Feb 1st 2012
The Culture, Practice and Ethics of the Press is the title of the Leveson Inquiry, set up to deal with the phone hacking scandal.
So let us turn away from press restraint, oppressive laws, the persecution of journalists in the Commonwealth, on which you so proudly campaign, and consider the ethical issues confronting the profession in the UK, how this Inquiry came about, the issues it faces and the impact that may have on your work.
In brief summary, in January 2007, the News of the World Royal reporter, Clive Goodman and a Private Investigator he used, Glenn Mulcaire, were convicted of phone hacking in respect of what the Metropolitan Police called “a handful” of people. It appears that it came to light because of fears that Princes William and Harry’s phones were hacked. Goodman was a “Rogue Reporter” and the matter was at an end, said the paper’s owner’s News International, though there were some footnotes.
Firstly, the editor of the NOTW at the time, Andy Coulson, though he was clear that he hadn’t authorised hacking, fell on his sword, as the man who had overall responsibility for the conduct of the paper. He didn’t stay impaled for long, however, because, in May 2007, he was appointed as Director of Communications by the Conservative Party. If the pollsters were right, he would shortly be running the press corps at No 10 Downing Street.
My guess is that this is what motivated the hero of this story, the Guardian’s Nick Davies, into takig the matter further. He was clearly satisfied that more people had been targeted and worried that Coulson might be a completely inappropriate person to be at the centre of government. So, he continued to investigate.
The second footnote was interest in why Simon Hughes MP and Gordon Taylor, Chief Executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association were listed as hacking victims on the indictment against Goodman and Mulcaire when they seemed unlikely targets for a royal reporter.
Then, Gordon Taylor sued for breach of privacy and received a settlement of £700K, when the usual level of damages would have been in the tens of thousands. People wondered what it was that the Murdochs were paying for.
The police told some people around the original case that they may have been targeted and others began to ask the police if they had been. It gradually emerged that 4332 people were thought to have been hacked – quite a large “handful” The information came from a spreadsheet from Glenn Mulcaire that Scotland Yard had had all the time.
There was clear need for another police inquiry and Operation Weeting was established in January 2011. A shoal of arrests following quite speedily, including a number of journalists and News International bigwigs, some of whom resigned and additionally, in about July 2011, Andy Coulson, Rebekah Brooks, and a man called Neil Wallis.
The Commons Culture Media and Sport Select Committee started an Inquiry and, in July called Sir Paul Stevens, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. In questioning it became clear that the Met had appointed Neil Wallis, who had been deputy when Coulson was NOTW editor, to its press relations office. Presumably this was to ensure good relations between police and No 10. However, what was sinister was that the Met should have been investigating Coulson at the time, not cosying up to him.
The Commissioner resigned the next day to be quickly followed by Assistant Commissioner John Yates, who had been in charge of the first inquiry with Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman. Hayman could not resign from the police. He had already done so and got a job as a columnist with, you have guessed it, News International.
There was little reporting of anything other than these few dramatic events about the hacking scandal as a whole. It was about the press elite making disclosures about celebrities and politicians and the public were not greatly interested. Perhaps newspapers were wary of writing critically too.
In July 2011 the public discovered that the phone of a schoolgirl murder victim, Milly Dowler, had been hacked between her being lost to her parents and the finding of her body. It was thought at first that the hackers had deleted her messages and given her parents false hope that she was deleting them and was still alive. It now seems that the messages deleted automatically and is ironic that the huge public anger this caused was actually due to mis-reporting.
It soon became clear that victims of the London bombings had had their phones hacked, so had relatives of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. News International was running a campaign called “Help for Heroes” at the time, in apparent support of the very people whose phones they were hacking.
Perhaps most breathtakingly hypocritical, was the hacking of Sara Payne’s phone. She is the mother of a child murdered by a paedophile, campaigning to change the law on sex offenders, and someone who had been personally supported by Rebekah Brooks.
In July, the Rupert and James Murdoch gave evidence to the Commons Select Committee, culminating in the throwing of a custard pie at Rupert Murdoch, shortly after he had said, clearly badly tutored by a publicity trainer “This is the humblest day of my life”. The Murdochs said that the NOTW was only 1% of their empire and anyway though shameful, this was an old story now.
So little was it an “Old Story” that Mark Lewis, the solicitor who had got such a staggering settlement for Gordon Taylor, and consequently accumulated a host of celebrity hacking victims, found that he had been hacked, his estranged wife and two daughters followed and a plan hatched to allege that he was having an affair with a colleague at his firm. So, in the summer of 2011 when these events were at their height, News International was using dirty, perhaps unlawful, tricks to discredit someone who was crossing Murdoch.
A few days after the Commons hearings, the Murdochs closed the 168 year old NOTW, sacking several hundred people, most of whom had nothing to do with hacking. If the plan was to give the appearance that this was the “rogue paper” the equivalent of Goodman being the sole culpable “rogue reporter” it did not work.
