Lord Judge

Speaking at the Human Rights Law Conference Lord Judge said he has 'the utmost confidence' in Leveson

Credit: Ian Nicholson/PA

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, has publicly defended Lord Leveson after criticism of the judge and his inquiry into phone hacking and press ethics.

Speaking at the Human Rights Law Conference in London this afternoon, Lord Judge, who was responsible for selecting Leveson to lead the inquiry, said he "had no illusions about the burden" the judge was undertaking, but said he retained "the utmost confidence" in him. Lord Judge also said that if Leveson was the wrong person to conduct the inquiry, the responsibility for the decision was his and not Leveson's.

Lord Judge acknowledged that criticism of the inquiry had come "fast and clear", including personal criticism of Leveson. Leveson's competence was called into question by former Sun editor Kelvin McKenzie during an inquiry seminar last week.

McKenzie said: "God help me that free speech comes down to the thought process of a judge who couldn't win when prosecuting counsel against Ken Dodd for tax evasion and more recently robbing the Christmas Island veterans of a substantial pay-off for being told to simply turn away from nuclear test blasts in the Fifties. It's that bad."

Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, criticised the make up of Leveson's six-strong panel during his appearance, claiming: "They don't have the faintest clue how mass-selling newspapers operate".

The Daily Mail's publisher went on to launch an appeal, with the support of the publishers of the Guardian and the Daily Mirror, for Leveson to further members to the panel with tabloid of regional newspaper experience. Leveson rejected the appeal.

Earlier this month, Independent writer James Cusick said that one of the early seminars in the inquiry resembled "a very bad edition of Question Time, where normal people were banished and replaced by room-full of big egos"

Cusick went on to claim the seminar descended into a "hybrid bar chat" made up of "back patting" by the newspaper editors in attendance.

"If Lord Leveson allows months of this, his inquiry will fail before it has started. A talking shop with a delusionary rose-tinted view of Fleet Street isn't what was ordered."

Likely in response to McKenzie's claim that free speech "came down to the thought process of Leveson", Lord Judge sought to make clear that Leveson's task is to "inquire and make recommendations":

"He is not providing a judgment which is binding on anyone in any way."

Turning to the controversial issue of press regulation, Lord Judge backed the continuation of non-statutory regulation, stating that he was "unenthusiastic" about the idea of either the government or judiciary be given the responsibility for regulation, and emphasising that an independent press was a fundamental constitutional principle.

With regard to the phone-hacking scandal that led to the setting up of the Leveson inquiry, he pointed out that it was the press itself which drew attention to the illegality that so badly damaged the industry's reputation.

"The scandal of telephone hacking which took the form of cruelty and insensitivity to one family and ultimately led to the setting up of the Leveson Inquiry was uncovered and revealed by a different constituent part of the press. The first of these scandals – the cruelty and unfairness - should never happen. The second – the revelation of a public scandal - must be allowed to continue to happen. My own view is that the public value of the second is priceless.

"Whatever means of regulation are designed to reduce the occasions of unacceptable behaviour by elements of the press they must not simultaneously, even if accidentally, diminish or dilute the ability and power of the press to reveal and highlight true public scandals or misconduct."

Lord Judge also stood behind the Press Complaints Commission, saying that to criticise the much-maligned regulatory body for not exercising powers it does not have "is rather like criticising a judge who passes what appears to be a lenient sentence, when his power to pass a longer sentence is curtailed".

Acknowledging that the PCC, with no powers to force membership or impose fines, was a "toothless tiger", he advocated strengthening the body. Discussing his ideas for a new and improved PCC, he seemed to recommend an increasingly popular solution – an independent regulatory body with enforced membership for all national and regional newspapers.

"The first responsibility of the new PCC would be, of course, to continue the conciliatory/mediation work which is so successfully carried now. But consideration would have to be given to whether it would be vested with power to make express findings that the code then current had been broken, and if so to direct the terms of any apology or appropriate article in the offending newspaper, and if the power is granted, to make an order for compensation.

"Two further points. The new PCC – that is the new body currently in my contemplation in any new system of self-regulation - must be all inclusive. You might perhaps be willing to discount a news sheet circulated to about 25 people, but any national or regional paper would have to be included. In short any new PCC would require to have whatever authority is given to it over the entire newspaper industry, not on a self-selecting number of newspapers."

He finished his speech by recommending the committee of this new PCC should, like the current one, contain a mix of industry representatives and "civilians", and stressing that the government should not be involved in its selection in any way.
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