Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]
Debate between Harriet Harman and Guy Opperman(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)
I rise to support the Government new clauses in the group and the manuscript new clauses standing in the name of the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. The manuscript new clauses arise out of the cross-party talks, into which I thank the Secretary of State for inviting us. That explains why hon. Members have not, I am afraid, had much time to look at them. We all want to be sure that hon. Members have the opportunity to scrutinise provisions in advance, but because we worked late into the night in attempting to agree them, they have been brought before the House with inadequate notice. I offer my apologies for that.
I hope to add to the points made by the Secretary of State, with which I greatly agree. Also, because hon. Members have not had much chance to look at the manuscript amendments and consider what they mean, I shall try to explain my understanding of how they sit with the new framework set out in the royal charter.
As the Secretary of State has said, the choice Leveson made was not to impose direct regulation on newspapers as a complaints system, but to invite them instead to set up their own regulation system and to encourage subscribers to it, not only because it is a good idea as the framework is fair and reasonable, but because incentives and disincentives have been provided. That, of course, leaves the choice to them—the point of incentives and disincentives is that they incentivise and disincentivise—but encourages them to go into the new regime.
It is also crucial—this is a major change—that a new arbitration system is being set up. Over the years, people have wrung their hands about how inaccessible the courts are to people who have been defamed, while newspapers have wrung their hands about being tied up for ages with the enormous costs that can arise if some oligarch takes a newspaper to court. Importantly, therefore, arising from the Leveson report is not just a new complaints system but a new arbitration system. Media torts, defamation and privacy claims that would otherwise have gone to court will instead go into the arbitration system. The manuscript new clauses on cost will incentivise not only newspapers but individual complainants to go into an arbitration system and not straight to court. There is an incentive for a complainant who wants to bring an action against a newspaper that is a member of a regulatory body to agree to arbitration, which will be available to members of the body and which will be run inexpensively. A complainant who does not want to go to arbitration, who says “I will take my chances in court” and who then wins the case will not win the costs, and costs may be awarded against that complainant. Arbitration will involve no cost to complainants, and they will benefit from a top-rate, legally kosher procedure without having to go to court.
Guy Opperman
I am delighted to observe that the Labour party studied the legislation in such detail before presenting it.
I should probably declare that I am a qualified mediator and arbitrator. Under the current system, people involved in arbitration can appeal against the process if they are not happy with it, and the litigation can begin anew. Would that arrangement continue, and how would an individual litigant defamed by a newspaper or any other publication bring an action, given that—contrary to what the right hon. and learned Lady has just said—the costs of arbitration are very high?
Ms Harman
The royal charter requires the regulator to provide for an inexpensively run arbitration service which will impose no costs on complainants. As the hon. Gentleman will know, things can happen further along the chain after arbitration has been agreed to, but the essence of arbitration is that both sides embark on it agreeing that the arbitrator will settle the issue.
I think that this will be a great step forward, because it will deal with the problem of inaccessibility. Most people who are defamed, or whose privacy has been invaded in what is termed a media tort, would never dream of being able to go to court, although many lawyers are prepared to act on the basis of conditional fee arrangements. A free-to-use arbitration service is therefore an important component of the Leveson package contained in the royal charter. It is good news for claimants, but it also means that newspapers will be well and truly incentivised not to remain outside the regulatory body. If they are not in the regulatory body and arbitration is therefore not available to those who may complain about them, it is possible that when the case goes to court, costs will be awarded against them even if they win.
Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)
Debate between Harriet Harman and Guy Opperman(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Ms Harman
I will proceed, if I may.
Despite the interventions, I know that Members in all parts of the House regard the question of truth, accuracy and full disclosure to Parliament as fundamental. We cannot settle for anything less if we are to hold Ministers to account. Putting it at its very lowest, there is prima facie evidence that the Secretary of State failed to give accurate and truthful information to the House.
On 3 March 2011—[Interruption.] I ask hon. Members to bear with me while I set out what I believe to be the facts at issue. On 3 March 2011, in reply to the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), the Secretary of State told the House that in respect of his handling of the Murdoch bid for BSkyB he had published
“all the documents relating to all the meetings—all the consultation documents, all the submissions we received, all the exchanges between my Department and News Corporation.”—[Official Report, 3 March 2011; Vol. 524, c. 526.]
I have here the documents that he published on that day. Many of them, such as written ministerial statements, the European intervention notice and press releases from the European Commission, were already in the public domain.
But when the Murdochs came to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry, we discovered that all the exchanges had not been published. No: there had been literally hundreds of exchanges between the Secretary of State’s Department and News Corporation that he had not published. Over the course of many months, both when the bid was the responsibility of the Business Secretary and when it was his responsibility, there had been literally hundreds of exchanges—texts, e-mails, reports of phone calls—none of which had been disclosed to this House. So while on 3 March 2011 we were told that the pile was only this big, a full year later, on 24 April, and thanks only to the Leveson inquiry, we discovered that it was this big. Even though the Secretary of State says that he did not know of the volume and content of the exchanges between his special adviser and News Corporation, he did know of their existence, because, as he told the House on 25 April, he had authorised those exchanges.
There is a second occasion where there is prima facie evidence of the Secretary of State not being accurate and truthful to the House. In answer to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Fiona O’Donnell) during his statement to the House on 25 April, he said that he
“made absolutely no interventions seeking to influence a quasi-judicial decision that was at that time the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Business.”—[Official Report, 25 April 2012; Vol. 543, c. 973.]
But it emerged during evidence to the Leveson inquiry that on 19 November 2010, when it was—