Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
Main Page: Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Labour - Life peer)Media: News Corporation
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, we as politicians are fond of quoting the famous dictum of Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, the former Prime Minister Harold Wilson, that a week is a long time in politics. The events of the past 10 days in British politics, British journalism and British policing are such that a better phrase might be, “Ten Days That Shook the World”, which is the title of the US journalist John Reed’s classic 1919 eyewitness account of the October 1917 Russian Revolution. The world may not quite have been globally shaken by the News International phone hacking scandal of the past 10 days, but the worlds of UK politics, media and policing have unquestionably been shaken to their very core.
Ten days ago, News International owned four major British newspapers. The bid from News International’s parent company, News Corporation, for total ownership and control of BSkyB, which in revenue terms is Britain’s biggest broadcaster, looked set to be nodded through by the Government. Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of the Sun and the News of the World reigned supreme at the pinnacle of UK media power as chief executive of News International. The political power of the company derived from the sheer scale of the circulation of its four titles and their reach into all parts and classes of Britain looked both unassailable and permanent.
A mere 10 days later, after 168 years of publication, Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper, the News of the World, is gone. News Corp’s bid for BSkyB is gone too—pulled off the table by the company in the face of concerted condemnation from across the political spectrum. Gone as well this morning is Rebekah Brooks, sacrificed or sacrificing herself to try to help save the company. Gone too, it seems—or at the very least substantially diminished—is the power, wielded over UK politics by News International and its founder Rupert Murdoch, of more than 40 years.
In comparison with the spring revolutions across the Middle East this year, let alone the Russian Revolution of 1917, this may not be that much of a change, but in comparison with what has run for so long in British journalism and British politics it is a revolution indeed. A number of factors led to this revolution. The most forceful and important has been the public. Public opinion can be hard to hear. Whole industries and a wide range of mechanisms, opinion polls, focus groups and all the rest have been established and have refined their techniques over many years to help us hear the public more clearly, but the moment the story exploded when the Guardian newspaper revealed last week—only last week—that the News of the World had been hacking into the mobile phone of the murdered 14 year-old schoolgirl Milly Dowler, the public mood was clear, unanimous and determined. Without opinion polls, focus groups, elections or any of the machinery of catching what the public are thinking and want, the public transmitted their views in every home, shop, pub, town and village in every part of the country and beyond these shores. What the public thought and wanted was transparent, forceful and undeniable.
The press has been vital. Good journalism has been the engine for driving out bad journalism. The work of the Guardian particularly, and especially of its brilliant and unswerving investigative reporter Nick Davies, on digging out what happened at the News of the World has eventually had an effect almost certainly far beyond what that newspaper and its journalists would probably have ever imagined. When the Guardian revealed that phone hacking by the News of the World had moved beyond politicians, celebrities and sports stars, and had spread into missing children, fallen soldiers, grieving parents and into police corruption, the issue crossed a line that marked, on one side, public indifference to what had been seen as a Westminster village insider story and, on the other, revulsion, horror, outrage and anger from people in all parts of the country and in all walks of life.
Parliament has been central to that revolution. My noble friend Lord Mandelson, a Member of your Lordships’ House who knows a thing or two about politics and the media and their interrelationship said this week that the reason politicians chose not to tackle issues around media reform was that they were too fearful to do otherwise. This is a daunting but wholly accurate charge. In a democracy, Parliament and politicians should of course be scrutinised by the public, and from that organisations and institutions such as the media seek both to inform the public and to reflect the public’s feelings, judgments and wants. However, that media scrutiny has over many decades become entangled with media power, and a particular kind of power. As Stanley Baldwin so brilliantly characterised it in 1931, it is “power without responsibility”.
Politician after politician, from the Prime Minister onwards, now accepts that the relationship between politicians and the press has got seriously out of kilter. Fear of the media and fear of the consequences of getting on the wrong side of the media prohibited articulation of that before now, but in the past 10 days it has been articulated and it has been Parliament that has articulated it. It might have done so belatedly, but there is a real sense that there has been a shift and that a ratchet has been turned that cannot be turned back. Politicians from all sides of the political spectrum—right, left or centre—now have the prospect of being freed from the shackles of fear that have characterised the relationship with too much of the media. There has been fear of an unfavourable front page and fear of the public being turned against them by the media. As James Forsyth, who is not much of a friend of my party, says in this week’s Spectator:
“Rupert Murdoch’s hold on British politics has finally been broken”.
If that is the case, I, for one, am glad. That the spell has been broken means that the concentration of power is fragmenting.
When in the 1990s I was trying to defend my party’s relationship with the Murdoch press, my late husband, a principled and moral man of strong values, was critical. He was right and he would have been much relieved by the events of the past 10 days. It is the first time for decades that we, as politicians of all stripes, have started to regain our moral courage in relation to sections of the media. Some parliamentarians before now have, with real bravery, taken a stand over a much longer period. Labour MPs Chris Bryant and Tom Watson in the Commons, the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, from the Conservative Benches in this House, and my noble friend Lord Prescott, are most prominent among them. My right honourable friend Ed Miliband, our party’s leader, has brilliantly led the way on this issue. I pay tribute, too, to my noble and learned friend Lady Scotland of Asthal, the shadow Attorney-General, for all the close legal work that she has been carrying on behind the scenes.
