Leveson Inquiry: Letting the Judges Take the Hard Decisions?
| Author | Chris Hanretty |
| Published date | 01 April 2013 |
| Date | 01 April 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/2041-9066.12004 |
| Subject Matter | Feature |
Leveson: first, that the decision to
hold an inquiry can be understood
with reference to common theories
of blame avoidance; second, that the
cost and length of the inquiry were
limited compared to other similar in-
quiries; third, that the nature of the
inquiry demonstrated the increasing
judicialisation of British politics; and
fourth, that reactions to the inquiry
were strongly conditioned by initial
attitudes towards regulation of the
press and party politics. This does not
help us to predict the likely fate of
Leveson’s recommendations, but it
should make us realise that this issue
will not go away.
Blame Avoidance
The initial decision, subsequently
revised, was to appoint an inquiry
into the narrow issue of phone hacking.
Understanding decisions to set up
such inquiries is devilishly difficult
because of the problem of nega-
tive cases – instances where it was
conceivable that an inquiry might
have been established, but where
no inquiry resulted. We know, for
example, that the rate at which
public inquiries are established has
increased from roughly one per
year until 1980, to a peak of four
per year in the period 1997–2001.
From this trend, however, it is dif-
ficult to say whether we have more
public inquiries because politicians
increasingly favour public inquiries
as their preferred ‘mechanism for
ascertaining the facts after any major
breakdown or controversy’ (Burgess,
2011), or because major (perceived)
Leveson Inquiry:
Letting the Judges Take the Hard Decisions?
On 29 November last year,
Lord Justice Leveson pre-
sented his report on the cul-
ture, practices and ethics of the press
to Parliament. Leveson had been
asked to undertake an inquiry by
the Prime Minister following claims
that a private investigator working
for the News of the World had hacked
the phone of murdered schoolchild
Milly Dowler. Leveson concluded
that the British press had too often
acted in an ‘outrageous’ fashion and
that the existing system of press
self-regulation was inadequate.
Leveson concluded that there was
no evidence of widespread police
corruption, despite a sequence of
poor decisions relating to the initial
investigation into hacking at the
News of the World, but found that
politicians, as a group, had devel-
oped ‘too close a relationship with
the press’.
The report made 92 recom-
mendations. Some were relatively
uncontroversial (for example, those
concerning amendments to the Data
Protection Act and civil damages).
Others – in particular, the recom-
mendation that a system of press
self-regulation have a statutory
underpinning – proved far more
contentious.
Though the publication of the re-
port lacked the theatre of earlier pub-
lic hearings, the inquiry as a whole
was an important political event.
It was not, however, sui generis.
Leveson belongs within a particular
genus (judicial inquiries) and species
(inquiries under the Inquiries Act
2005). Such taxonomic rigour helps
us understand several points about
The Leveson inquiry was quick and cheap by the standards of public inquiries. Compendious in length, it was
intended as a solution to the problems posed by press malfeasance – but its reception merely reaffirmed pre-
existing political sentiment. Chris Hanretty reports.
Politicians had
developed
‘too close a
relationship
with the press’,
Leveson found
breakdowns or controversies are
simply more numerous.
Nevertheless, we can hazard some
generalisations about the factors
that make public inquiries more
likely. Using a carefully curated cata-
logue of calls for inquiries, Raanan
Sulitzeanu-Kenan has been able to
identify three factors that make an
inquiry more likely: if the govern-
ment is popular at the time; if the
issue is salient; and if the original
target of blame is remote from the
government. These three factors all
feed into politicians’ calculations.
Other things being equal, politicians
would rather not call public inquir-
ies, because to call a public inquiry
is to admit that something has gone
wrong on the government’s watch.
That is, the government loses from
acknowledging problems. Popular
governments are happier taking a
short-term loss by acknowledging
a problem. Salient issues are those
that are foremost in the public mind
and for which immediate relief is of
greatest benefit. Remote concerns
are issues where the long-term risk
for the government of a castigatory
report is limited.
How does this help us under-
stand Cameron’s 6 July decision
to establish a public inquiry into
phone hacking? Certainly, the issue
was extremely salient – the media
likes to talk about itself, and the
hacking of a dead girl’s voicemail
is an act so ghoulish it is unlikely
the issue would have dropped off
the agenda. The primary targets of
blame – News International editors
and executives – were socially close
to the Prime Minister, but they were
8
Political Insight
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