Tories would restrict criminals’ right to profit from publishing
The Conservative Party is set to unveil measures preventing convicted prisoners profiting from publishing memoirs about their own criminal activities the Shadow Home Secretary David Davis today revealed.
A proposed a change to the law will be announced within the coming days, Mr Davis said.
The measures would not only restrict the activities of those who are currently incarcerated, but also ex-convicts.
“There has long been a problem here, the Government has talked about solving it over and over again…and nothing has ever happened”, Mr Davis told BBC One’s Breakfast with Frost.
“It is pretty simple, you really just need to change the law, not to stop writing, if they want to write for the public good that’s fine, but they mustn’t make a profit from it just as they mustn’t make a profit from crime.”
Asked whether books which were for example either moralistically or religiously driven would fall under the ban, Mr Davis stressed that the rule would only stop people making a profit from writing.
“It doesn’t necessarily stop them publishing it.”
He explained: “One of the things that is in our proposals is to give the Director of Public Prosecutions the option as to whether he exercises the law so that if he judges there is a public interest – a public benefit to come out of the publication – then he can allow it to go forward.”
Mr Davis finished by saying a line would however be drawn whereby novelists such as Lord Archer were not prohibited from crafting fictional tales.
