Leveson Inquiry

Debate between Harriet Harman and Lord Lilley

Monday 3rd December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for affording the House the opportunity to have this debate. Last week, following the Prime Minister’s statement, the House agreed that victims had suffered terribly, that the Press Complaints Commission had failed, and that we must have change. Today, we must focus on how we make that change.

Let me turn right away to the most controversial issue in the Leveson report—the question of statute. At the heart of today’s debate is whether we have independent self-regulation backed by law. It is important that we are clear about why statute is required and what it would do. We need statute because the current system of self-regulation has failed—year after year, for 70 years, and despite seven major reports. It has failed not because there are not people of good will in the press and not because last chances and dire warnings were not given—there are people of good will in the press and last chances and dire warnings were given. Each time there has been a new incarnation of self-regulation by the press, everybody has started with the best of intentions, but every time, because there is no oversight, standards have slipped and wrongdoing has returned.

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Does the right hon. and learned Lady recognise that the inquiry was set up because of two scandals—phone hacking and the bribing of police—both of which are against the law and neither of which will be tackled by the form of state intervention she is talking about?

[Ms Harman]

The inquiry was set up—I congratulate the Prime Minister on setting it up, and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition on demanding it—not only because the criminal and civil law were broken, but because the press demonstrably had not abided by their own standards that they set out in their code of conduct. To stop that happening again, we must decide who overseas the regulator, because currently no one does.