House of Commons Hansard Debates for 29 Jan 1993

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newspapers. I fear that that is precisely why one of my local newspapers decided to take a chance and publish the Camillagate transcript. I was assured by that newspaper, and accepted its undertaking, that it was trying not to increase sales but to inform the public. You will appreciate, Madam Deputy Speaker, that, as a journalist, I suffer from no cynicism whatsoever.

After receiving that assurance, I had an anonymous telephone call. I do not like anonymous telephone calls, but it was from somebody who works in that press print. My informant told me, "You ought to know that the print run was dramatically increased first thing this morning because we knew that this was gong to be good for selling the paper." That is the public interest--it is interesting to the public and is selling newspapers.

I do not believe that the pre-publication of the Queen's speech by The Sun before Christmas was in the public interest. The material was going to be in the public domain in two days' time, in any event. I have to say, with due respect to Her Majesty, that the Queen's speech is not normally the most dramatically controversial event of the year.

Mr. Dalyell : Who decides what is the public interest? Some of us may have very different views about the public interest.

Mr. Gale : The hon. Gentleman made that point earlier. We are, of course, talking about degree and opinion, but I suggest that that breach of an understood embargo, if not a literal embargo, can hardly be claimed to have been in the public interest. One editor of one newspaper stuck two fingers up and said, "I don't give a xxxx for the Establishment of the United Kingdom."

One case has been referred to three times this morning, the Robert Maxwell case. I suggest to the House, on behalf of my constituents, that the fact that Maxwell pensioners lost money was in the public interest and that that fraud ought to have been exposed. Where were the dogs of Fleet street? They were not barking. The editor of one national Sunday newspaper told me, "I've got a cupboardful of gagging writs that prevented me from publishing that story." Forgive me, but how does one take out a gagging writ on a story that is so carefully and delicately handled that it is published before a writ can be obtained? One can take out a libel writ afterwards, but one must have prior information to gag. That is one singular occasion upon which Fleet Street failed the country.

I have some concerns about the Bill. The provision for the quick correction of errors, particularly in the case of small local newspapers which have a tendency for inaccuracy, usually through haste or inexperience but not through malice, may lead to their front pages being filled with corrections. I know that that is not what the hon. Gentleman intends. In clause 4(5) he provides that his authority would be able to dismiss applications that it considered to be trivial. The hon. Gentleman will have to look at that matter carefully in Committee so that the right balance is struck.

Mr. Dalyell : How much space would "Tiny" Rowland be given in correcting the Al Fayed brothers?

Mr. Gale : The hon. Gentleman will be making a speech. He has intervened about five times this morning.

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Mr. Mandelson : Answer the point.

Mr. Gale : I am endeavouring to--

Mrs. Teresa Gorman (Billericay) : My hon. Friend does not have to answer.

Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. We must be careful about reasonable standards of courtesy. We cannot have a sub-conversation going on.

Mr. Gale : I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. You invited hon. Members to be brief. Many hon. Members want to speak in the debate. I could spend half an hour talking about that issue, but I choose not to do so. It will be much better if hon. Members make their own speeches.

My personal inclination is that we should amend the criminal justice legislation to regulate electronic eavesdropping, the taking of photographs by long-tom lenses and intrusion into people's homes. That is a matter entirely for the Home Office and criminal justice legislation. I look to the hon. Gentleman and to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for National Heritage to provide redress for the ordinary person.

Last week, members of the press ordered the last drinks in the last chance saloon by trying to find a way round the Press Complaints Commission. After everything that I have said, and after having heard what the press has said this week, I believe that if it is prepared to implement each and every one of the alterations that have been suggested, a revamped Press Complaints Commission, under a new chairman and with many more lay members, might prove eventually to be the way forward for the ordinary person. However, the hon. Gentleman's Bill makes a serious attempt to address a serious problem. I commend him for having introduced it. I hope that it receives a Second Reading. I wish it well.

11.19 am

Mr. Tony Worthington (Clydebank and Milngavie) : I am grateful to be called, and I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) on introducing the Bill. As he said, I was involved in the issue some years ago.

