Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to the Answer of 26 April 2021 to the Question 184471, what (a) policing reforms and (b) press regulations have been enacted following the Leveson Inquiry.

There have been extensive reforms to policing practices as well as significant changes to press self-regulation.

Since Lord Justice Leveson published his report on part 1 of the inquiry in 2012, the Government has considered all eight recommendations and introduced a number of reforms to policing. This includes the publication of the policing Code of Ethics by the College of Policing in 2014; guidance on relationships with the media; guidance on whistle-blowing; new powers for the Independent Office for Police Conduct to investigate without referral from the police and voluntary notification by chief constables of post-service employment for 12 months.

There now exists a strengthened, independent, self-regulatory system for the press. The majority of traditional publishers—including 95% of national newspapers by circulation—are members of IPSO. A number of smaller publishers have joined Impress.

These regulators enforce codes of conduct which provide guidelines on a range of areas, including discrimination, accuracy, privacy, and harassment. If they find that a newspaper has broken the code of conduct, they can order corrections or critical adjudications.

IPSO, unlike its predecessor the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), has the contractual power to legally enforce all the obligations into which the press has entered. This includes determining the wording, where a ruling is placed in a newspaper, in what font size and on what page. As well as dealing with complaints, IPSO can launch a standards investigation in cases where there may have been serious and systemic breaches of the Editors’ Code. IPSO also now has a compulsory low cost arbitration scheme, introduced in August 2018, that all member national newspapers have signed up to. This can be used to make claims for defamation, privacy and harassment, and some data protection breaches.

In 2016 IPSO commissioned its own independent review which found it had made some important achievements in demonstrating it was an independent and effective regulator, and that it was largely compliant with the recommendations of the Leveson Report.