GLASGOW – A leading QC has criticised the attention given to the Leveson inquiry on press standards, saying police resources could be better spent clearing up unsolved murders.
Speaking at a media dinner in Glasgow, Paul McBride said: “I watched, as most of you have, the hysterical coverage of allegations of journalistic wrongdoing. I say allegations, because there’s been plenty of them with very little in the way of evidence.
“I watched the Leveson inquiry, with endless celebrities babbling away about how their lives have been ruined by media intrusion when often they have paid millions of pounds to PR consultants to get their names into the paper in the first place.”
“It doesn’t take you long to find out that in London the Met have the most unsolved murders in the United Kingdom,” Mr McBride continued. “In London, every year, about 15 per cent of murders go unsolved.” He added: “We have millions of pounds and hundreds of police officers devoted to ongoing operations of contraventions – alleged – under the Telecommunications Act.
“I have no doubt there are some real people out there, ordinary people, who have suffered pain and misery as a result of some media misbehaviour. But in times of austerity, is it appropriate to devote the level of resources to people like me to carry out an inquiry that may last four or five years when there’s so much real crime out there?”
Mr McBride, a high profile lawyer and a former member of both Labour and the Scottish Conservatives, said he was “not impressed by celebrities turning up looking for even more publicity when they’ve been caught taking drugs or having affairs while at the same time trying to present a different image to the public.”
The Leveson inquiry was set up in response to revelations that the now-defunct News Of The Worldcommissioned a private detective to hack murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's phone after she disappeared in 2002. – (PA)