In the face of the Motion put down by the leader of the Labour Party in the other place, which drew support from all sides of the House, News Corp withdrew its bid for BSkyB. Parliament in the form of the House of Commons spoke with one voice, and even the most powerful of organisations had to heed that message. I imagine that today in this House we, too, will speak with one voice, which I welcome. News Corp’s decision meant that this House no longer had to debate the same Motion today, but we can play our part. As I said, we on these Benches look to your Lordships’ House today to speak with a similar singleness of purpose.
The events of the past 10 days are in all likelihood a long way from playing themselves out. Criminal investigations are likely to lead to criminal prosecutions. The FBI is now involved in the USA. The inquiry the Government have established, which we called for strongly and now warmly welcome, has a great deal of work to do, which will take a while. This will be a long revolution but it will be a revolution with many twists and turns. If earlier this week it felt as though the scandal had peaked with News Corp pulling its bid for BSkyB, it certainly does not feel like that today with the resignation, accepted this time by the Murdoch empire, of Rebekah Brooks. And it will not feel like that next week when Ms Brooks, by then free of her responsibilities as News International’s chief executive although probably not from her contractual obligations, is due to be joined by who will by then be her former bosses, Rupert Murdoch and his son James, to give evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee in the other place.
However, the nature of what has taken place and how it is being addressed means that this is a long-running issue, which in turn means that despite the imminent pressure of events there is a real opportunity now to get things right. The agenda to get things right, which the Prime Minister has laid out—police reform, press reform and political reform—is clearly the correct one and we on these Benches support it. Indeed, it is an agenda which my party has been promoting. Even within the constraints of criminal investigations, it is an agenda which the Leveson inquiry needs to begin to tackle. Like the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, I believe that it is an agenda to which we as politicians must respond with humility. Later in the debate, my noble and learned friend Lady Scotland will set out some of her ideas on issues prompted by the events of the past 10 days to be taken forward.
Even when you are living through them, revolutions can be hard to spot. It is not difficult when it is Egypt this spring or Moscow in 1917, but it is harder when it is an invisible but no less potent change such as the advent of the internet or of social media. Some of those changes have been behind the media desperation that lies at the heart of phone hacking, the ruthless competition that drove the News of the World to do things that could not and should not in any decency have been contemplated, let alone carried out, but however desperate and however hard the competition, whatever the reason, that can never be an excuse for what went on in Wapping. Criminal acts are criminal acts. The scale of phone numbers that have now been listed suggests not only that this went on, and not only was it regarded as normal, but that it would in effect have been automatic. As soon as someone—anyone, it did not matter who—was in a story, their phone was hacked. In other words, there were no limits on behaviour.
However, the public do have limits, which are set by the rule of law, by values, by community, by families and by good manners. What we have seen over the past 10 days is a world apparently without limits where a powerful group, the media, felt itself to be beyond the law and where any behaviour is acceptable and anything goes. We have seen that come into conflict with a world where limits do matter, where decency and good behaviour matter, and where standards matter—and where, over the course of the past 10 days, those values have won. No one can say that this will not lead to a permanent settlement and a new way of how these important institutions, what they do and what they stand for, will work in practice, but here and now there is a chance to learn; as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said, it is a chance for real change. That chance for change, for a small revolution in the worlds of the press, the police and of politics, is worth all of us—the press, the police, politicians and above all the people—seizing and working to secure.
Baroness O'Cathain
I beg to move that the noble Lord be no longer heard. This is wrong. Despite the fact that we did not say aye or nay, or content or not content, we assumed that the noble Lord would take the mood of the House. Other people came late as well and took not the mood but the convention of the House and did not speak.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, as the noble Baroness says, it is indeed correct that the convention of the House is that if one is not here at the beginning of the debate, one should scratch. However, there are mitigating circumstances. Although I appreciate that people should be here long before the start of a debate, it is difficult if one is told that it will be an hour and a half later. I therefore suggest that rather than noble Lords who were not here at the beginning of the debate giving their full speeches, they should limit their speeches to two minutes. I have been speaking to my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, who asked if she might speak in the gap for a couple of minutes. Personally, I would find that acceptable. I am not a Whip, but I put that forward as a way through this matter.
Lord Soley
Before the noble Lord responds, perhaps I may clarify that part of the problem was the uncertainty yesterday about the start time of this debate, when we were being told by people on the government side that it would start at 12.30 pm. I missed the first few minutes of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, which was not very long, but it was primarily because I had a delay elsewhere. I want some guidance on this. One problem with the House is that we do not have clear start times. It would save everybody a lot of problems if we did. My view is that in a debate of this nature, we should let people speak.
Lord De Mauley
I am grateful to all noble Lords. I suggest that we proceed with the debate. If the House wishes to hear the noble Lord, Lord Birt, perhaps he would like to keep his comments as brief as he possibly can.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I do not wish to prolong this. I have no objection should the noble Lord wish to continue and should that be the will of the House, However, if the noble Lord, Lord Birt, is going to speak, then I think that for reasons of equity it should be possible for my noble friends Lord Gilbert and Lord Myners, as well as the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, also to speak.