The phone-hacking scandal started out as a story affecting the rich and the famous, and therefore of little relevance to the general public. Then came the revelations that Milly Dowler’s phone had been hacked, as had the phones of the relatives of war casualties, the murdered Soham girls and 7/7casualties. Suddenly it became a scandal of how news is gathered, one which could have touched any family, and there was a wave of national revulsion at what Nick Clegg called the “fundamentally corrupted relationship between politics, the media, and the police.”

News International thought that the surest way to distract people was to create a compelling diversion. Closing the News of the World was intended to hold off criticism, but it was never going to be enough, and the fall-out continues. The Metropolitan Police have questions to answer over shelving an investigation that they should have pursued vigorously. They failed to tell thousands of people whose names appeared in the books of a private investigator that their phones might have been hacked. Their excuse was that they were far too busy with other matters – particularly terrorist plots – to plough through the mountain of documents they had recovered in the sketchy first enquiry. Perhaps they should have handed the lot over to Wikileaks for analysis. It would seem that the police were afraid of endangering their cosy relationship with the Murdoch papers. More seriously, some police were corruptly paid by the Murdoch press.

David Cameron made an astonishing statement on Wednesday when he admitted that the relationship between media executives and the politicians had become unhealthy. He said: “It was too close. Too much time was spent courting the media and not enough time confronting the problems.” Margaret Thatcher was the last Prime Minister who didn’t give a toss about the media. Since then it has been a sorry catalogue. Kingmaker Murdoch saw off Neil Kinnock, John Major and Gordon Brown, while ensuring the coronation of Tony Blair and David Cameron. No wonder there was a climate of fear, a reluctance to take on the power of the tabloids which used illegal intrusions into privacy to sell newspapers and to secure political influence. Even Tony Blair was eventually moved to castigate the “feral beast” of the media.

One politician who did not cosy up to the Murdoch empire was Vince Cable. As business secretary he had legal responsibility for deciding whether to accept any Competition Commission decision that a takeover of BSkyB could go ahead. Then last December he was caught by a ‘Telegraph’ sting when he revealed his true feelings. He told the undercover reporters: “And I don’t know if you have been following what has been happening with the Murdoch press, where I have declared war on Mr Murdoch and I think we are going to win…His [Murdoch's] whole empire is now under attack…” He lost his BSkyB role for his indiscretion and was considered lucky to hang on to his cabinet post. But who would argue with his judgement now. On Wednesday Rupert Murdoch capitulated to parliament and abandoned News Corporation’s £8bn bid for BSkyB. So a celebratory lap of honour in the Cable household would be in order.

Also on Wednesday David Cameron performed another U-turn and announced a sweeping public inquiry, to be presided over by Lord Justice Brian Leveson, into widespread lawbreaking by the press, alleged corruption by police, and the failure of the initial police investigation into phone hacking. The inquiry will also look at a new system of independent regulation of the press and the potentially critical issue of future cross-ownership between press and television stations. So that’s alright then.

Or is it? Inquiries under The Inquiries Act 2005 can still be subject to ministerial interference on the relevance of evidence and even the terms of reference. They also grind exceedingly slow. No results are promised in under a year. The danger is that, once the initial outrage has passed, and the general public is otherwise distracted by such as the Diamond Jubilee and the Olympic Games, we will again settle for half-measures, half-implemented, as happened with the impulse for constitutional reform that came out of the parliamentary expenses scandal.

Photo courtesy of bisgovuk

The Identity Documents Bill abolished identity cards and the national identity register in December 2010. It was the first instalment of the government’s promise to introduce legislation to “restore freedoms and civil liberties through the abolition of identity cards and unnecessary laws.” The Protection of Freedoms Bill, presented to Parliament last week, is the next step.

The bill covers a multitude of matters. It provides for a maximum pre charge detention period of 14 days, scraps the notorious section 44 stop and search powers and repeals or rewrites the provision of powers of entry and associated powers. Clause 26 ends the fingerprinting (and other biometrics such as iris scanning) of children in schools without parental consent, and clause 25 provides for the destruction of DNA and fingerprint evidence samples of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. The bill provides for a code of practice about surveillance camera systems, including the CCTV and Automatic Number Plate Recognition systems, and the appointment of a Surveillance Camera Commissioner. It creates a new criminal offence of immobilising, moving or preventing the movement of a vehicle without lawful authority, aimed at rogue wheel clamping firms.