The best article that has been written on the subject recently appeared in The Herald, in which Mr. Ian Bell said :

"The issue is not privacy ; the issue is not bias. The issue is not good taste, ethics, or the relationships between information technology and the state. The issue is not smut, deference, royalty or David Mellor's big toe. The issue is accuracy, where journalism begins and ends."

The first question should be, "Is it true?" If we concentrated on that, many of our problems would be at an end. That is where I started from, and that is where Kelvin MacKenzie starts from. He said that tabloid journalism cannot be condemned simply because it is brash or noisy or declamatory ; it must be called to account only if it is false, irresponsible or reports untruthfully. I agree entirely. But what does someone do if a newspaper is inaccurate or, worse, if it prints lies ? As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith said, when I introduced the Right of Reply Bill, I was assured that matters had improved considerably and that the press had cleaned up its act.

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Mr. MacKenzie says that his newspaper no longer lies. What does someone do who disagrees with him, when the courts are not available and, frankly, when the courts can never be available ? Even if legal aid were available for defamation, court procedures are not appropriate to such action. Surely the onus should be on the press to show some evidence for their stories, given the huge damage that can be done, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith showed. This week I tried to find some untrue stories. The difficulty is that one gets only one side of the story. On Wednesday, the Nimmo Smith and Friel inquiry reported on the allegation that there is a gay network in Scotland. A headline from The Sun appeared in The Herald, saying :

"Gay Judges Linked to Palace. Homosexuals in Scotland's top jobs are part of a deep-rooted gay network with members stretching all over Britain and even to Buckingham Palace, The Sun can reveal". There is no hesitation about that statement. The article was about a list that had come from a man called Colin Tucker. The Nimmo Smith/Friel report states :

"Colin Tucker's so-called list' is a Statement which we have in our possession and which does not name or otherwise identify any prominent member of the Scottish legal establishment, apart from Lord Dervaird"--

who resigned several years ago--

"as a person who has allegedly engaged in homosexual behaviour." There is a fair amount of evidence that that story is untrue, that it is a fabrication and that it was probably known to be such when it was written.

Another headline appeared in The Sun on Monday, not on page 23 but on page 1. It says :

"Kick out Colonel Charles."

--I am not a great monarchist ; I am simply quoting from this week's stories--

"Army anger at Camilla affair. Senior Army officers last night called on Prince Charles to quit as colonel-in-chief of six regiments--over his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles."

I read on with great interest to discover which six regiments were calling for the Prince's resignation, but The Sun could not find one Army officer or even a batty old retired general to make the story stand up. One knows what probably occurred : it was a slack Sunday in the office at The Sun.

On Tuesday, The Sun reported :

"Prince Charles yesterday turned down an investigation into the Camillagate tape"--

that is true--

"and declared : I have got to get on with my job'."

The thought that Prince Charles telephoned the deputy editor of The Sun, Stewart Higgins, and said, "I have got to get on with my job", beggars belief. I have no problem saying that that is inaccurate ; it is not true. We must start by asking, "Is it true"? The journalist will be able to say, "Yes, it is true ; here is the evidence."

I am sad that such journalism masks the superb journalism, of which we have seen some good examples this year. It was not our Government or the Foreign Office but the world's journalists who alterted us to the problems of Somalia. There is some incredibly brave journalism coming out of the Balkans. I watched a moving programme on television last week about the work that is being done by journalists in the Balkans. In neither place will one find the newspapers that are causing us so much concern. When I went to Somalia, I asked myself, "Will I find The Sun there? Will I be able to escape press harassment?" Somalia is a good place to go if one wants to avoid The Sun. Its brave lads are at the bedroom window.

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Its editors have decided that the world's greatest humanitarian disaster--Somalia--is not a story. I find that rather difficult to accept.

It is nonsense to say that such newspapers are on the side of the little people. One of the extraordinary achievements of such papers is that they have made freedom of the press unpopular in a democracy. An extraordinary story appeared in The Independent this week. It said that a survey conducted by Glasgow university found that the public put tabloids at the bottom of the list of agencies for protecting human rights.

Mr. Robin Corbett (Birmingham, Erdington) : With The Sun at the bottom.

