Leveson Inquiry: misbehaving newspapers should be fined £1 million, says Lord Black

Newspapers and magazines would be fined up to £1 million for the most serious “breakdowns in ethical behaviour” under a new system of regulation suggested to the Leveson Inquiry.

Lord Black was director of the PCC between 2000 and 2006 

Lord Black of Brentwood, chairman of the Press Standards Board of Finance, the co-ordinating body for newspaper and magazine publishers’ trade associations, said “serious” financial penalties should be legally enforceable by a new watchdog.

But he urged the Inquiry chairman, Lord Justice Leveson, to resist any

form of statutory regulation, saying any body policing the media must be independent of Parliament.

Lord Black, who is Executive Director of Telegraph Media Group, publisher of The Daily Telegraph, said the system he was suggesting was “future proof” because it could be applied to print and digital news organisations alike.

He is one of a number of senior figures within the media invited by Lord Justice Leveson to submit ideas for a more robust replacement for the current watchdog body, the Press Complaints Commission.

Lord Black said the PCC had “lost the confidence of the public” because of its “inadequate” response to the phone-hacking scandal.

He said his proposal was backed by the UK’s four main newspaper and magazine publishers’ trade bodies, The Newspaper Society, The Newspaper Publishers Association, The Scottish Newspaper Society and the Professional Publishers Association.

The proposal involves a complaints committee which would deal with complaints against the media, and a separate investigations and compliance panel with the power to call witnesses and demand documents as it looked into breaches of ethical standards.

The two arms of a new regulator would be overseen by an independent trust board, with members of the public making up the majority of its members, Lord Black said.

Publishers would sign up to a five-year rolling contract with the regulator, paying annual fees, and would face legally-enforceable penalties enshrined in the contract for any transgressions.

“This gives the new regulator an enforceable legal basis on which to work without the need for any form of statutory intervention,” said Lord Black.

Financial penalties would be decided by the trust board, which would have the power to levy fines of up to £1m for “systemic breakdowns in ethical behaviour”, he suggested.

He said any publisher who left the voluntary regulatory system would be liable for future fees covered in the contract.

They could also face other sanctions, he added, such as the withdrawal of press cards from their journalists, the withdrawal of access to agency copy and the loss of a proposed “kite mark”, which would make it harder to attract advertising.