There will be reform of the vetting and barring scheme and criminal records regime to scale them back to more common-sense levels. Clause 82 provides that historical convictions or cautions for consensual gay sex with over-16s will no longer have to be disclosed. Clause 92  plans to amend the Freedom of Information Act so that if requested data is either held in an electronic dataset or the applicant expresses a preference for data in electronic form, “the public authority must, so far as reasonably practicable, provide the information to the applicant in an electronic form which is capable of re-use”. The bill also strengthens the powers of the information commissioner. Marriage laws will be amended to allow people to marry outside the hours of 8am-6pm. And clause 99 repeals the provisions of section 43 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 which allowed certain fraud cases to proceed without a jury.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: “This is a landmark Bill which will result in an unprecedented rolling back of the power of the state. The Protection of Freedoms Bill brings together a huge range of measures to restore the hard-won British liberties that have been lost in recent years.” Writing in the ‘Observer’, Henry Porter said: “The bill is a creditable start and it tells us that the Blair attack on liberty is spent.” But it is just two cheers from Cian Murphy. Writing in the ‘Guardian’ he said: “It is piecemeal reform of selective aspects of several years worth of intrusive legislation. Progressive reform should always be welcomed but let’s hold the fanfare. It’s no Magna Carta.” Even more critical is the Law Society, whose President, Linda Lee, said: “While the aim of scaling back state powers and reversing what has been seen as the widespread erosion of civil liberties in recent years is laudable the Bill as a whole fails to measure up to the Government’s grand rhetoric.” She said: “The Society has grave doubts that the Bill will be seen as the turning point in the growth of the surveillance society,” adding: “Freedom is also about enabling people, yet cuts to legal aid will do precisely the opposite.”

The full text of the Protection of Freedoms Bill 2010-11 can be found at:

http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010-11/protectionoffreedoms.html

One of the more surprising pledges in the Coalition programme for government was to extend anonymity in rape cases to defendants. Such a move would turn the clock back to 1976, when the Sexual Offences Act introduced anonymity for those accused of rape. That provision was repealed in 1988. Shortly after the Coalition pledge, which provoked a storm of adverse publicity, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg signalled a willingness to drop the government’s plans when he told Parliament: “I want to make it clear that, although the Government have proposed the idea, we want to listen to everybody who has a stake or expertise in or insight into the matter. If our idea does not withstand sincere scrutiny, we will of course be prepared to change it.”

Now it would seem that the government has abandoned these plans. When asked in the Commons last week if he will conduct a public consultation on whether to grant anonymity to defendants in rape cases, justice minister Crispin Blunt said: “The Government are minded to strengthen anonymity before charge. We want to hear the views of those who may have any new evidence to assist our deliberations, and we will bring our conclusions to Parliament in the autumn.” However, he went on to say: “Since the principal points of judgment around the issue are clear and very narrow…the Government do not propose to manage a full, formal public consultation.” Crucially he added: “We want in the first instance to try to find a non-statutory solution, and given that we had 21 Criminal Justice Acts passed over the 13 years of the last Administration, I am sure that Labour Members will understand why we are loath to find even more statutes to put on the statute book.”

Instead the government will negotiate with the Press Complaints Commission to persuade newspapers and websites to grant anonymity to suspects. “It was agreed on both sides of the House when the Sexual Offences Act 2003 went through Parliament that all people charged with offences ought to have their identity protected until the point of charge. That is the guidance that the Press Complaints Commission put into effect in 2004.” He added that there is an issue around the strength of that guidance which required attention. According to the ‘Guardian’, Government sources said the minister had not performed a U-turn because ministers had not committed themselves to changing the law. Ministers are still committed to granting anonymity to suspects between arrest and charge and believe that a change in the PCC code is the best way of achieving this.