Eversheds comment: Still a long road ahead for clarity on UK press reform

• United Kingdom

18-03-2013

In response to the news that a deal has been struck between the three main political parties in the UK on measures to regulate the press, Andrew Terry, media expert at global law firm, Eversheds, comments:

“It appears that broad agreement has been reached regarding the framework for future press regulation in the UK. Yet the contradictory cries of success from all sides show how politicised this issue has become. What will seem strange to those outside the UK is that tremendous energy has been spent on creating a framework that looks like it is not a statutory one. Hence the emergence of the vehicle of a Royal Charter, to ‘underpin’ press reform, without seeming to be ‘underpinned by statute’. Any suggestion that UK press reform might be a useful template to be followed by other countries starts to look unlikely when agreement is bound around a little-used medieval royal right.

“The way this debate has been framed and examined has muddied the issues at the heart of press accountability. Statutory control is often interpreted as meaning government control and there are obvious reasons why that is deeply unattractive. The reality is that many individuals and bodies, the judiciary and OFCOM, for example, are appointed by statute and are seen to be independent. Independence cannot be assumed to exist, but neither can it be assumed to be absent. It all depends on how the regulator would work in practise. To answer that we will need to turn a blind eye to the partisan summaries, and take time to review the detail of the final proposals.”

• Andrew Terry
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• +44 791 911 2302
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