Press Regulation Reforms Delayed

It has been announced that the plans for a new royal charter to regulate the press have been delayed.

The charter is designed to lay down a framework which will allow the creation of a new body to regulate the press, following proposals made by the Leveson Inquiry. Details of the proposals and the charter can be found in this original article.

The charter was to have been examined by the Privy Council, the body which advices the monarch on which charters to grant, on 15 May. However, this has now been delayed so that proposals made by the press itself can be examined.

The proposals, which are backed by most newspapers, differ in a number of ways to the charter proposed by the government.

The press’s proposals would:

• remove Parliament’s power to change future changes to regulation. Instead the regulator, trade bodies and the ‘recognition panel’ would have to agree changes;
• the members of the panel would be selected by an appointments committee chaired by a retired Supreme Court Justice and include one representative of the industry’s interests, one representing the public interest and one public appointments assessor nominated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments;
• remove a ban on former editors sitting in the panel;
• give consumers a say on the industry’s proposals;
• make group complaints more difficult; and
• amend the power of the new regulator to ‘direct’ the nature, extent and placement of corrections and apologies. Instead, it will have the power to ‘require’.

Now it always desirable to have a dialogue in a free and democratic society, but, in my view, the alternative proposed by the press is wholly unnecessary. For the reasons given in the original article on this topic, the charter proposed by the Government is perfectly acceptable, posing no risk to free speech. Assertions to the contrary are either misplaced or deliberately misleading.

It is to be hoped that an acceptable outcome can be reached in the near future so that a system of effective regulation can be put in place.