Mr. Worthington : Yes, The Sun was at the bottom. The public found lies and distortions more offensive than anything else. It is not freedom of the press if the press can say in print anything it likes about someone without offering redress. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith said, the freedom of the press is a concept which belongs to the people, not a few editors. A right of reply, as embodied in the Bill, enhances the freedom of the press because the ordinary citizen can have his or her say. The knowledge that someone can bite back and say, "It is not true" is a formidable deterrent to a lying or sloppy newspaper.

When I introduced my Bill, I was aware that one of its weaknesses was the way in which it proposed to establish a press commission. It looked as if the Government were setting up a body. I am aware that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith said, we have a long tradition of setting up bodies which achieve some distance from the Government. However, the idea suggested by Sir Louis Blom-Cooper is worth examining. He said that we should give the duty of appointing an authority to people in responsible posts who did not obtain those posts through any Government appointment. That would be a valuable way of creating some distance.

I commend the Bill. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith would like to tackle the whole sorry mess of our press laws. I should like a Bill of Rights, freedom of information, a new official secrets Act with a public interest defence and a reform law on defamation with perhaps a small claims court attached to it. There would be differences among us about a privacy law. I remain to be convinced that it could be framed adequately. However, the Bill is a valuable start, and I commend it to the House.

11.30 am

Mr. Alan Howarth (Stratford-on-Avon) : It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington), who has also introduced legislation intended to address these immensely important issues. So we are indebted to him, as to the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley).

I have some worries about the proposals in the Bill which I should like to elaborate. I am a member of the National Heritage Select Committee. The review that the Committee is currently undertaking of privacy and the media takes us into some of the same territory as the Bill occupies. The Committee has reached no conclusions. My remarks this morning will be in an entirely personal capacity.

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What is the nature of the problem to which we should address ourselves? What is the evidence of a collapse of journalistic standards? Jaded and dyspeptic individuals at their breakfast tables have always complained of what my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) described as the gutter press. In the home counties a generation ago, it was widely assumed that the country was going to the dogs because The Times intended to print news on the front page. The decline of the press is always with us.

If we contemplate legislation, we need to consider the facts and the practicalities calmly. There is a good deal too much righteous indignation sloshing around our political system. We hear tirades from editors and from some politicians. It will be as well if we look to see what objective evidence there is on the problem. We do not find very much.

The statistics of complaints to the Press Complaints Commission in the 18 months to July 1992 show, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith said, that complaints about accuracy were by far the largest category. But they numbered in total 1,052. There were another 40 complaints about the opportunity to reply. There were 143 complaints about privacy. In the same period, the press ran hundreds of thousands of stories. Are we to conclude, as the Press Complaints Commission and the editors do, that there is no great problem? Or are the complaints received from aggrieved individuals the tip of the iceberg? Possibly they are.

Regrettably, the Press Complaints Commission does not monitor the press. Nor has it considered third-party complaints. I commend the hon. Member for Hammersmith on his attempt in clause 3(2) to address that need. We all have our hunches and prejudices, but there is no body of evidence upon which to base the contention that there is a problem of abuse of power by the press such that we should legislate to control further than we already do what the papers are to print. After all, that is a decision not to be taken lightly in a free society.

Of course, journalists write inaccuracies from time to time. They produce quantities of material to tight deadlines. But I suggest that one important reason why inaccuracies occur is that few, if any, of us operating in the political world systematically seek to lodge in the minds of the press a complete and objective version of things which does justice to all sides of the argument. All Governments, at any rate in Britain, are great culprits here. Knowledge is power. Therefore, they deny information to the public. Huge quantities of information are systematically but unnecessarily kept secret. Governments make highly selective information available and steer interpretation on the part of the press, often by unattributable guidance.

Politicians do their best to manipulate the press and lead it by the nose. Is it fitting, then, that we should legislate to establish a statutorily based authority, the job of which would be to require the press to print the truth under compulsion of powerful sanctions? I worry about the proposal in the Bill that the Secretary of State--even so liberal and honest a Secretary of State as my right hon. Friend--should appoint the members of such an authority. The editor of The Observer, Donald Trelford hit the nail squarely on the head when he said :

"I think it would be undesirable for people appointed by the Government to decide what is truth."

