Anonymity (Arrested Persons) Bill

Mike Freer Excerpts

Friday 4th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

My hon. Friend is quite right—that is exactly what I am trying to do. I do not want to turn this into a debate about press freedom, because it is not as simple as that.

I should like to explain where I am coming from—a dreadful modern expression, but it is an accurate description. About 30 years ago, I first became involved in student politics—you may remember those times, Mr Speaker. I was a student reading law—you were probably at kindergarten—and I became involved in student politics. I then trained to become a barrister. Student politics, rather bizarrely, took me to Scotland, because I won an election. I blame not just the good students of Stirling university for that but my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer)—we, too, go back many years. I ended up as the honorary president of Stirling university, and I was in need of a job.

It had always been my intention and ambition to work in the broadcast media, for reasons that I do not need to divulge to the House. The only good advice that I ever got about how to achieve my ambition was to start on a local newspaper and learn my trade as a journalist. I did that. I worked for a year on a newspaper called the Alloa and Hillfoots Advertiser and Journal. It was a great publication. It employed at least two reporters, and I was one of them. I covered everything, from the fortunes of Alloa Athletic right through to the editing of the pigeon club—one of my greatest moments in journalism. In all seriousness, I honed a trade there. I learned a great deal. At that time we never published the name and address of anybody who was arrested, because a convention existed.

In due course I was lucky enough to go into television. I worked in television for many, many years, not just as a presenter, but as a reporter. I have always been very proud of my membership of the National Union of Journalists. I was shop steward. That does not make me a good journalist, but I hope it explains where I am coming from, and I do not want my remarks to be seen as an attack on all the people with whom I had the great honour to work and whose skills I still admire.

If we look at what is happening in Egypt, we know that it is because of the courage of the media there that not just all of us know what is going on there, but most importantly, the people of that country, notwithstanding the oppression in place, know what is happening. We sometimes forget the invaluable work that the media do, and how brave and courageous many reporters are, especially in such situations. I am keen to emphasise that this is not an attack on the media, but it is a serious criticism of the antics that have prevailed for too long among certain sections of the media. That is what the Bill seeks to address.

I mentioned events in Bristol. Let me make it clear that I do not intend to name anybody, and I am sure that hon. Members will also be keen not to name anybody, save for this: I do not think there is anybody who is not aware of the publicity and media coverage that was given to the first man who was arrested following the murder of Joanna Yeates. It is right and fair to say that everybody with any sense of decency and sensibility has accepted that the coverage of that individual was, if not outrageous, as I believe it was, certainly unacceptable and plain wrong. It is as if we had forgotten that one is innocent in this land until proven guilty. Unfortunately, it is not the first time that that has happened, but it is the most extreme case that we have seen.

Everyone tends to forget that on being arrested, a person suffers the trauma of the arrest. It is difficult to imagine a worse accusation than to be accused of taking somebody’s life, raping someone or doing something horrible to a child. There is the trauma of the process and the nature of the allegation, and on top of that, the person’s name and address appear in the local paper. If it is a high-profile case, they appear in the national papers.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

It is not just the naming of someone as a person of interest. If we recall the landlord in Bristol, it was the castigation, the crawling over of that gentleman’s background, the questioning of his looks, his eccentricity and his sexuality that were abhorrent and that will follow him around for ever. Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem is not just the naming, but the castigation that follows such people around afterwards?

[Anna Soubry]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes exactly the point that is most pertinent. It is the vilification. I have used the expression and I do not hesitate to use it again. What we saw in Bristol was, in effect, a feeding frenzy and vilification. Much of the coverage was not only completely irrelevant, but there was a homophobic tone to it which I found deeply offensive. The slurs on the man were out of order. All good and decent people in this country accept that. I include in that number fellow journalists.

I am grateful to all the people who have contacted me by letter or e-mail. Among them have been journalists, some of whom wanted to speak privately. Among good, sensible journalists there is a desire now for clarity. I will deal in due course with the Contempt of Court Act 1981. It as if those journalists want us, as Parliament, to help them in a way that they cannot do themselves. They cannot self-regulate because of the financial pressure that is being placed especially on our newspapers and on our broadcast media. I shall deal with that point later.

Enough is enough. We must do something about the matter and stop it. It is not just ordinary members of the public and journalists who want clarity and who want the present practice to end; it is also the police. I shall touch on that as I go through my speech. The man who was first arrested in Bristol was not the first, but I want him to be the last. There are other examples. Again, I am grateful for the e-mails that I have received and the information that I have been given from various sources to remind me of other people who have found themselves in a similar position.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Buckland]

My hon. Friend is right to put a high degree of faith in the judgment and good sense of ordinary people in making the distinction between what they would see as authoritative sources of information and the sort of tittle-tattle that fills far too many social networking sites. A judge giving a direction to a jury can deal with such mischief and, if I may say so, my hon. Friend sounded a little judicial in his intervention, because I can imagine a judge saying to a jury at the beginning of a trial, “Please disregard any gossip you may see on websites. Don’t tweet. Don’t look at Facebook. Disregard all those websites.” There is a great difference between information and knowledge.

