The end of the road for a press royal charter
As the battle with the politicians over regulation comes to a climax, a touch of paranoia is a vital weapon in ensuring we do not carelessly slip further down the road to a half-free society, says Raymond Snoddy.
The newspaper industry has run out of road in its attempts to block the royal charter produced by the three main parties and the campaigning group Hacked Off.
A last minute attempt to get an injunction to stop the “sealing,” or finalisation, of what has been dubbed the politicians’ charter, has failed in the High Court.
Now the Queen has signed-up, apparently without any qualms, and a judicial review summarily refused. The newspaper organisations will now go to the Court of Appeal but with very little chance of success.
Appropriately enough the day of drama in the law courts coincided with the beginning of evidence in the first and greatest of the phone-hacking trials starring Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson with a full supporting cast.
The criminal trial could run until Easter but a number of subsequent events in the regulatory rumpus can now be predicted with a high degree of probability.
You would like to think that last week’s letter from seven international newspaper and media freedom organisations urging the Queen not to sign such a “toxic” royal charter would have an effect. Alas, not.
It has nothing do with whether the decision taking is wrong or even stupid. If that were the criteria then politicians would find themselves addressing judicial reviews on an almost weekly basis.
It’s much more to do with establishing whether or not due process was followed or whether or not it is within the realms of reason for a body of people to come up with such a decision in all the circumstances.
It was neither wise nor fair for the politicians, together with Hacked Off representatives, to exclude press representation from the entire process, but they were almost certainly under no legal obligation to do so.
You don’t have to be paranoid to notice a whole series of apparently unrelated happenings in recent days that all have one thing in common – they would serve to limit freedom of expression in this country.”
It means, therefore, we now have the politicians’ royal charter on the table beyond the reach of legal challenge in magnificent isolation.
The press royal charter is dead – because you can’t have two competing royal charters regulating the same industry.
It is now surely time to stop talking and move ahead with a credible and independent form of press self-regulation which has absolutely no direct, or indirect, link to politicians.
And if politicians try to impose exemplary damages on publications who decline to sign up for the politicians’ royal charter then it’s off to Europe for years of delay and a much better chance of winning a legal victory at last.
You don’t have to be paranoid to notice a whole series of apparently unrelated happenings in recent days that all have one thing in common – they would serve to limit freedom of expression in this country.
The clumsy attempts by police officers to persuade newsagents to remove copies of the current Private Eye from sale on the grounds that the “Halloween Special” with Rebekah could amount to a contempt of court seem farcical. But who sent those officers and why?
Rather more seriously Prime Minister David Cameron has warned of the danger of injunctions and the use of D notices against the reporting of leaked NSA files – the files that showed that the mobile phones of 25 political leaders had been hacked by security services.
If leaking such information is not in the public interest it is difficult to imagine what is.
The same Mr Cameron who once said his aim was to make Britain “the most open and transparent government in the world” has now been urged by 76 organisations to drop proposals to limit access to the Freedom of Information Act.
Then up pops Grant Shapps, the Conservative Party chairman, to warn the BBC that if it did not restore public trust it risked losing some of its licence fee money to other public service broadcasters.
In fact, despite its all too obvious troubles, the BBC probably commands rather more public trust than politicians of the ilk of Grant Shapps.
Operating way beyond his pay grade, Shapps went on to raise questions over whether the BBC applied “fairness” to the reporting of politics.
As former BBC director general Greg Dyke said immediately afterwards, 18 months from a general election and the Government is already trying to put pressure on the Corporation.
Happily not everything is going in the same depressing direction. Earlier this month the Daily Mail was praised by the president of the Supreme Court Lord Neuberger for campaigning for open justice.
The issue involved the jailing by the secretive Court of protection of Wanda Maddocks for five months for trying to remove her father from a care home.
The support of Lord Neuberger is welcome, although the real question is how such a secret jailing could have been tolerated in the first place.
As the battle with the politicians over regulation comes to a climax a touch of paranoia is a vital weapon in ensuring we do not slip carelessly further down the road to a half-free society.
This article was amended on 31 October to reflect that fact that the politicians’ Royal Charter was signed by the Queen.