David Cameron announced the Leveson Inquiry in August to look into conduct of News International but there is an important tributary story too.
Between 2003 and 2006, Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, had presided over something called Operation Motorman. This investigation showed that at least one private detective, working through a spiders web of bribed insiders and despite the Data Protection Act, was supplying data from HMRC and DWP, from the Police National Computer, from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Centre and from mobile phone companies to journalists.
305 named journalists had paid to receive this information unlawfully, but top of the list were 952 requests through 58 journalists for the Daily Mail, 802 requests from 50 journalists at the People, followed by the Daily Mirror and the Mail on Sunday, none of which is part of the News International stable. Only fifth on the list with 228 inquiries from 23 journalists, was the NOTW.
Here was a different kind of illegality, being used, as simply as going to a shop to buy goods, by journalists throughout the UK press world and not even principally by News International. The questions for Leveson therefore stretch beyond phone hacking and beyond News International.
His Inquiry is currently hearing the first module of Part One of his Inquiry, looking into press relations with the public and featuring the whole hacking history. Innumerable victims have been called, from Hugh Grant to the Dowlers and more than a dozen Fleet Street editors have appeared, each regretfully accepting that the Press Complaints Commission is not strong enough but each cleaving, nonetheless, to a system of self-regulation.
That is has gone far wider than the issue of hacking is evidenced by evidence last week from some women’s organisations, one of which I chair, about the way in which the press depicts women. They gave an example of the sexual abuse of two twelve year olds by a group of footballers which was described as “an orgy” when it was a sexual assault, capable of being seriously damaging to the girls. It featured too, stories of the sexist abuse poured upon women in public positions who are depicted as ugly and stupid while women cooks are idolised as domestic goddesses – examples of a culture of keeping women in “their place”. I relate these not for your views but to demonstrate that the Inquiry is looking at an array of ethical questions.
A summary of the issues “in the air” in the UK at present would include:
1. The interplay of Articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
ARTICLE 8 provides:
Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
ARTICLE 10
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or the rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
Clearly both are inherently conditional rights and have, additionally, to be balanced against each other on a case by case basis by the judiciary. I don’t think that it is an unrealistic generalisation to say that the judges have tended to favour privacy. There are calls from time to time for a statutory right to privacy, for its own sake and, alternatively, for such a statute in order to stop the judges from creating a right to privacy, without democratic sanction.
2. The intense commercial competition in the newspaper world in the context of challenge from the electronic media. Increasing pressure for stories with weaker control over how they are obtained as papers cut staff and rely more on freelances.
A cut throat approach to this has undoubtedly been led by Murdoch with his doctrine of doing whatever it takes to get a story, destroying the competition and the result justifying all.
His politics have been brought into all his newspapers and his power and influence are well-known and have been effective for more than a decade. Tony Blair cultivated him as did Gordon Brown (with less effect) and now Cameron not only appointed Coulson but is said to ride with Rebekah Brooks, as part of “the Chipping Norton set” and there are stories about Murdoch going into No 10 by the back door so that the frequency of his meetings isn’t seen.
People are afraid of Murdoch. The DCMS Select Committee was advised that if it started an inquiry into Murdoch it could expect intrusions into members private lives with a view to discrediting them.
However the Daily Mail is equally ruthless and destructive now.
There are taste issues with little apparent political content. The Daily Star, whose editor is a woman, not only objectifies women in photo after photo but has been described as “only a newspaper in the loosest sense” and its editor did have to admit to Leveson that story after story put to her by counsel to the Inquiry was completely without factual foundation.
An important point is that these intrusions into people’s lives are extremely injurious. The damage done to the Dowler family and to others who are undermined by lies or private information, published to millions is immense.
However, it is important to remember that phone hacking and paying police, or other officials, for information, has always been a crime and we could legislate to guarantee better media plurality if we wished, so that bias could be rectified, diversity improved and power limited.
Perhaps the most important balancing fact is that almost the whole phone hacking scandal was disclosed, not by press regulators or police, but by the press itself, in the form of Nick Davies of the Guardian with his team, fully supported by the editor Alan Rusbridger.
The late Hugo Young said that it was time to stop “the blackmail … that the interests of the Sun and the Guardian have anything to do with each other.” Why should investigative journalism be restrained because the redtops cannot act responsibly?
I return to where I started, Leveson’s recommendations are bound to have an impact on the Commonwealth and your campaigns for press freedom, against oppressive legislation and to protect commonwealth journalists. It is important that CJA puts in a submission to his Inquiry so that he takes cognisance that his findings will be capable of having a deleterious effect, on the very different press in the Commonwealth, if he doesn’t frame them with care.

