Global Witness Warns of Threat to Non-profit Organisations Posed by Costs Sanctions

Global Witness is the latest campaigning body to warn that widely condemned costs sanctions which would punish publishers for refusing to join a state-recognised regulator would have “a highly undesirable impact on non-profit and civil society organisations.”

The global campaigning organisation warned that the costs sanctions would have a “major chilling effect” on its work highlighting injustices in countries across the world.

In its evidence to the Data Protection Bill Committee, Global Witness said: “The threat of costs consequences, even in a legal case where the publisher is successful, would have a highly undesirable impact on non-profit and civil society organisations that adhere to extremely high standards in their investigations into corruption and inequality, but do not have the resources to risk the uncertain prospect of litigation.

“These provisions fail the tests of necessity and proportionality. Global Witness has faced costly legal threats and claims by powerful individuals and companies, including African dictators and wealthy multinational corporations. The costs consequences for non-profit publishers would be disproportionate and excessive and would inhibit important investigations and reporting.

“This runs counter to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to freedom of expression.”

The Committee narrowly voted to remove the clauses relating to the Section 40-style clauses from the Bill and a major enquiry into data protection issues in the media this week but the Labour Party immediately pledged to reintroduce them at a later stage in the Bill’s passage.  

Shadow Culture Secretary Tom Watson said Labour would “fight the Government every step of the way and will re-introduce amendments to ensure Leveson Part 2 happens when the bill reaches the floor of the House.”

In the Bill Committee debate on Tuesday MPs condemned the clauses and the way in which the Data Protection Bill is being used to introduce them.

Peter Heaton-Jones MP said “I find it a little hard to understand why we are discussing this issue at all in relation to the Bill. That amendment and the Section 40 amendment, which we will discuss later, were attached to the Bill in the other place in much the same way as one attaches decorations to a Christmas tree.”

“The landscape has changed markedly. It is absolutely right that we take account now, in 2018, of the situation that we find ourselves in. Given that Leveson 1 has happened, given what we know Leveson 1 was able to achieve and what it was not able to achieve, and given some of the reforms that have since taken place, it is absolutely right that the current Government in 2018 revisit the matter.

“In my view, they have reached absolutely the correct conclusion: the grounds on which Leveson was originally to go ahead no longer are justified.

“Section 40 will have precisely the opposite effect to what probably anyone listening would hope it to have. It will be an extraordinarily damaging measure for the future of the freedom of the press in this country. It will have the effect of preventing publication of material which is in the public interest and which is true, legitimate, and fair, because newspaper proprietors will not be able to afford the risk of going to a court case which they win but still have to pay the costs. It will be an incredible impediment to the free press in this country.”

Matt Warman MP said that stories such as the revelations about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica would not be possible under the regime and pointed to the strong regulatory model already in place: “I had a mercifully limited engagement with what was then the Press Complaints Commission, although we did have to deal with some complaints in my small bit of the paper.

“Although we took it seriously, it is in no way comparable with the seriousness that IPSO is now taken. That might be down to the fact that the scale of the apology that can be demanded by IPSO, and has to be given, is exponentially greater. That is a crucial deterrent when it comes to the work done by journalists in the newsroom, who sometimes regard their editors as figures of great fear as much as great role models.

“The other side is that we have a crucial low-cost arbitration system that allows people who are not of the means that the right hon. Gentleman described to bring cases against the media and get the redress they deserve when people make mistakes. Those are the two crucial differences between the PCC and IPSO.

“The latter is a fundamentally more powerful, very different regulator, but it has the credibility and independence that IMPRESS will simply never have.”

Colin Clark MP said: “Surely my hon. Friend shares my concern, and more to the point the public’s concern, that state interference smacks of all the wrong things the Government do and undermines the free press, on which we depend on a national and a local scale.”

Mike Wood MP added: “Is my hon. Friend as concerned as I am that The Times journalist who uncovered the Rotherham child abuse scandal said that it would have been inconceivable—that is the word he used—for the newspaper to have run that story on its front page had section 40 been in place?”

Speaking for the Government DCMS Minister Margot James MP said: “Press self-regulation has changed significantly in recent years with the establishment of IPSO, which follows many of the principles set out in the Leveson report. As so few publishers have joined a regulator recognised under the royal charter, commencement of section 40 would have a chilling effect on investigative journalism, which is so important to a well-functioning democracy.

“To conclude, high-quality news provision is vital to our society and democracy. I know there is shared interest across the House in safeguarding its future, and the Government are passionate about and working to deliver it.

“We believe that the clauses would work against those aims and cut across the work we are doing to help strengthen the future of high-quality journalism, and will therefore oppose their continued inclusion in the Bill.”