Press

Monday

Sebastian Payne

‘Small-scale’ bloggers hear the chimes of freedom

Bloggers of the United Kingdom rejoice – an exemption from the all-new press controls looks to be on the way. We are waiting today to see if any of the amendments tabled on Friday will pass but the Financial Times reports (£) that cross-party talks over the weekend will result in a successful amendment on blogging: ‘Tri-party talks took place over the weekend to agree a wording for an amendment to the crime and courts bill which will be discussed in the House of Lords on Monday.’ At some point, that is. The amendments are being considered in the Lords right now but there has been no sign of anything

Friday

Sebastian Payne

It’s down to the House of Lords to save the bloggers

On Monday, Parliament will decide the future of blogging in this country. As the government’s press regulation proposals stand, blogs big and small would come under the new press regulator. This would make bloggers liable for significant compensation sums (aka exemplary damages), fees for joining the regulator as an ‘associated member’ (newspapers join as full members) as well as for increased legal costs. While the proposals could send bloggers rogue, to host their sites abroad and out of Parliament’s jurisdiction, others who can’t face the hassle may decide to close down. The problem stems from Leveson’s lack of concern for (or understanding of) the Internet. His report devoted just one page to the

Douglas Murray

Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good

I have a piece in this morning’s Wall Street Journal (Europe) on our new press regulations titled ‘We have the newspapers we deserve’: ‘I have just finished studying a diagram aimed at explaining Britain’s new press laws. After having a lie-down, one single line keeps running through my head. Oddly enough it isn’t ‘recognition appointments panels,’ ‘regulatory appointments panels’ or even ‘standards and compliance arms,’ memorable though all these are. ‘The line is from T.S. Eliot, who almost eight decades ago derided those people who spend their days ‘dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.” The whole piece is here.

Clarissa Tan

Do politicians know what they’re doing with the Royal Charter?

I witnessed my first-ever PMQs last week. It was, as my friend and Spectator colleague Isabel Hardman told me, not a raucous a PMQs as can usually be. Yet for me, it seemed a pretty lively parliamentary debate and — at the risk of sounding hopelessly naive — a bit of a treat to actually see important things being debated for all to see. I wonder if UK politicians know that the Royal Charter they have drawn up may one day come back and bite their butts? For what they’re proposing finally influences an entire nation’s conversation. If they have their way, the UK is headed for press regulation, the

Thursday

Trevor Kavanagh

Diary – 21 March 2013

I learned on Wednesday that a row is exploding over freedom of the press … in Australia. Surely some mistake. Australia is refreshingly open and its newspapers are free to say, often rudely, whatever they like. In fact, they are among the world’s the most tightly regulated, standing 26th and 29th respectively in the Reporters Without Borders censorship index — way behind Jamaica, Costa Rica and Namibia. Where, I wonder, will Britain stand after the events of this week? Much has changed in Oz since I spent my first day there as a Ten Pound Pom, looking comical in a grey suit on Bondi beach in midsummer, almost half a century

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 21 March 2013

There is supposed to be a Leveson Part II, although everyone has forgotten about it. As well as telling him to look into everything bad about newspapers (‘Please could you clean the Augean stables by Friday, Hercules’), David Cameron also asked Lord Justice Leveson to investigate who did what when over phone-hacking. This was postponed because of the forthcoming criminal trials, but I mention it because it is a reminder that things are back to front. Normally when you have an inquiry, you first work out what happened and then you work out what to do about it. Leveson is the opposite, hence the resulting chaos. The problem is particularly

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 — Peter Lilley vs. George Eustice on press regulation and the 2013 Budget

The Spectator has categorically said ‘NO’ to signing up to the government’s new regulatory body, but why are MPs so divided? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, Peter Lilley — who has spoken in support of The Spectator’s position — goes head-to-head with George Eustice, David Cameron’s ex-press secretary, over the Royal Charter agreed by the three parties this week, how it came to pass and what lies ahead for Fleet Street. Listen below to hear more about how divided the Tories are over the issue. Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth also join to discuss George Osborne’s 2013 budget and in particular, the prominent role of the Monetary Policy