Vera was delighted to speak at Fabians New Year Conference 14th January 2012
In the morning breakout group: Women The Crisis and Politics Vera shared a platform with Polly Toynbee, Seema Malhotra MP and David Coats, Research Fellow of the Smith Institute.

“The first point I wish to make is that we discuss the financial crisis every day and when we do so we should always have in our minds that all economics is gendered.

I am grateful to Professor Sylvia Walby who has done considerable work on this topic.

So, for example when there is a tax rise, which is a tool that could contribute to reducing the deficit, much of the take comes from men, because more of them work and they earn more.

Women tend to use public services more; the NHS because of pregnancy and childbirth, maternity pay, they earn less so are more likely to get tax credits, will have been able to save less so might need pension credit, lone parents, 90% of whom are women are likely to need support.
So tax is raised largely from men and spent more on women.

According to Lord Davies there are only 12.2% of directors in the FTSE100 who are women and only 7.3% in the FTSE250, so women have little say in making the finance to be taxed and since there are 20 women of 119 Coalition Ministers, they have little say in where, how and at what levels tax is raised. So women who are the main recipients of tax are excluded from decisions about raising public funds of which they are the major recipients.

The corollary which is better known is that public service cuts impact more on women. So decisions such as whether to raise taxes or cut public services are not only probably a class issue but also a gender issue.

This is made sharper by the preponderance of women employed in the public sector. I accept the need for the continuation of the cap on public sector wages now that Osborne’s policies, as predicted by Ed Balls a year ago, have turned a slightly growing economy under Labour to one on the threshold of returning to recession. However, we do need to acknowledge and take account of the fact that that is going disproportionately to impact on women in two ways. Not only are jobs lost but they are jobs in which employment, equality rights and flexibility are far more part of the culture and less contested than in business. In short, they are the kind of jobs that make it easier for women to work.

We need to discuss economics, publicly through a gendered prism. This is an issue for us. Although there are a few more Tory women than before 2010 they tend to champion the advance of women like them and have little to say to working women, struggling to make ends meet. We have women MPs who have worked in the public sector.

Yvette Cooper did an excellent job in analysing the figures and showing that 70% of the impact of government economic policies have fallen on women and only 30% on men. The Fawcett case gave that protest focus.

We must keep talking about it. We must look at each and every cut and policy change and if it has an adverse gender impact we must say so.

My second point is that, as well as the quasi-democratic deficit in the absence of women on boards, there is a real democratic deficit in most of our elected institutions.
This week saw the second anniversary of the Speaker’s Conference on diversifying the House of Commons but little seems to have changed save that the House of Commons nursery will now take MP’s children as well as those of staff members .

