This petition was submitted during the 2010-2015 parliament
Rejected petition HACKED ON
More details
The New York Times says that statutory underpinning of a new watchdog body would be “. . .a big step in the wrong direction” for a country whose press already operates in a “harsh” legal environment.
The paper states that legislation would be “dangerous to Britain’s centuries old traditions of a press free from government regulation”.
It goes on to say that the British press is “. . . in many ways the envy of the world and its freedom is crucial to keeping Britain free.”
Freedom is part of what made Britain and made us what we are, or at least were. It is critical to the maintenance of this freedom that laws are only ever made where absolutely necessary.
In the hacking scandal, people broke existing laws and will be punished for that by a court.
We, the undersigned, believe that the law as it exists in sufficient to control the press and that any new watchdog body does NOT need to be backed by any new legislation.
This petition was rejected
Why was this petition rejected?
There’s already a petition about this issue. We cannot accept a new petition when we already have one about a very similar issue.
You are more likely to get action on this issue if you sign and share a single petition.
We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.