E&S Comment: Independent jury is real regulation

The same jury found his former boss Rebekah Brooks and others to have had nothing to do with it.

The trial has proved that there was indeed something very wrong with the biggest selling Sunday tabloid in Britain.

What it has also shown is that it was not as rife as those who want to restrict centuries of Press freedom had claimed.

The pressure group Hacked Off and others would have supervision of the Press come under the supervision of Parliament – one of the very bodies journalists hold to account.

Through phone hacking, celebrities and ordinary people suffered from a gross and obscene invasion of their privacy, often in pursuit of tittle tattle and gossip as opposed to anything that could have been seen to be in the public interest.

But phone hacking was and rightly remains illegal, as the prosecution and conviction of Andy Coulson has shown.

It is not a practice that regional newspapers such as the Express & Star, at the heart of their communities, indulged in nor ever would.

Yet the demands of pressure groups and celebrities for action, which resulted in the setting up of the Leveson Inquiry and moves to end 300 years of a Press that was free of state interference, applied to us as well.

The judgment of the Prime Minister is rightly called into question today.

Not only did he rush into the new regime of regulation before the full facts had emerged in a court of law, he also employed Andy Coulson as his spin doctor despite warnings about his suitability for the role. David Cameron will have to think long and hard about the people whose support he courts and the advice he listens to as he tries to win the next General Election.

In the meantime justice has been done and, thanks to the right of the Press to report from the court room, has been seen to be done.

Those proven to have hacked phones will face the judgment of the courts.

The old system of Press regulation was said to have been not fit for purpose because it contained too many people from within the industry. It was said to require greater independence.

But a jury of one's peers deciding on guilt or innocence? There is nothing more independent than that and we had it all along.

Prisons should not be ‘chaotic’

Words such as 'chaotic' should never have to be employed to describe what goes on within a prison.

But that is exactly how it was for staff working at the privately run and now much-criticised HMP Oakwood.

An inquest has heard how it took the best part of an hour for anyone to summon an ambulance as inmate Edward Ham lay dying.

There appears to be something wrong within our prisons. This newspaper reported at the weekend how neighbouring Featherstone has been alleged to have seen several attacks on prison officers, prompting questions to be asked in Parliament.

Edward Ham was serving a sentence for possessing drugs with intent to supply them.

He was entitled to believe that while he was deprived of his liberty to walk the streets, he would at least be safe. Had he collapsed in the street someone would have summoned immediate help.

Oakwood even had a defibrillator but it was locked away and no-one on duty was authorised to use it anyway. Prisons are places where the inmates have a right to be safe, just as much as the society outside has a right to know they are serving their punishment.