Labour Fails to Deny Secret Murdoch Deal to Drop Leveson Press Inquiry in Exchange for Endorsements

The Labour party has failed to deny reports that the Prime Minister made a secret pre-election deal with News UK not to complete the Leveson inquiry into the conduct of the British press, in exchange for an endorsement from Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers.

The I Newspaper reported on Monday that the Sun and Sunday Times had only endorsed Labour after the party gave them “private assurances” that Starmer would not resurrect the planned second part of the Leveson Inquiry, or introduce other “restrictions on press freedom”.

Multiple Labour spokespeople declined to explicitly deny to Byline Times that they had done such a deal, with a party spokesperson telling this paper only that “any policy position arrived at by this Labour government is done so in the interests of the country”.

The second part of the Leveson inquiry was due to focus on criminal activities and police and media corruption, but was cancelled by the last Conservative government in 2017, following lobbying by News UK.

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Labour had initially committed itself to resurrecting the inquiry, under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, but ditched this pledge at the end of last year.

There had been conflicting reports in the run up to the general election over whether any such deal with Murdoch had been struck, with some suggesting that Starmer had refused to fully commit to the demands of News UK executives, during one pre-election meeting.

However, there was no pledge to resurrect Leveson in Labour’s manifesto, and the party also voted in the final weeks of the last government to repeal Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act, relating to state-backed press regulation.

In the end Labour did receive a late endorsement from both The Sun and Sunday Times. 

However, another Murdoch-owned newspaper, The Times, declined to endorse Starmer’s party, saying that “a question mark remains over the party’s approach to free speech” and whether it will “seek curbs on the ancient right of the freedom of the press”.

One area where Murdoch remains at odds with Labour is over the future of the BBC.

The last Conservative government, under David Cameron, faced repeated allegations of having struck deals with Rupert Murdoch over his own expansion plans and the future of the license fee.

His successor Boris Johnson was also reportedly personally urged by Murdoch to “get rid of” the national broadcaster, according to Johnson’s sister Rachael.

However, Labour has so far resisted such calls, with Keir Starmer stating after the election that he is strongly “committed” to the future of the license fee and the BBC.

Asked this week about the party’s position on Leveson, the newly-appointed Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told the House Magazine that “we need a proper regulation system that supports the public to be able to have trust in what is reported”.

However, she added that Leveson had not been included in their manifesto and that she was “very opposed to the idea that politicians should be telling the media and the press what they can and can’t say”.

Nandy also promised to end Government attacks on the BBC, saying that “Where we feel criticism of this Government is unfair, we’ll say so, but I want us to move away as a country from this ongoing running commentary from ministers about whether they consider the actions of the media to be appropriate or not, trying to interfere in what is said and what is not said.

She added that “all this nonsense about attacking institutions for being too woke, for lacking impartiality” would end.