Michael Meacher MP

Vanessa Perroncell is a person I have never met and am very unlikely to.   But her story is surely the tipping point for action to bring a lawless, licentious and rampant press under control.   Freedom of the press is one thing, recklessly destroying lives without any regard for the facts is quite another.

After splitting up from the Premier League footballer Wayne Bridge, she allegedly had an affair with John Terry, the England captain.     Once a judge lifted an injunction banning revelation of Terry’s sex life, she was hounded mercilessly by a salacious press pack pouring out ever more fictitious gossip about her private life and prurient details about her family background.   #as she herself said, “They made out I,m some kind of prostitute.   That’s really what they’re saying.   And the stories are untrue.   The have gone mad”, adding (which is the crucial question) “who are they to do this?”

We urgently need effective regulation to curb a wanton and self-indulgent press which sees salacious insinuation as a commercial prize.   The utter ineffectiveness of the Press Complaints Commission is legendary.   Voluntary self-regulation has always been a failure, be it the banks, MPs, the police, the security services as well as the press.   Those with power always abuse it unless constrained by tight deterrent regulation.

Most obviously we need:

*  A right of reply, as already exists in several other countries, which would guarantee subject to a rapid tribunal ruling that the offended party was afforded the same amount of space on the same page within 3 days to mount a reply.

*  A privacy law, rather than at present a series of judge-made decisions protecting personal privacy in particular circumstances, which again as in other countries balances the right to privacy with a free press which can legitimately claim a public interest in publishing, subject to carefully prescribed criteria.

*  In the worst cases a legal right to impose on a grossly, or serially, offending newspaper a heavy deterrent fine and/or, as suggested recently by the Commons DCMS select committee, a legal right to stop publication of such a newspaper for a day or whatever period determined.