The Government has dropped Lord Leveson’s controversial proposal to make newspapers pay both sides’ legal costs for libel actions, whether they won or lost in court.
Culture Secretary Matt Hancock told MPs this week that the Leveson Inquiry has formally closed and that the government will seek to repeal the s40, Crime and Courts Act 2013 cost provision laws. Hancock said the ‘terms of reference’ for the second part of Leveson had ‘largely been met’ and the media landscape was ‘markedly different’ from that examined by Lord Leveson in 2011. Since then, newspaper circulation has fallen by about 30% while about 200 local newspapers have been forced to close, he said, and publishers are finding it hard to generate revenue online. Meanwhile, unregulated social media has risen dramatically as an information source.
However, Steven Heffer, head of media and privacy at Collyer Bristow, which acted for many of the celebrities affected by phone hacking, said: ‘It is astonishing that the government is abandoning it promises to victims of the phone-hacking scandal.
‘In 2012, David Cameron made personal promises to the victims of press abuse that the government would implement Leveson. It is a huge disappointment to them that this government has now dropped that completely.
‘At the time of Part 1 of the Leveson Inquiry, the government accepted that the system of press regulation was badly broken. Precious little has changed since then, but the government is now content to walk away without fixing it.
‘Part 2 of Leveson should have been a crucial part of examining unlawful actions by media organisations, and improper relationships between journalists and the police. Instead, the whole affair will be swept under the carpet.’
