Former BBC chairman Lord Grade has hit out at the “bonkers” cross-party royal charter system of press regulation, arguing that it is a “dangerous step too far” towards political interference.
He said leading lawyers had questioned the legality of the “carrot and stick” system, where newspapers who sign up to a regulator recognised under the royal charter system will be spared the threat of exemplary damages, claiming it could breach human rights laws.
The Tory peer said the process of deciding how to react to the Leveson Report had been “comprehensively hijacked” by pressure group Hacked Off and under the system newspapers would find themselves more at risk of parliamentary interference than the licence-fee funded BBC.
In a speech to the Society of Editors, Lord Grade acknowledged that the press had “brought this situation on itself” as a result of the bad behaviour of some in the trade.
“It certainly does at times seem as if tabloid journalists leave their humanity and their conscience at home when they head for the newsroom,” he said.
But he added: “The trouble is, that as soon as the politicians became involved, they did what politicians always do: they reached for the statute book always the wrong answer where press regulation is concerned.”
Lord Grade continued: “That final session, where politicians of three main parties huddled in secret over pizza with Hacked Off to agree the final draft of the royal charter, while the industry directly affected was unrepresented that session was, to say the very least, counter-productive”.