the Murdoch papers if they were not open to the bid.
“Norman was quite agitated about that”, Clegg said.
The Inquiry continues this afternoon with evidence from Scottish first minister Alex Salmond.
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12 Jun 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman today called for cross-party consensus on the Leveson Inquiry’s recommendations for future press regulation, suggesting also that the Inquiry examine media ownership.
Labour leader Miliband said he felt News International’s share of 34 per cent of the national newspaper market was “too much”, and suggested limiting media ownership to 20 to 30 per cent. “More than 30 per cent is worrying,” he said, adding that his aim was “plurality”.
Miliband said it was good for democracy to have plurality in the market, stressing that his intention was not “to stifle one organisation or another”, but instead that “one organisation does not exercise overweening power.”
Harman, Miliband’s deputy, stressed the “opportunity” presented by the Inquiry into press standards, which is due to report this autumn. “People want this sorted,” she said of the press malpractice that led to the Inquiry being launched last summer.
“They want a strong free press and want it to act fairly, not a dressed-up version of the status quo.”
She said a new system of redress that operated on a voluntary opt-in basis — similar to the Press Complaints Commission — would be “pointless”. Miliband suggested the need for a body independent of press and politicians and stressed he was “conscious of the limits of statutory recognition”, while still suggesting a kind of statutory support might be needed for a reformed PCC.
Both emphasised the need for cross-party support of Leveson’s recommendations, a topic Leveson himself alluded to yesterday in stressing his desire to avoid “inter-party politics and the politics of personality”.
“The default position for us as politicians must be to try our hardest to use the recommendations of the Inquiry to provide a framework for the future,” Miliband said.
Miliband gave an impassioned defence of press freedom, reminding the judge that his recommendations should protect it.
He highlighted what he saw as a “mutual culture of contempt” between the press and politicians, and that we were a “long way” from the ideal of a relationship of mutual respect between the two.
He told the Inquiry there had been a “failure of the establishment” not to have spoken out sooner on abuses by the press, noting that there had been a sense of fear, anxiety and unwillingness to do so.
He compared calling for a public inquiry into phone hacking in July 2011 to “crossing the Rubicon”, suggesting it would have been seen by News International as “an act of war”.
“In retrospect I wish I would have said it earlier,” Miliband said.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow with evidence from deputy prime minister Nick Clegg and Scottish first minister Alex Salmond.
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11 Jun 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
Chancellor George Osborne has defended his party’s decision to hire former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as the Conservatives’ communications chief.
In a seemingly well-rehearsed appearance before the Leveson Inquiry afternoon, Osborne stressed that it was Coulson’s “enormous amount of professional experience” editing a major national newspaper that made him a strong candidate for the job of communications director for the Conservative Party in July 2007.
Coulson told the Inquiry last month that he was personally approached by Osborne just months after his resignation following the jailing of former News of the World reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire on phone hacking offences.
Osborne conceded it was “controversial” to hire Coulson given the nature of his resignation, but downplayed the former editor’s links to News International. “What we were interested in hiring is someone who was going to do the job going forward. We thought he had the experience and the personality to do that,” Osborne said.
He added that he sought assurances from Coulson on phone hacking: “I asked him [Coulson] in a general sense (…) whether there was more in the phone hacking story that was going to come out that we needed to know about and he said ‘no’.”
Strenuously denying claims of a conspiracy between the Tory party and News Corp, the Chancellor referred to the media giant’s bid for the takeover of BSkyB as a “political inconvenience”, stressing he did not have “a strong view on the merits or demerits of the merger.”
“It was what it was, and was causing trouble with varous newspaper groups,” Osborne said, adding that he was also unaware of primer minister David Cameron or culture secretary Jeremy Hunt‘s views of the bid, which was eventually abandoned last summer in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.
He said that the December 2010 decision to hand over responsibility for the bid to Hunt — following the revelation of business secretary Vince Cable being secretly recorded as having “declared war” on News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch — was a “good solution” to keep Cable in government while passing over the responsibility of media plurailty to the department of culture, media and sport (DCMS). He said the decision, suggested by Number 10 permanent secretary, Jeremy Heywood, was settled in under an hour.
“The media department was the obvious place to look [to] when it came to the reallocation of responibilities for media policy within government,” Osborne said.
“The principal concern was that this was not something that should lead to the resignation of Dr Cable,” Osborne added, noting it would take a “real fantasist to believe we had knowingly allowed Cable to be secretly recorded”.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow with evidence from former prime minister Sir John Major, Labour leader Ed Miliband and Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman.
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11 Jun 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
Gordon Brown has denied that his wife Sarah gave consent to the Sun to run a 2006 story about their son suffering from cystic fibrosis, contesting the evidence given to the Leveson Inquiry by the paper’s then-editor Rebekah Brooks.
The former prime minister told the Leveson Inquiry this morning that there was “no question ever of explicit permission” given to the tabloid, denying Brooks’ claim that the Browns had given her permission to run the front-page story in November 2006, which revealed the couple’s four-month-old son was suffering from the disease.
Brown revealed he had received a letter of apology from the Fife health board, which stated it believed it was “highly likely” that there was unauthorised information given by a staff member that “allowed the Sun in end through this middleman to publish the story”.
Brooks told the Inquiry last month that the story came from a father of another child cystic fibrosis sufferer, and maintained she had the Browns’ express permission before publishing the story.
“If the Browns had asked me not to run cystic fibrosis story, I wouldn’t have,” she told the Inquiry.
But Brown said today that “no parent in the land…would have given explicit permission for this story”, claiming he and his family were presented with a “fait accompli” and had no choice over the story being published.
When asked by counsel Robert Jay QC why Sarah Brown arranged Brooks’s 40th birthday party in June 2008 and attended her wedding the following year, Brown said his wife was “one of the most forgiving people” and that she “finds the good in everyone”.
He also refuted claims made under oath to the Inquiry by News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch that Brown had “declared war” on the Sun during a 2009 conversation with the media mogul, following the tabloid switching its support to the Conservative party ahead of the 2010 general election.
“The conversation never took place,” Brown said, adding that there was “absolutely no evidence”, and that he felt it was “shocking” that the Inquiry had been told under oath that the conversation had occurred. He added that he was not surprised by the allegiance switch, believing it had been planned for “many, many months”.
He also made several digs at the tabloid for what he saw as sensationalised reporting of the war in Afghanistan, accusing its coverage of suggesting the Labour party “didn’t care about what was happening to our troops”. Brown said he still felt damage had been done to the war effort by such claims.
Discussing his dealings with media barons, Brown said he had a “duty” to engage with the press but that there was a “line in the sand” that he could not cross.
“You can serve dinner but don’t have to serve up BSkyB as part of that dinner,” he said, alluding to the recent storm over links between the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and News Corp over the bid for the takeover of the satellite broadcaster.
During his time as prime minister from 2007 to 2010, Brown said he “rarely” read newspapers, quipping: “I’m so obsessed by the newspapers I rarely read them”.
Elsewhere in his morning of evidence, Brown stressed his concerns for the future of “quality journalism” at one point suggesting a BBC licence fee model ought to be looked at for funding journalism in the future.
The Inquiry continues this afternoon with evidence from chancellor George Osborne.
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