These are the highlights of a rousing speech in defence of press freedom given by Jacob Rees-Mogg during last night’s Data Protection Bill debate:
“Mr Mosley was the authoriser of a leaflet… What did this leaflet say? As I say, this is so appalling that I am reluctant to read it out in Parliament. Under a heading of “Protect your health”, it said: “There is no medical check on immigration. Tuberculosis, VD and other terrible diseases like leprosy are on the increase. Coloured immigration threatens your children’s health.”
That is the view of the funder of IMPRESS. It is little wonder that our free press does not want to be associated with such a man. It is little wonder that, to its credit, the Labour party has now refused to take any further funding from this man, but IMPRESS has not. IMPRESS has not condemned this man. It has not said it will refuse further funding from the charitable trust he set up purely and specifically to keep IMPRESS running. IMPRESS has done nothing of this kind. It has a reputation of its own, and there is a certain irony in this; its chief executive is a man called Jonathan Heawood, and he tweeted, of all things, that the Daily Mail was “a neo-fascist rag”. Dare I say that he might know a good deal more about neo-fascists than one had thought when that tweet was originally circulated?”
Read Guido’s Impress File here. The Mogg’s not Impressed…
Cathy Newman asks Max Mosley if he lied under oath over the existence of a racist leaflet which claimed “coloured immigration threatens your children’s health“. Mosley had a proper car crash after Cathy handed him the leaflet, replying: “If it is genuine it doesn’t reflect my views today” and insisted he had “no reason to apologise to anyone”. Towards the end of the interview he appeared to admit responsibility for the leaflet and accept it was racist. Read the Mail story here. Mosley’s name is at the bottom of the leaflet. This looks very bad for Max, who admitted he supported offering paying to repatriate immigrants and was reduced to accusing the Mail of breaching the Data Protection Act. He went on to insist he was a fit and proper person to fund Labour’s deputy leader and would give him more money. Will Tom Watson hand those half a million pounds of donations back?
Unelected, unaccountable and unknown to the British reading public, a gang of press-hating peers last night forced a double defeat on the government which could pave the way for Leveson 2. Lords voted by a majority of 29 to effectively green light the proposed second part of the Inquiry. Lengthy Leveson 1 already produced a 2000 page report at a cost of £5.4 million to the taxpayer – and left the press with legal bills in the tens of millions.
The Conservative manifesto pledged in black-and-white that the Inquiry would not be reopened. Despite this promise, Leveson 2 will now face a vote by MPs in the spring. Commons maths means the outcome is far from certain. Tom Watson can hardly conceal his glee. Cop-thumper Max Mosley will consider it a spankingly good development…
The peers, led by Baroness Hollins, effectively hijacked the Data Protection Bill, twisting consumer protection measures into yet another press-bashing free-for-all. Their illiberal agenda includes introducing measures akin to the harsh Section 40, which would mean newspapers could have to pay both their own and their opponent’s legal costs even if they were successful in data protection cases.
Guido understands government concessions are in play. A ‘press sustainability review’ may be put on the table. There’s a danger opponents of a free press will run away with any concession and try to force through their anti-freedom agenda. The government last night said it will seek to overturn the Lords’ amendments in the Commons.
The press has been publicly scrutinised to an extraordinary level in recent years, put under the spotlight unlike any other industry, with lengthy inquiries and multiple (fruitless) police probes. The threat of yet another inquiry was described in last night’s debate as amounting to “harassment” of the press by the state. Some politicians are still on their hellbent crusade to muzzle the free media, the force that exposes their wrongdoing and holds them to account…
Readers will remember MediaGuido’s Impress File, which exposed how board members on Max Mosley’s state-endorsed press regulator were on the record saying they “hate” newspapers, want to ban them and put them out of business. Not the sort of positions a fair-minded regulator should be taking, Guido thought…
It turns out Impress agree. Press Gazette reports it has banned its own chief executive Jonathan Heawood, who Guido revealed compared newspapers to Nazis, from sitting on its decision-making committee for large publishers. It has also banned board member Emma Jones, who compared the Mail to Hitler, and Maire Messenger Davies, who equated the paper to Nazis and fascists.
The farcical situation is effectively an admission from Impress that it is not fit for purpose. How can Heawood, Jones and Davies possibly keep their positions on the board when their own organisation has deemed them unfit to regulate newspapers? Shambles…
Why does Impress funder Max Mosley want to gag the press? So they are prevented from publishing stories like this in today’s Sun, revealing Mosley once wrote a letter demanding an end to “coloured immigration” and defending his fascist father.
His opinion of “the Jew” is a nice touch too. How can Impress take £4 million from a man with such views? And why has the government given them state recognition?
UPDATE: Worth remembering that Spanky Max gave Tom Watson a £200,000 donation. Strange alliance…
MediaGuido’s Impress File has exposed Max Mosley’s state-recognised press regulator as a bunch of cranks who are unfit for purpose. Impress is the press regulator which hates the press. Now any paper which refuses to be put in Mosley’s shackles faces financial ruin.
Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act, cooked up by Hacked Off and Brian Leveson, is designed to punish newspapers for reporting the truth. Even if a paper publishes a story that is completely true it will be forced to pay costs should a legal case be brought. Even if a newspaper wins a case, it will still have to fork out for the other side’s fees. It’s a charter for anyone who fancies it – from crime bosses to celebrities, from local councillors to foreign dictators – to try their hand at shutting down stories exposing wrongdoing.
You have just a few days to let Culture Secretary Karen Bradley know that gagging the free press with ruinous costs is unacceptable. The consultation closes at 5pm Tuesday 10 January. Take 10 seconds now to make a stand against cover-ups and for free expression, by completing this form:
If you want to read the next MPs’ expenses scandal, sign the form above…
