The Spectator’s Notes | 4 April 2013

The press is now to be regulated under the supervision of a body created by Royal Charter. On the website of the Privy Council Office, it explains that a Royal Charter is ‘a way of incorporating a body … turning it from a collection of individuals into a single legal entity’. New grants of charters are reserved for ‘eminent professional bodies or charities which have a solid record of achievement’. A body with a Royal Charter ‘submits significant aspects of the control of its internal affairs to the Privy Council’ (which is currently presided over by Nick Clegg): ‘This effectively means a significant degree of government regulation.’ Such a body should normally have more than 5,000 members. The University of Cambridge seems to be the oldest chartered body (1231) and the College of Chiropractors the newest (2012): 999 have been created in our history. If the press body were to be made the 1,000th, it would fit none of the criteria. Under the government’s post-Leveson decision, a Royal Charter is to be bestowed upon a ‘Recognition Panel’ to recognise whatever system of press regulation is invented. This panel is not an eminent professional body or a charity and it has, as yet, no members and no achievement, solid or otherwise. No one has petitioned for it. So the ‘dab of statute’ turns out to be a euphemism for an exercise of the royal prerogative (i.e. government power) to invent a body for which the system was never designed, while ensuring as little answerability to Parliament as possible. The Privy Council website adds that there is a mechanism for ‘counter-petition’ and makes the encouraging point that ‘Any petition which is rendered controversial by counter-petition is unlikely to succeed.’ What are we waiting for?

Another semi-unconstitutional provision in the Royal Charter set-up is the rule that it can be altered only by a two-thirds majority in Parliament.