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Dear Friend
We need your help to make sure that press abuse victims are not betrayed and that Leveson’s recommendations are not abandoned.
This week political parties published their manifestos for the General Election on 8th June and we learned that the Conservative party are proposing to abandon the Leveson reforms which they agreed on a cross-party basis in 2011, and to cancel Part 2 of the inquiry which would investigate police corruption and the cover-ups of criminality at newspapers. We will fight this disgraceful betrayal.
The Conservatives, however, have chosen to renege on the cross party agreement and to betray press abuse victims. Their manifesto pledges to repeal the “Section 40” low cost arbitration incentive and thereby deny ordinary people affected by illegal press abuse access to justice. They have also pledged to abandon the second stage of the Leveson Inquiry, allowing unaccountable press barons to continue to get away with corporate misconduct. This appalling reversal comes in spite of the support for Leveson from a number of rank-and-file Conservative members, MPs and Peers.
After all the unminuted meetings between press representatives and the office of Number 10 over the last year, we can only conclude that There has been collusion at the highest level between government and newspaper owners. It appears that the Prime Minister has stitched up a calculated deal to trade the interests of the public for favourable coverage in powerful newspapers.
Press victim, Christopher Jefferies said:
"If this pledge is carried through, there will be no effective, independent regulation of the press in this country and no access to affordable justice for victims of press abuse. I wish to make it clear that I and others who have suffered at the hands of powerful and unaccountable newspapers will not tolerate this betrayal.
"We will fight throughout the next Parliament to ensure that the voices of ordinary people are heard above the megaphones of self-interested newspaper editors and proprietors. We will fight to ensure that the careful regulatory framework proposed by Leveson and agreed by Parliament is not systematically dismantled by a government subservient to newspaper editors. And we will fight to ensure that any inconvenient truths about cover-ups and about collusion between police, press and politicians in the past are exposed to proper scrutiny."
We need to challenge the Conservative leadership on why they have gone back on their word, but we can’t do it without your help! We need you to make sure you hold your prospective MPs to account in the run-up to this General Election. We will send you more on this next week.
Thank you for your continued support,
The Hacked Off team.
Read the full Press Release
here.