Leveson Inquiry

Tim Farron Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

It is incredibly important that the newspaper industry heeds what hon. Members have said and what the Prime Minister has said forcefully—that the ball is now in its court to make the first move of showing that it can propose a self-regulatory institution, which would be independently verified in one way or another as soon as possible. It would be an extraordinary failure if the press did not take up that opportunity and respond to Lord Justice Leveson’s invitation for its own good. Everybody who cares about our great British press knows that the public need to be reassured that it will abide by higher standards in future.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Given that we can choose one of two extremes—one is a dangerously politicised regulation of the press, and the other is allowing editors to continue to regulate themselves through a lock-in at the last-chance saloon—is not the best thing to do to accept the advice of an independent commission that sat for so long, heard so much evidence and produced such a lengthy report, so that we do not kick the matter into the long grass, and so that we give the victims of the worst examples of journalism the justice they deserve?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s basic premise that, if the central insights of Lord Leveson are good ones, we should implement them. However, I disagree with hon. Members who have implied that the report should be adopted in its entirety, with every t crossed and every i dotted. There is a lot of dense and complex stuff in the report. There is an extensive chapter on data protection. I am no data protection expert, but Parliament will want to scrutinise the implications of that chapter properly. We should adopt Leveson’s central insights and what he is seeking to deliver, but I do not believe we should therefore suspend all critical faculties on some of the detail, which must be got right.