Your questions answered

22/03/2013

Does this Charter ‘do Leveson’?Yes.The Charter agreement reached by the three parties delivers Leveson’s recommendations on press self-regulation, clearly and authoritatively.There are also two amendments to existing Bills, which give legal effect to the Charter.Lord Stevenson’s amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill (drafted by Hugh Tomlinson QC and accepted by all parties) gives the ‘dab of statute’ required to ensure that ministers can’t make changes to the Royal Charter whenever they feel like it, ensuring press freedom.Amendments to the Crime and Courts bill (drafted by the Conservatives) voted on in the House of Commons on Monday ensure that law backs up the incentives for publishers to join this new self-regulator. These include exemplary damages and costs.Did Hacked Off sell out or back down?No.We didn’t want a Royal Charter in the first place because Leveson didn’t recommend it: instead, he recommended a bill in Parliament. But this Charter, alongside the amendments, delivers a system which is as close as we could ever have hoped or expected to implementing Leveson’s recommendations.We regret that there were four months of political shenanigans before we reached this point, but we are very pleased with the outcome and we hope that our supporters who helped us reach this stage are happy too.How did this Charter come about?The Conservatives published a draft Royal Charter in February. Labour and the Lib-Dems, as well as Hacked Off, didn’t believe that this would be workable or effective and cross-party talks began with the aim of resolving these issues.Last Thursday, David Cameron suddenly ended cross-party talks and called for a debate and vote in Parliament, which would have allowed MPs to choose between the Conservatives’ Charter and the Labour and Lib-Dem Charter.Over the weekend, all three parties (and Hacked Off) met again and produced a Royal Charter that had cross-party support, so there was no longer the need for a vote after Monday’s debate.So whose Charter is this?The Charter that has been adopted was drafted by Labour and the Liberal Democrats, with the help of Hacked Off. The Conservatives accepted it in full.Why is there suddenly a huge concern for bloggers?Many bloggers and others have rightly noted that the amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill have the potential to weigh unfairly on bloggers and other small publishers.These amendments can be changed before they pass into law, though there is not much time. The amendments go to the House of Lords on Monday for what is likely to be their last stage in Parliament. New changes, if they are to be adopted, have to be ready today.The amendments are the work of Conservatives in government and not of Labour, the Liberal Democrats or for that matter Hacked Off. They have not been endorsed in any way by Hacked Off. On the contrary, at the weekend we urged the three parties not to approve them finally there and then, but to leave time for them to be improved. The parties agreed to this.We have been working hard, with the support of a legislative drafting specialist, to find the best way of changing the amendments so that the law does not bear down unfairly on bloggers and small publishers, and so that for almost all web-based publishers the provisions would actually give them protection. We will make our suggestions to the political parties very soon, and we expect to publish them as soon as practical after that.For what it is worth, we believe the potential impact on bloggers and small publishers was unforeseen – an accident in the drafting – and we know of no reason why politicians might resist efforts to put things right.If the amendments that we propose are accepted, almost all bloggers, with a very few, rare exceptions, will be completely untouched by the changes.We hope that this reassures bloggers that they’re not being forced into a new system; though they would be welcome to join if they wished.What about the newspapers saying that they won’t join?Let’s wait for the dust to settle. It is important to note that an Editor’s Code of Practice already exists, it is just not being properly enforced. It makes little sense for newspapers to resist membership to a system that exists exclusively to uphold the same standards that they themselves claim to want to maintain. Newspapers are businesses, and we hope that they will see the advantages of membership and will join.What happens next with the Charter?The Charter will come into effect in May, at the end of this parliamentary session, when it will be promulgated (formally approved by the Queen).After that, the job is to set up the recognition body and to wait for the newspaper industry, which is still working on its own system, to come forward with a self-regulator that meets the standards required in the Charter.What next for Hacked Off?There are 92 Leveson recommendations. Press regulation occupies only the first 47. There are other aspects of the Leveson Inquiry that need to be looked at. These include:

  • The relationship between politicians and the press,
  • The relationship between the press and the police,
  • The data protection regime,
  • Media ownership and plurality of voices, and
  • Public interest defences in law.

We will be looking at all of those in the hope of seeing implementation.The implementation of Leveson’s recommendations on the self-regulation of the press is a major achievement and we hope that every supporter of the campaign realises that they have played a role in achieving this historic cross-party agreement. We also hope that you will continue to give your support as we work towards the implementation of the remaining Leveson recommendations.Thank you.

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Queries: campaign@hackinginquiry.org

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