Leveson Inquiry

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I do not accept the underlying premise that all this can be settled by courts and the criminal justice system. Kate and Gerry McCann had their privacy abused and were subject to the most shocking and vile accusations, which they could not have possibly remedied through the law. The hon. Gentleman should read Gerry McCann’s evidence if he really thinks it is undemocratic or illiberal to suggest that maybe we should set up a system that can help people such as them. Gerry McCann went to the Press Complaints Commission and was basically told, “Sorry, there is nothing we can do.” Surely, one would have to have a heart of stone not to accept that there is something seriously, seriously wrong when there is nothing that helps Kate and Gerry McCann. I strongly refute the hon. Gentleman’s idea that it is illiberal and undemocratic to help them.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Given what the Deputy Prime Minister has said and what the Leader of the Opposition said earlier, the Prime Minister now seems to have become a marginal figure on this issue. Therefore, will the Deputy Prime Minister work with the Leader of the Opposition, the First Minister of Scotland and the Taoiseach na hEireann, Enda Kenny, to find, where possible, common ground in this free movement area of the UK and Ireland in press regulation?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The Prime Minister has initiated the cross-party talks. They will happen shortly and I hope that, with good will, we can make progress. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Irish model. There are similarities between the Irish model and what Lord Justice Leveson is suggesting. They are not identical by any stretch of the imagination. In many ways, the Irish model is a much more direct form of the statutory establishment of a regulator than the indirect verification of a self-established regulator set up by the press. There is an important qualitative difference between the two, although, as I said earlier, it is remarkable that a number of British newspapers operate, as far as I can make out, relatively comfortably under the more exacting—dare it say slightly more illiberal?—system that exists across the Irish sea.