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Hacked Off says press damages plan is a mistake

So the latest twist in the surreal saga of statutory regulation of the press is that the campaign group which had unparalleled access to the three parties hammering out a settlement in the silent watches of the night now thinks there’s been a terrible mistake. Whoops! Hacked Off has put out a statement this afternoon which says the amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill approved by MPs on Monday night contain ‘an accident in the drafting’ and is now trying to change the amendments so that they won’t impact bloggers and small publishers. You can read the full statement here, but this is the key section: ‘The amendments are

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why The Spectator won’t sign the Royal Charter

Whatever else is said about David Cameron’s hand-ling of press regulation, there can be no doubt that the deal he struck on Monday demonstrated masterful sleight of hand. Just days earlier, his differences with Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg had seemed irreconcilable and the Prime Minister was heading for defeat in the Commons. But then, overnight, everyone united around a compromise: a state regulator which insisted it was no such thing. It was the political equivalent of Magritte’s ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’; Britain’s first piece of legislative surrealism. The Royal Charter’s ornate, 17th-century language is part of the obfuscation. It begins: ‘To all to whom these presents shall come,

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Blonde ambition

Seems a little weird to be rabbiting about sport at a time when a malign confederacy of sanctimonious do-gooders, vengeful politicians, hypocritical celebrities and hatchet-faced lefties has brought about the biggest threat to press freedom since Uncle Adolf started on his European adventures. But at least we have this fine journal which has refused to sign up to any new system of state licensing of the press. How long before a newspaper has the guts to follow the Spec’s lead? As more than one commentator has pointed out, try to imagine reading the following sentence in the New York Times: ‘The Senate and House of Representatives last night agreed on

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Osborne’s pitch to Sun-reading voters caught up in Leveson row

If this was a Budget for Sun readers, then it hasn’t quite worked out as well as George Osborne might have hoped. The newspaper sounded pretty cheery this morning with its story about the beer duty escalator. But here’s the front page for tomorrow’s edition: Now, this is clearly as much about Leveson and the newspaper’s industry disgust that it wasn’t consulted when the lobbying group Hacked Off was invited to the late night negotiations as it is about the measures announced today. But there’s also the point that Fraser makes tirelessly on this blog that politicians like to be lazy at best when it comes to talking about debt

Tuesday

Steerpike

Jim Sheridan MP and those “parasites” in parliament

Labour MP Jim Sheridan covered himself in glory this morning by asking why the ‘parasitical press’ is ‘even allowed to come into’ parliament. Westminster watchers will remember the eloquent and thoughtful Mr Sheridan’s contribution to the expenses crisis when he described the soon to be disgraced Speaker, Michael Martin, as a man of the ‘highest integrity’. Now, a reader has regaled me with a tale that makes you wonder how Mr Sheridan reached the giddy heights of the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee: ‘At a day at the races some years ago my girlfriend was making small talk with him and he must have been the Labour Convenor for

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ministers avoid awkward vote on foreign criminals as Tories rebel on press damages plan

The Crime and Courts Bill, which contains one half of the government’s response to the Leveson recommendations, has just passed its third reading in the House of Commons. An earlier amendment on exemplary damages, which the Mail’s James Chapman reports this evening has roused the ire of Boris Johnson, saw this group of Conservative rebels troop through the ‘No’ lobbies: Richard Bacon, Christopher Chope, Tracey Crouch, Philip Davies, Richard Drax, Nick de Bois, Andrew Percy, Mark Reckless, John Redwood, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Andrew Turner, Martin Vickers, Charles Walker and Sarah Wollaston. The amendment passed 530 ayes to 13 noes (the list above includes tellers Rees-Mogg and Drax, who are not listed in

Monday

Nick Cohen

It’s not a press regulator, it’s a web regulator.

