Press ‘hogwash’

I shall summarise the answers from the report (including appendices and online references): they are really routine matters of “legal plumbing”.

The Leveson-compliant regulatory body has to be given a jurisdiction to deal with complaints of alleged breaches of the Editors’ Code by “news-related publishers”.

A regulatory body tribunal would investigate such complaints. If it upholds a complaint it may order a remedy: for example, it may order the publisher to print a correction, retraction or apology – giving it the same prominence as the item that breached the code. It might order payment of a sum of money.

As with most disciplinary  tribunals dealing with complaints against doctors, nurses, midwives, lawyers and others, it is to be expected that the ruling will be complied with.

However, the tribunal would not have the usual power to suspend, or “strike off” the  offender; papers would retain their privileged position in that respect.

Nor would the tribunal have legal power to enforce its rulings. If the publisher refused to obey the tribunal’s order, the complainer would apply to the court for an appropriate decree.

“Statutory underpinning” would enable the complainer to go to court to seek a decree for enforcement. If the court was satisfied that the order was  legally justified, it would  pronounce a decree ordering the publisher to give effect to the ruling.

If payment of money was  ordered, that money would be recoverable in the ordinary way, just as with a decree for damages in a defamation case or a fine in a contempt case.

If the court ordered publication of a retraction, etc, the publisher would comply – or face being held in contempt of court. Courts frequently issue decrees ordering persons to do or not to do something; hundreds of such orders currently in force are listed on the official court site under statutes such as the Children & Young Persons (Scotland) Act, 1937.

The press knows about these orders and obeys them. Similar orders are competent in other proceedings.

There is absolutely no reason to suppose that publishers would defy the court. As a judge I had to impose punishments on several publishers, including a TV channel, for breaches of the Contempt of Court Act.

If publishers did defy the court they would be subject to the usual range of penalties, including fines and imprisonment, available for wilful disobedience of court decrees.

In a democracy, the rule of law is fundamental. One basic feature of the rule of law is that society will enforce the final rulings of competent courts. There is nothing new, startling or undemocratic about that. To be effective the jurisdiction has to extend to “all significant news-related publishers”. The Prime Minister himself said so to Lord Justice Leveson.

The courts already have “compulsory” jurisdiction over publishers in many areas, such as defamation, contempt, hate speech, “stalking by publication” and privacy under the statutes quoted in the report, [para. 27], plus the Human Rights Act.

The press’s bogus claim that it has been “free from regulation for 300 years” is hogwash.

John McCluskey

House of Lords