The House of Commons Culture, Media & Sport Select Committee has today issued its report into privacy, libel laws and press regulation in the UK. Publication marks the culmination of a year long investigation, in which Newcastle’s MP Paul Farrelly played a leading role.
To download a copy of the report, click here
For the accompanying, official press release, click here
The launch was accompanied by a press conference, at which Newcastle’s MP made the following comments, setting the report into context:
‘It was back in autumn 2008 that I asked the Committee to start this investigation. It has been a long haul, but each time we sought to move to a conclusion, important events occurred which needed further consideration.
One of these, indeed, was of my own making: the controversy following attempts to prevent the Guardian - and rest of the UK press - reporting my Parliamentary Questions last October regarding the Trafigura toxic waste dumping scandal in Africa.
I had always wanted to look closely at the UK’s libel laws since I joined the Committee after the general election in 2005.
Before becoming an MP in 2001, working at Reuters, the Independent on Sunday and The Observer, I long had to look over my shoulder at libel threats at the coalface of investigative journalism.
Since then, of course, legal changes and the rise of the internet had major implications for libel and press freedom in the modern age.
Canvassing around ‘Fleet Street’ five years ago, however, showed that newspapers were more pre-occupied with Conditional Fee Agreements (‘CFAs’, or so-called ‘no win, no fee’ deals), than the broader issues and restrictions of libel law.
As CFAs were widely perceived to enhance access to justice for ordinary people - who otherwise could not afford to sue for defamation - it was simply impossible to get any groundswell of support from fellow MPs for such a narrow enquiry.
So what had changed by 2008? Press treatment of the McCann family following the tragic disappearance of their daughter Madeleine, for starters.
After the defamation actions against the press were settled in that case, a former colleague of mine at the Independent, Brian Cathcart, wrote a fine piece for the New Statesman magazine: ‘How the press tried to destroy the McCanns’. Brian subsequently joined the Committee as a special adviser for the enquiry.
One implication, particularly, stood out: namely, in any other industry where there had been such a collective breakdown of standards, and where such injustice had been perpetrated, there would have been an enquiry. Indeed, as in the banking industry today, the press would have clamoured for an investigation, and for heads to roll.
The industry’s regulator, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), however, signally failed to do anything – and it was into this breach the Committee stepped.
Two other events were also seminal: the privacy case brought by Max Mosley against the News of the World and Tesco’s libel action against the Guardian - to my mind the most flagrant failure in many years of our laws to protect responsible investigative journalism against action by a determined, deep-pocketed corporation.
The enquiry has, therefore, been complex and wide-ranging, but its existence has already had salutary effects even before publication of today’s report.
Firstly, it has galvanised much press comment on the major issues, including – for example – the Sunday Times’ regular reporting over ‘libel tourism’ and the threat to honest medical and scientific comment. Respected newspapers overseas, such as The New York Times and Washington Post, have also joined the fray.
Secondly, it has prompted the Ministry of Justice into action, issuing consultations over the impact of the internet on our libel laws and the whole issue of defamation costs. A Working Group on Libel has also been established, which has also taken ‘libel tourism’ – initially played down by the MoJ as a concern – firmly under its belt.
The latest recommendations on CFAs are particularly welcome, as ‘no win, no fee’ agreements have in effect become ‘always win, double the fee’ and have had an enormous ‘chilling effect’ on the press.
The report says that it is the way success fees are wholly recoverable from the other side which is the main issue, not their existence per se. To the extent, however, that MoJ proposals for a 10% overall cap in defamation cases will limit recoverability effectively to this level, too, the move is very welcome – and addresses core press concerns about the runaway costs of libel in the UK.
Thirdly, following the Trafigura affair, there are signs – recently in the case of England football captain John Terry, for example – that the bar in the public interest to the issuing of injunctions is already being raised by the courts.
We do not believe a time has yet come for the UK to legislate on privacy – there have been too few cases and judges would retain great discretion even with statute.
There is a great opportunity now, though, for a thorough overhaul of the libels laws in England and Wales to bring them into the 21st century and gain a far better balance between protection or reputation and freedom of speech in the public interest.
One word of caution, however, regarding unintended consequences: we should never return to the days where the particular type of press we have in the UK feels able to intrude on ordinary people, say what it likes and destroy lives simply because it knows people do not have the wherewithal to take action.
That is a challenge, too, for the PCC, so it is taken seriously at last as a regulator and as a body concerned with standards, not just handling complaints. The PCC has the opportunity now to take up the baton. It has a new chair, fresh blood on board and a review of governance underway. It now needs to learn from the failures in the McCann case – and its recent enquiry into the News of the World – and take action.