Lost amidst the noise of the 2024 UK general election being announced, Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 was quietly repealed in the ‘wash-up’ procedure designed to close off any outstanding Parliamentary business before electoral campaigning begins.
Many national press titles argued for and welcomed repeal. This is unsurprising given that Section 40 was designed to ensure that news publishers could be held accountable in the courts in the event of press harm if they were not participating in independent press self-regulation (which none of them do).
Without Section 40 or an alternative mechanism in place, we have returned to a pre-Leveson Inquiry situation, and it does not seem possible that the Recognition System can work as intended. Sir Brian Leveson predicted this would be the case, identifying a ‘cosmetic pattern of reform’ as a recurring theme in the history of press regulation and – sooner or later – as a prelude to another scandal.
While Section 40 has been held up as the ‘bogeyman’ in the model of independent press self-regulation, those large, commercial news publishers who objected to it are not now suddenly lining up to participate in the Recognition System.
This leaves us to speculate whether Section 40 was the real problem or, more likely, that any form of independent accountability is anathema to sections of the industry. It is far more comfortable for the national titles to point towards membership of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) as being evidence of ‘high standards’ even though IPSO is unable to demonstrate that it meets the requirements for independence or effectiveness agreed by Parliament, and the industry-dominated Editors’ Code of Practice Committee controls the standards it enforces.
Where does this leave us? There is currently no burning platform prompting calls to strengthen press regulation on the national political stage. Despite our efforts and those of others to shine a spotlight on the harm of which the press is capable, it is virtually impossible to get airtime through the very channels that have a vested interest in avoiding this type of scrutiny. At the same time, politicians seem far more likely to act in response to issues which gain traction in the 24-hour news cycle.
Without any meaningful brake on press conduct and behaviour, what will happen when another scandal does occur? We have already had several public inquiries, of which the Leveson Inquiry was simply the most recent.
Various models of regulation or self-regulation have been set out. Every time, sections of the press have managed to prevent meaningful change and maintain their ‘benign regulatory environment’.
Standards will inevitably drift under these conditions, and when they do, calls for a public inquiry will get louder. But we have been on this cycle before. We do not need another inquiry to tell us what we already know. However, should it come, we will be ready to answer the question: how was this allowed to happen again?
We are standing at a crossroads with a clear choice: do we continue down the track and let standards spiral in the commercial interests of a small number of large titles, or do we take the hard road and start to act in the interests of public protection and safeguarding the freedom of speech of all news publishers? If we do nothing, the outcome next time a scandal attracts public anger, with or without another inquiry, may well be direct state regulation – there may be no other outcome that people would accept.