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The press complaints commission's speedy initiative to inquire into the Biggs affair will provide a severe test of the self-regulation of the press. It should also prompt a public debate about the scope of press freedom, the control of chequebook journalism and the pecuniary benefits to criminals.
The immediate focus of the Biggs affair is the prohibition in the PCC's code of practice on payment by newspapers to persons engaged in crime, or to their associates (defined as including family, friends, neighbours and colleagues). Payments must not be made either directly or indirectly through agents.
Chequebook journalism has traditionally been abhorred. The old press council in its impressive report into the case of Peter Sutcliffe in 1981, when national newspapers were unsuccessfully vying with each other to offer six figure sums to the wife of the notorious mass killer, sought to outlaw payments to criminals. It virtually ruled out any public interest exception. The report said: "While the council recognises that conceivably, in an exceptional case, publication of stories or pictures from associates could be justified by some overriding consideration of public interest, and an editor might be able to demonstrate that the disclosure would have been impossible without the payment, there is no such justification."
That declaration of principle reflected an abolitionist approach which has, however, not been sustained, either by the press council or its successor, the press complaints commission. Both bodies imported into their rules a qualification of public interest which included the exposure of crime, the detection of anti-social conduct, the protection of public health and safety and preventing the public from being mislead by information from the criminal informer.
Can the Sun conceivably claim a public interest defence in the Biggs affair, as distinct from a claim that the fugitive from justice is of interest to the public? It is doubtful whether a claim by a newspaper, supposedly acting for the benefit of the public, is sustainable when so many people think that Mr Biggs should have eked out his last days in Brazil, and not have foisted on the English penal system, with the Sun's help, the cost of enforcing an over-lengthy term of imprisonment on a terminally ill, long-term fugitive from British justice.
The press complaints commission will need to produce a carefully reasoned report if it is to meet the test of self-regulation in preference to some other regulatory system. If, exceptionally, it has been the practice of the PCC to investigate cases only on receipt of a complaint, why has it not conducted investigations of its own motion into racism in the press or into chequebook journalism generally? Perhaps the PCC can explain this reluctance to adopt a stance that discloses a hasty willingness to act exceptionally in the case of Mr Biggs.
Focussing on press freedom, with recent developments in human rights in mind, the PCC might well conclude that, irrespective of any defence, real or spurious, the press should not as a matter of principle be deflected from its prime function of informing its readers about issues of interest to them, however obnoxious the material or its surrounding circumstances. Where the crime is particularly vile, there will naturally be an enhanced repulsion to payment.
Victims of violent crime will understandably be revolted by the callous disregard for their feelings. Yet the memoirs of a multiple murderer may instinctively extend the boundaries of criminological knowledge from which valuable lessons of crime prevention may be learned. We should not put a dampener on such valuable sources.
In a perfect world editors would no doubt prefer not to do business with criminals, but competition among newspapers drives them to engage in a dubious practice. To the extent that information can be obtained only by payment of large sums of money, however, the remedy surely lies elsewhere than in censure of the press, unbacked by any meaningful sanction, which editors are only too willing to ignore as a slap on the wrist. Criminals who are paid money for recounting details of a crime for which they have yet to be convicted or even after conviction may have their payments seized, on the basis that they are part of the proceeds of crime.
In sentencing offenders, courts nowadays possess wide powers to confiscate property "in connection with" an offence. And the home secretary has recently announced plans to increase the powers of the courts to order confiscation of the profits of crime. If so, what about a tax - say, 80% - on any receipt of chequebook journalism? The press must be free to report uninhibitedly on all criminal matters, but would be bound to declare publicly any payments to criminals for the Inland Revenue to pursue their enforcement. Thus press freedom and responsibility would go neatly hand in hand.
• Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC was chairman of the press council, 1989-90
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