Since the early 1990s, hundreds of millions of words have been produced about the Web. Enthusiasts have told us that it is the greatest communications revolution since Guttenberg invented movable type, and they are probably right. Utopian fantasists have imagined that cyberspace would be beyond the reach of governments – those ‘weary giants of flesh and steel’, as one particularly giddy theorist put it – and they were certainly wrong. Their libertarian dreams, as we can see tonight, were an illusion. Those ‘weary giants of flesh and steel’ are tougher than they look. They are more than capable of using the new technologies to their own advantage, while censoring what

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Newspapers irritated by exclusion from Leveson talks

As he summed up today’s debate on press regulation, the Prime Minister repeatedly stressed that the new system was a voluntary one, with incentives for journalists to join. It marked a shift in the tone from the leaders at the start of the debate: the Prime Minister was now trying to coax the industry to join the new system leaders had agreed on. Perhaps it was this statement from the Newspaper Society that made him a little more conciliatory: ‘We would like to make it clear that, contrary to reports broadcast by the BBC this morning, no representative of the newspaper and magazine industry had any involvement in, or indeed

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Press regulation: Tory backbenchers worried by proposals

MPs are continuing to debate the cross-party deal on press regulation in the Commons at the moment. The debate has been divided between congratulations for the party leaders and their colleagues who hammered out the deal, and wariness from some Tory backbenchers about what the proposals actually mean. David Cameron insisted during the debate that this wasn’t statutory underpinning, but Nick Clegg said ‘of course’ when asked whether it actually was. Some Tory MPs agree with Nick: they believe this does include statutory underpinning. Perhaps the most forceful speech came from Charles Walker, who started his speech by saying that this country has a ‘pretty revolting’ press, but that he

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why the Tories don’t think the Leveson deal is statutory underpinning

David Cameron has just met Tory MPs to explain the deal he’s struck on Leveson. One of the things many of them were anxious to learn was whether the result does really mean the government has accepted the need for statutory underpinning. Hopefully the PM employed a better turn of phrase than his spokesman,  who told hacks this morning that this ‘enshrines a non-legislative approach’. The Tories in Number 10 are insisting that this really is the case, that it’s not statute at all and that the PM’s feet aren’t wet from any crossing of the Rubicon. Their argument is firstly that the amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Press regulation: Ceci n’est pas une statute

The party leaders should finish their discussions on Leveson – by phone – in the next hour or so. We’ll then get a statement in the Commons on the outcome of those talks, and it’s highly likely that all three leaders will speak as part of that statement. But the big debate now is whether what they have signed up to already constitutes the statutory underpinning that David Cameron was so very keen to avoid. There are two amendments to two different pieces of legislation relevant to press regulation: one on the Crime and Courts Bill on exemplary damages, and one to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill which prevents

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Harriet Harman and Maria Miller both claim victory in Leveson talks

Who has won in the late-night Leveson talks? Both Harriet Harman and Maria Miller seem to think their own party’s Royal Charter has come out tops. And one says they’ve secured statutory underpinning, while the other says there isn’t any underpinning. And again, one says the deal is done, while the other says the parties are ‘close’ to a deal. This is what Harman had to say on the Today programme: ‘There is an amendment going forward into the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill which says that where a Charter says in that Charter it can’t be dissolved or amended without a two-thirds majority in both Houses then that should

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Late night Leveson talks bring parties close to deal

So it looks as though a deal has been struck on Leveson after late night talks. Oliver Letwin, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman were holed up in Miliband’s office until 2.30 this morning, and Labour is now confident that it is close not just to an agreement on press regulation, but an agreement on its own proposals for a Royal Charter, rather than the government’s draft. As Coffee House reported on Friday, David Cameron was facing a rebellion of around 20 Tory MPs and a defeat in the House of Commons on his Conservative amendment which introduced the Royal Charter. That threat appears to have concentrated the mind