[Mike Freer]

I am not a lawyer, so I do not profess to know the technicalities of the difference between information, gossip and libel, but can my hon. Friend confirm that the written media carry much more weight than the internet?

My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) mentioned libel, but often, the points that are reported are facts. The gentleman in Bristol was gay, he was eccentric and he was a teacher, but it is the insinuation that is wrapped around such facts that causes the damage. That gentleman was referred to as a teacher at a school, within a mile of which a murder had taken place several years previously. All that is factual, but the insinuation that the media wrap around such facts causes the damage that needs to be controlled.

[Mr Buckland]

I agree with my hon. Friend about the assertion of facts that could be prejudicial to any future investigation, although I would say that I am now of the view that internet and print media are indistinguishable. The only difference between them is that today’s print is tomorrow’s firelighters—tomorrow’s chip paper, as I think I called it in another debate. The problem with the internet is that it is not just for Christmas, it is for life. I could give a number of examples of constituents who, years after having been exonerated and cleared of very serious allegations, still have to live with the fact that when a Google search is made against their name, a newspaper report about that false allegation comes up. It haunts people who are in that unfortunate situation. As I said earlier, that is a matter for DCMS input and for regulation, because we need consensus about how to deal with the sometimes baleful effects of internet reports that linger for years and years.

I return to what I regard as the grey area between arrest and charge, and the somewhat cumbersome nature of the Contempt of Court Act 1981. As I said in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe, the leave of the Attorney-General is needed before any prosecution is brought, which can often be a cumbersome way of doing things. Such things take time, because obtaining that leave can interrupt proceedings and lead to a delay before a decision is made, which can be damaging in itself. As she said, the test set out in that Act—whether there is

“substantial risk that the course of justice…will be seriously impeded or prejudiced”—

is a high one. It mentions the course of justice, however, and at the point of arrest we do not know whether there will be a course of justice in the sense of a charge. I can see many a clever lawyer—much cleverer ones than me, although I have received a degree of praise today that I perhaps do not deserve—taking that point firmly by the reins and running with it.

In short, the Act, which is celebrating its 30th year, needs revision, and here is my suggestion. We should consider the point between arrest and charge in a different way from the point from charge to trial or conviction. There should be a presumption against the publication of details of an arrested person prior to charge; then that presumption should be reversed post-charge. In other words, we should apply the interests of justice test, but with safeguards in place, acknowledging that the decision to charge is significant. It means that the prosecution has formed the view that there is a reasonable prospect of conviction, and that it is in the public interest to charge. That is an important and simple test that everybody can understand, both in this place and elsewhere, and it should trigger more disclosure.

Prior to that point, unless there are public interest reasons such as those clearly set out in the Bill, the presumption should be the other way around and there should not be publication unless there is a clear public interest such as that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) rightly referred to. I can imagine, and in fact I know of, scenarios in which there is a tight-knit local community or an estate in which a particular issue arises, and it would be in the local public interest to know that suspect A had been arrested. That person may well be known to local people, and it would give them a sense of confidence that the criminal justice system was working. Most importantly, if there were any perceived injustice at that stage, people in the local community could come forward and say, “We think you’ve got the wrong person—will you investigate why?” I can imagine a whole host of community and wider public interest reasons why publication could and should take place.

The observation that my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) made earlier about limiting the details that can be published to someone’s name and address has merit. In the spirit of the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe that the Bill is not necessarily the precise device needed to cure the mischief, it could well be that if the Bill proceeds further, or in the course of a wider review of the Contempt of Court Act, we should consider carefully whether setting out clearly in statute a provision for the publication of name and address could cure the problem of the grey area that I have been talking about.

I have mentioned the exceptions that my hon. Friend has set out in clause 2. I welcome them, with one caveat. Subsection (2)(c) and (d) state that it will be in the interests of justice to make a direction when

“it may lead to information that assists the arrested person”

or if

“the conduct of the…defence at trial is likely to be substantially prejudiced if the direction is not given.”

I wonder whether we need the word “substantially”. Perhaps it would be far better to take it out and make the point that if the defendant wants the provision to apply, that is a matter for them. The burden of proof is not on the defendant, as we all know, so perhaps that word should be taken out.