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The hon. Member for Hammersmith acknowledges that difficulty, and contemplates the establishment of an intermediary appointments commission. Even then, I would be worried about the indirect element of political patronage. I should have similar reservations about his suggestion that the National Heritage Select Committee should play a part in determining who is appropriate to serve on such a body. Of course it is desirable that the press should adhere to high standards of accuracy. Indeed, it is proper that a citizen who suffers from some inaccurate report should be able to exercise the same freedom of expression as a journalist and have a correction stated in the same media. However, the establishment of what is correct will often not be easy. I feel that the hon. Member for Hammersmith underestimates that difficulty.

The Bill postulates a notion of "due accuracy". What is due accuracy? What is truth? The answer has baffled philosophers and perplexed the courts time out of mind. With the best will in the world, truth will often be hard to ascertain.

How would the Independent Press Authority deal with propaganda--when politician A says something which politician B insists is wrong? If a newspaper correctly reports what the hon. Member for Loamshire, South says, may it not perpetuate the untruth about which the hon. Member for Coketown, North has so vigorously complained? What would be the proper role of the IPA there? What should the IPA do where there is a complaint of selective reporting which is misleading on account of what is not said?

The 21 good persons and true who are to be members of the authority would need a godlike wisdom to discern what is accurate, true and in the public interest in myriad such cases. However, the issues will be immensely important. Truth matters, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith eloquently impressed on us.

For that very reason, the press will insist on a full right to defend themselves against charges of purveying untruth. The press argued against the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie, which would have established a right of reply. The press argued that the Bill would deprive it of proper legal safeguards, including the rights to demand evidence on oath, to cross-examination, to legal representation and to discovery of documents.

When arraigned for falsifying the truth, the press will surely, at least in important cases, claim the right to trial by jury. The press won that right at the end of the 18th century in Fox's libel law. It has been part of our law ever since. Are we to deny those long entrenched rights?

The hon. Member for Hammersmith envisages that the IPA should make up its own procedures. I think that he hopes that they would be informal and rapid. I fear that his hopes would be thwarted and that the procedures of the IPA would be driven to approximate more and more to those of a court. The IPA would be like no other court. It would be a special court to try the press. It would try the press without the full rigour and processes of a true court of law. For a long time at least, the IPA would be unpredictable in the exercise of its authority. It would wield its powers on the basis of loosely defined duties rather than a detailed body of case law and jurisprudence. The IPA would be confused in its purposes, as its role would be in certain instances to conciliate as well as adjudicate when conciliation fails. I do not believe that it

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is possible satisfactorily to combine both functions. The defendant will not co-operate fully and candidly with a conciliation body, if he knows that what he says will be noted as evidence when that same body later adjudicates on a complaint.

The IPA would be overwhelmed in its work load. The Bill proposes to go much further than that of the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie, which provided a statutory right of reply to factual inaccuracies which were damaging to

"the character, reputation and good standing of an individual or body of persons."

I apologise if I am mispronouncing the hon. Gentleman's constituency, perhaps he will correct me.

Mr. Worthington : It is "Millgye".

Mr. Howarth : I am very willing to grant him that right of reply. His Bill limited the types of inaccuracy to which there would be a right of reply.

The Bill provides in clause 3(1) a right for

"a published correction of a factual inaccuracy"--

any factual inaccuracy, regardless of whether it is damaging. That would open the IPA to a vast body of potential complaints. Hon. Members of this House alone--651 of us--could keep the IPA busy around the clock. The hon. Member for Hammersmith would have complaints considered not only from those people about whom the inaccurate statements were made but from anyone else who wanted to complain. The hon. Member for Hammersmith seeks to make the work load of the authority manageable by his provision in clause 4(5) :

"The Authority may dismiss any application which it reasonably considers to be vexatious or trivial."

But it would be no easy matter to do that sifting. Each case would need to be considered with proper care.

Some of the best justified third party complaints to the Press Council were pooh-poohed by editors as vexatious and trivial. An example is the case of Mr. Robert Borzello--a private individual who has campaigned persistently and courageously for years against racist language in the media. He has repeatedly been characterised as a crank and a vexatious troublemaker by arrogant and apprehensive editors.

