Maurice Hayes (Independent)

I am grateful to Senator Dardis for sharing time with me. I have several interests to declare before I start. I am a member of the board of Independent Newspapers and I write newspaper articles. I have also been acting as a facilitator to the press team to which the Minister made reference. From now on I am on my own, in the sense that anything I say does not reflect the policy or the practice of any of those groups.

I hope there is nothing particularly symbolic in the fact that we are having this debate on Ash Wednesday. I welcome the Minister's invocation of Sir Thomas More who was the greatest public servant of all time. It is always a pleasure to engage with the Minister, even when one disagrees with him, because he brings a freshness to debate in the House. His introductory statement is extremely helpful and I find myself able to support and applaud almost all of it. I certainly support his fresh approach, his open mind and the direction in which he seems to be heading.

I mentioned my difficulties with the libel laws earlier, which I see from both sides. I generally write very carefully and do not slag people off, but try to engage with their ideas. However, in the case of a book review and of an article in which I did not even mention names, I found myself being taken on and, in one case, sued. In another case, when I was a member of the Patten commission there was an entirely dangerous article in the newspaper which definitely exposed me to libel. I could live with that, but there were people around who might shoot one for doing the sort of thing attributed to me at the time so I had to pack it in. As an ordinary citizen I did not get the hassle. We must somehow bridge the gap.

I agree with the Minister's approach to the law of privacy. This will be developed, particularly following European Court judgments, through the courts. This is probably the better way of dealing with the issue. It is difficult when these matters are set in concrete and then it is found they do not fit the circumstances. The courts will develop provisions regarding privacy over time, given this process and the constitutional right we have to privacy.

I agree with Senator Norris that the ordinary person should not have to slog through the courts. If we have a press council and the press has a code of conduct, that code should reflect the judgments being made. I join the Minister in commending to Members Baroness O'Neill's proposal which is an excellent treatment of the situation.

The direction the Minister is taking towards a press council, which is not statutory in the sense of being appointed by Ministers or politicians, is the right way to go. However, it must have sufficient background to give it the teeth people expect for protection. It is important that it is independent and in this regard the first appointees and how they are appointed will be of great importance. There may be technical difficulties in ensuring these people emerge in a way that is credible and transparent without having some form of appointing procedure. It is important to all concerned that the first appointees are outstanding people with unimpeachable integrity so that people will believe the council does mean something. The code of conduct against which the council will operate is also important.

People have talked about the press and a democratic society. It is a question of checks and balances. The great thing about a democratic society is that one set of institutions can live with another set of institutions and keep it in check. Each institution will not be right all of the time and each will not produce balance across the board all of the time. There will be difficulties. What is important is that the ordinary person should feel there is a means of control.

I expect the media, generally, to be not anti-Government but critical of Government. I had the misfortune to live under a single party state for 50 years where people get very complacent. We have seen it happen across the water, both in the Thatcher Government and in the current Administration, that governments that are in power for a long time suddenly think they make the rules. Governments that are in power for a long time suddenly think they make the rules. This matter is important. We all applaud Woodward and Bernstein as portrayed in "All the President's Men" and Ben Bradley. Two investigative journalists from the Independent Group have been murdered. One was killed by criminals in Dublin and the other by loyalist paramilitaries in the North. In order to remove doubt I should say the second crowd was also engaged in criminal activity.

People will make mistakes and go over the top and it is important that they can be held to a set of standards. We should not try to be entirely restrictive. The use of false bylines is unpardonable. Much more than defamation, I worry about the danger to the criminal process of some of the things that are happening in court reporting and the presentation of cases. I also worry about the dangers that arise not through the actual journalism itself, but the things that are used to promote newspapers in the sense of lines being slashed up and taken out of context and all the rest of it.

In the closing section of the Minister's speech I thought I detected a slight false dichotomy in terms of the difference between a story being newsworthy or profit-worthy; information versus entertainment. I heard a quote the other day which was so bizarre that I hesitate to attribute the remark. It was said that newspapers should simply give information. That is Pravda. The trouble with newspapers being newsworthy or profit-worthy is that if they are not attractive enough to be read; people will not buy them. It does not matter how true is the news they contain. Efforts should be made to make clear what is news and what is comment. I sympathise with a great deal of Senator Dardis's sub-editorial views. We should avoid these false dichotomies.

From my experience, the industry has moved a long way. The Minister has helped that by promoting reasonable debate. He has consulted and thrown the issue open. It is important for him to go with the tide and bring this matter to a conclusion.

Reference was made this morning to Dean Swift. He was held up to us, quite rightly, as the great satirist, a person who probed at authority and the rest of it. What nobody mentioned was that Dean Swift wrote most of that under a false byline. He wrote as Drapier. Second, Swift was censored. While we applaud the great satirist we must remember that it is a slightly dangerous business. The greater mistake would be to overreact rather than underreact. I commend and welcome the approach the Minister is taking and wish him well.