Lessons from the Lords on Leveson

Peers are spending today debating the Leveson report. They’ve been at it for an hour and a half, and will continue debating until 5pm, but the first few speeches have yielded some interesting points to chew on.

Labour’s Baroness Jones of Whitchurch devoted a great deal of her speech to the damage that the ‘dark arts’ of the media had done both to private individuals and to celebrities. She described the distress of the victims going through the inquiry, and contrasted it with the response of the government in rejecting calls for statutory underpinning. The terrible treatment of those experiencing terrible bereavement was the reason the Inquiry was set up, and those in favour of statute now say the victims have been betrayed. No doubt Chris Bryant and Max Mosley will make the same argument at our Spectator debate on Leveson at the end of January. But those trying to avoid statute would argue that the most important thing for the victims is not statute per se, but a new system of regulating the press that prevents these abuses taking place again.