Lords to debate report on press regulation
The House of Lords will tomorrow, Tuesday 20 December, debate the Communications Committee's report from March 2015 - 'Press Regulation: Where are we now?'
The debate is being moved by Lord Best and Lord Keen of Elie will respond on behalf of the Government. Among those expected to speak are Baroness Jones of Whitchurch, former Shadow Spokesperson for Culture, Media and Sport, Lord Strasburger and Lord Lipsey.
The debate is expected to start from sometime after 6pm.
The report, Press Regulation: where are we now?, was published in March 2015 to establish where things stood with regard to press regulation in the wake of the Leveson report, the Royal Charter on Self-Regulation of the Press and the closure of the Press Complaints Commission.
It identified that there was a complex process for people to go through to make a complaint against a publication, and no regulator in place that met the criteria set out by Lord Leveson and embodied in the Royal Charter.
Since the publication of the report, IMPRESS has been recognised by the Press Recognition Panel as a regulatory body. This caused concern among some parts of the press. Karen Bradley MP, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, launched a consultation on whether the Government should put into force legislation which would affect legal costs in certain media cases.
The Committee undertook a short series of follow-up evidence sessions, transcripts of which are available here.