It is extremely important that third-party complaints, raised in the public interest by whomsoever, should be reviewed by the regulatory authorities with care and respect, but all that would take time. I worry that the IPA-- on the model proposed--would become an enormous organisation and would flounder. It would prove unable to carry out the duties laid upon it, even with regard to dealing with inaccuracies.

The correction of inaccuracies looms large in the Bill. My feeling is that the measure lacks balance on account of that. The hon. Member for Hammersmith wants to strike a proper balance between the freedom and the restraint of the press, but I question whether he has done so, although that needs to be done.

The sections of the Bill that refer to the upholding of freedom are brief and highly generalised. As far as detailed provisions are concerned, the parts that deal with the restraint of press freedom and the clauses that create a power to require the press to print new material are the meat of the Bill. Its emphasis is on restraint. It also seems unbalanced and inconsistent, in that, whereas it would be the duty of the IPA to promulgate

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codes of professional and ethical standards for the press, as in clause 2(1)(d), it will be its duty to police the conduct of the press in one respect only--the correction of inaccuracies. Of all the items that one would expect to be in the code--privacy, harassment, cheque-book journalism, intrusion into grief or shock, discrimination and so forth--I do not understand why the IPA should police only inaccuracies. A number of different values have to be kept in balance. If accuracy is of paramount concern, we could hardly complain about bugging. Bugging is a great aid to accurate reporting, but privacy matters at least as much, yet the balance of the Bill does not reflect that.

We need to be prepared to allow certain risks to be taken with investigative journalism. We need newspapers that are prepared to run risks and to penetrate the opacities presented to them in the interests of exposing bad practice. If we are not prepared to risk inaccuracy, we may prevent public good being done through investigative journalism.

Perhaps the hon. Member for Hammersmith thinks that the IPA will have enough to keep it busy in dealing with inaccuracies. By the time it has got through the catalogue of duties set out in clause 2(1)(c)--

"to investigate and monitor ethical standards of the press, distribution of newspapers, ownership and control of the media, access to information and restrictions on reporting and any related matter it may consider appropriate"--

its members will be dizzy with confusion and fatigue. Under clause 2(1)(b), apart from anything else, the IPA will be monitoring itself--a somewhat circular and giddy process.

I am glad that the hon. Member for Hammersmith leaves most of what will be covered by a code of standards for the press to self-regulation. I am not entirely clear about that from my reading of the Bill, but I assume it to be the case. Self-regulation is greatly preferable to statutory supervision by an external body. I cannot understand or accept the notion of a code of professional standards imposed from outside. The essence of professionalism is ethical autonomy and self-regulation.

Mrs. Gorman : Does my hon. Friend not agree that newspapers are businesses? Journalists are not professionals who discipline themselves from within but people who are trying to make a profit out of peddling stuff, some of which causes great distress to the public. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) has pointed out the difficulty of achieving perfection in any piece of legislation drafted in this House, but, while we may not achieve perfection, do not the public expect us to try to provide a society in which they can go about their everyday lives without being unduly harassed or traduced so that someone can make money out of them?

Mr. Howarth : Many eminent and respected journalists would agree with my hon. Friend that journalism is not a profession but a craft or trade. If that is so, perhaps we should not be talking about professional standards, but we certainly must talk about ethical standards and ground rules. As far as possible, it is much better for those to be generated by the newpaper industry staff, through self-regulation. If journalists own their own code of practice there is a better chance that they will feel committed to it. If the regulatory body contains a good proportion of practising journalists, their colleagues are

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more likely to respect their judgments, but the most important part of the case for self-regulation is that a free press is a crucial safeguard of a free society.

The press have, however, confronted us with a great difficulty. For years they have dragged their feet over self-regulation. Instead of embracing it positively, they have done the minimum that they could get away with at the latest possible stage. Self-regulation has therefore been unimpressive and that has certainly applied during the two year existence of the Press Complaints Commission.

Self-regulation, however, could be made more effective. The gaps in the code could be filled, the code could be made more detailed and specific, and its application could be made tougher, reinforced by penalties agreed by the industry. Fines would be an effective self-imposed sanction. There is already a requirement under the code--imposed by the press on itself-- that corrections should be printed. They could be printed in prescribed ways. When an editor could not agree with a complainant that an inaccuracy had been printed, the code could stipulate that a reasonably argued letter of refutation should be published. That would be greatly preferable to the quasi-judicial apparatus of the IPA.

