Leveson: A dogmatic judge, astonishing oversights and what happens next
The press is the sole whipping boy in a report that has some blinding oversights and a lack of curiosity, says Raymond Snoddy, as he looks at what will happen in the long term.
After nine months of inquiry and 2,000 pages of report the fate of Leveson comes down to a Rubicon moment.
While it is Boris, not Dave, who is the classical scholar, the Rubicon idiom was well chosen.
In modern parlance it means, of course, passing a point of no return, but historically it meant marking a point of treachery or rebellion.
Cue Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg splitting the Coalition by walking into the arms of Ed Miliband in calling for statutory underpinning of self-regulation, a concept that is a bit of an oxymoron.
Battles will now rage back and forth across the metaphorical Rubicon – in history a rather small and shallow stream – for months inside and outside of Parliament.
It is a very narrowly focussed battle and one we always knew was coming.
It was always inconceivable, and therefore no surprise, that Lord Justice Leveson was never going to let even a much-reformed self-regulatory body system survive intact and that he would go for statutory underpinning.
All the clichés have been swallowed. No more last chance saloons or the press being able to mark its own homework.
But right at the heart of the matter is a piece of almost medieval theology. This, the dogmatic judge insists, is not statutory regulation, nor could it reasonably or fairly be described as statutory regulation.
The judge is wrong. It could and it is – but it has to be made clear in what way.
This, Leveson insists, is “independent regulation of the press organised by the press.”
There would be, however, legislation to install a recognition and verification process carried out by Ofcom whose chairman is appointed by Government. For those publishers who did not sign up for the “independent” regulator there would be the outer darkness of full Ofcom regulation and specially designed “exemplary” damages in defamation and breaches of privacy case.
As carrots there would be a legal duty on government for the first time to protect the freedom of the press – a duty that is ill-defined – and access to a new, inexpensive system of arbitration.
Some will see it as more than a little odd that Leveson is calling on Government to protect freedom of the press at the same time he is proposing new limits on that freedom.
The forces and the arguments drawn up on each side of the Rubicon are easy to summarise.
On one – the Cameron side – there is caution about drawing up special legislation for the press for the first time in more than 300 years. Such legislation would be complex, capable of being misused and amended in future. There is an important principle at stake and a line that has to be held.
On the other side of the muddy stream, where Clegg and Miliband stand, there are those – probably in a numerical majority in the House of Commons – who support the Leveson underpinning.
As the Lord Justice said, this is the seventh inquiry into the press in 70 years, so let’s not have the need for another.
By the Press’s often “outrageous” behaviour, with codes of practice often totally ignored, means it has forfeited the right to self-regulation without a legislative oversight – and it is a harmless form of oversight that does not include prior restraint on publication.
Everyone will pick their sides and few minds will either change or be susceptible to argument in this debate.
The issue has even divided two distinguished newspaper editors. Sir Harry Evans, the legendary editor of the Sunday Times, who now comes from the land of the First Amendment, sees little wrong with the degree of statutory underpinning proposed.
Sir Max Hastings, former editor of the Daily Telegraph, denounces Leveson and most of his “naïve” works.
It is clear what will happen next. The press will beaver away on a new, improved and more independent self-regulatory body. The Lords Hunt and Black should pay attention to Leveson’s criticism of the plan for press cards being reserved for those publishers who sign up.
Prime Minister David Cameron will produce a draft bill of such complexity that it will take itself off to the long grass.
Someday soon there will be a vote in the House of Commons and Labour – which has apparently swallowed all 92 recommendations intact – will combine Tory rebels and most of the Liberal Democrats to produce a majority vote in favour of statutory lite.
After that nothing will happen. The Prime Minister and senior members of the Cabinet will ensure that there is no Parliament time for press legislation anytime soon – though attempts will probably be made to tag amendments onto a new Communications Act.
So don’t hold your breath on communications legislation any time soon either.
Lord Justice Leveson will get a peerage but he will not be appointed Lord Chief Justice in succession to Lord Justice Judge. That would be going too far.
While the central core of the Leveson report contained no surprises, some of the rest of it is truly astonishing. Virtually all policemen and certainly all politicians are totally innocent.
The press is the sole whipping boy.
As for the internet, Leveson shows curiosity worthy of George Entwistle.
Matters of regulating the internet he concludes are “problematical.” In general he is a judge of great certainties and few doubts.
A spectacular example can be found in footnote 11 where he accepts that on the crucial issue of deletion of messages on Milly Dowler’s phone further work by the Surrey police indicate it was unlikely that the News of the World had been responsible for providing false hope.
This important piece of information does not throw the judge for an instant.
“I entirely reject the suggestion that this error has undermined the basis for the inquiry which, in the light of all the evidence I have heard, was and remains more than amply justified,” Leveson insists.
He therefore blithely ignores the fact that it was the “deletions” and the false hope that provided the most toxic rocket fuel that made an inquiry inevitable. And then he has the cheek to justify the inquiry with evidence obtained after the event.
That’s probably in breach of some code somewhere.
But you might ask what side of the Rubicon do you stand on?
On this occasion, and this doesn’t happen very often, it’s a case of Cameron right Leveson wrong.