22% of MPs are women. 32% of Labour MPS are women, 16% of Tories and 12% of LibDems. At the current rate of progress it will take 70 years to achieve equality. Of 4897 MPs since 1918, 366 have been women. 11 Government Departments currently have no woman minister at all. We are doing better in that Ed aims for half his Shadow Cabinet to be women.
A recent report by Nan Sloane, who many of you will know, shows an even worse position in local government where only 20 additional female councillors were elected at last May’s elections, less than one third of all councillors are women and it will take not 70 but at current progress, 150 years for equality in councils.

Beware that All Women Shortlists may come under pressure. The current Boundary Commission proposals will reduce the number of constituencies and sitting MPs will contest against each other for seats and the losers are likely to have a priority position for other seats. Favouring the current PLP which is predominantly male will mean less progress to diversity in the first place.

However, in 2005 when Scotland lost 13 seats due to reorganisation, All Women Shortlists were abandoned and the numbers of women selected and hence elected fell. At Westminster elections in the same year, 50% of the newly elected intake was female, thus reaffirming that AWS works.

Some years ago I wrote a short pamphlet for Compass, arguing that the problem is not that the public won’t elect women, BME or disabled candidates but that not enough are selected by the parties. On the contrary more women tend to vote if there is a woman candidate and that helps us since we have a permanent problem getting out the Labour vote.

Women MPs often raise specifically female issues with which women electors have sympathy. Labour social policy has changed radically with the advent of more women MPs who have brought to the fore issues now accepted as a cross gender responsibility, like violence against women, parental leave and childcare provision.

So if we went back on AWS, for the next election, we would shoot ourselves in the foot. But we need to be vigilant. Some people still regard it as a provision only to be used in fair weather times, not when we are under political pressure and there are frequent attempts to exempt constituencies from it, in favour of one favourite son or another. Those attitudes need to be resisted and reversed.

My third point is that there is a real fear now that the Coalition’s cuts, commissioning changes and policy and legislative moves have now started to go further than hurting the purse more than the wallet but that they may now be putting women’s safety at risk. Fewer police on the beat and street light being turned out affect everyone but, understandably, make women more afraid and can be limiting.

Refuges are under local authority pressure to cut bed-spaces for women fleeing violence. Some refuge providers are finding it impossible to make ends meet as Local Housing Allowance is cut and welfare workers and counsellors needed for women whose lives have been turned upside down can’t be paid for.

Sexual Assault Centres are unsure who will fund them after the NHS reforms and the advent of Police and Crime Commissioners. They are being asked to say which of their services are therapeutic and which forensic, so that police can say health should fund them and health authorities can say that police should.

Meanwhile 17000 suspected rapist have been removed from the national DNA database despite the difficulties in achieving a conviction for rape and the developing understanding that it is often a repeat offence.

Legal aid cuts will mean that women who have suffered domestic violence will have to question their abusers in court and, worse still, be questioned personally by him. Neither of them is likely to get legal aid under the narrow definition in the Act and the tiny range of evidence which will suffice, for the authorities to prove that it has occurred.

Women’s safety concerns are now being raised on a daily basis and Yvette Cooper has asked me to Chair a Women’s Safety Commission to go to the regions and meet with women and women’s organisations to look systematically at what is happening at the grassroots. We did our first regional evidence gathering in Manchester last Friday, where many of the complaints and worries reflected those the national women’s organisations pointed out to us when we scoped the Commission’s work with them, a week before Christmas.

Although this is a Labour Commission and it has started because of women’s organisations drawing threats to them to our attention, I intend the work to be done forensically. The findings will only be of use to women if they are accurate. We will bring them into the Party’s policymaking process but we will also take them to the Government and campaign for change where we find problems. We are also asking whether there is a need for a Women’s Safety Bill to change the law and what should go into it, if so.

Overall my three points fit together. We must ensure that the gendered nature of economics is always referred to when there are new cuts and changes, so that women and men know how fairly or unfairly the Coalition’s failing economic policies are impacting on them. We should make sure that more women candidates are selected to directly represent women as well as to boost us as the party of diversity, despite the trickle of women and BME MPs the Tories now have. We must work hard to find any threats to the safety of women from Coalition policy and campaign to reverse them, albeit in the context of the economic crisis. Then the current battle for women’s allegiance, which we are already winning, should be assured since we will have demonstrated that we are the party that raises their issues and serves their interests best.”