I am afraid that events have convinced me that self-regulation, while necessary, will not be sufficient. The breakdown of ethical consensus in our society and the pressures of the circulation wars mean that some newspapers will occasionally brush aside the code of practice to which they claim to subscribe.

That being the case, I believe we must reinforce the legal remedies available to the citizen. We can strengthen the law of confidence, as recommended by the Law Commission and accepted in principle by the Government some years ago. We could create a new tort of infringement of privacy, although, like the hon. Member for Hammersmith, I have some doubts about that. The creation of a new tort of harassment seems attractive. We must make legal remedy against defamation, which bears on the issue of accuracy that is so emphasised in the Bill, available in practice to people other than the rich. I presume that the simplification of procedures that the Lord Chancellor is contemplating would bring down the costs of libel actions, and I hope that he will reconsider his position on legal aid and make it available for plaintiffs in libel actions and at levels well above income support.

The third element of reform needed, to balance the proper protection of the individual with enhanced freedom of the press, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith wants, is freedom of information legislation. Happily, the House will have an opportunity to debate that next month.

There are other possibilities of strengthening press freedom in beneficial ways. The Law Commission's proposed Bill would provide a clear-cut public interest defence in proceedings for breach of confidence. That would reduce the scope for prior restraint of publication, which also needs underpinning in libel cases, as the Robert Maxwell saga has shown.

Although I applaud the hon. Member for Hammersmith for giving new focus and urgency to the national debate on the freedom and the responsibility of the press--in the hearings in his committee before Christmas, as well as in today's debate--I must say, with respect, that I do not believe that his independent IPA is

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what is needed. I have explained my reservations. If the Bill goes into Committee, I hope that some of these difficulties can be looked at in more detail.

I hope that the House will prefer to consider a threefold thrust of reform- -improved self-regulation by the press, strengthened civil remedies for the citizen and enhanced freedoms for the press, by far the greater part of which is responsibly committed to the public interest.

11.50 am

Mr. Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) : The two speeches that we have had from Conservative Members have rather neatly encapsulated the divide on the argument. The hon. Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) wanted a level of control and regulation of the press that I should like to think that most of the House would wish to resist. The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) expressed his reservations about the Bill. He accepted that they could be absorbed by the Bill, although he chose to take a different view.

In some ways, I regard this debate as a sad day. I should make clear my own interest as a member of the NUJ, although I am not in any way speaking on its behalf. I was in the House on the day when the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) had the debate on the motion to which he referred. I said then that I was resistant to any measures that might infringe the freedom of the press or require legal measures to control it in any way. That remains my view, but I also said then that it was becoming increasingly difficult for those of us who took that view to defend the excesses of at least some sections of the press.

It is right for hon. Members to acknowledge that the press is, to some extent, our bread and butter and vice versa. On occasions we can sound a little self-righteous, if not priggish, when we complain about the excesses of the press, when we are more than happy to see that and to witness the effect it can produce on unwitting voters when it is done on our behalf.

Mr. Mullin : I cannot remember the last time that the press was excessive on my behalf.

Mr. Bruce : As a Liberal Democrat, I echo the hon. Gentlman's sentiments. I do not believe that the press is excessively committed to putting forward the arguments that I should like to see presented.

The sad fact is that self-regulation has failed. Editors make themselves look a little foolish when they write highly charged critical editorials about the need for independent regulation of the City and an independent investigation of the police, and then say, "But, please, not an independent body to look into the affairs of the British press."

The hon. Member for Hammersmith has put his finger on it--the issue is not whether there should be some measure of assessing the accuracy of reporting in the British press and the rights of citizens to redress, but what that mechanism should be. How can we be sure that that mechanism will be independent? How do we ensure that the citizen feels that he has a reasonable chance of fair redress?

I commend the hon. Member for Hammersmith on the innovative way in which he has brought his Bill to the House. Although I was unable to take part in his investigative committee, it demonstrated his long-standing commitment to this issue. He is aware of the need to get the

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