The government is to ban payments to witnesses by newspapers seeking to buy up people involved in prominent cases 【21】______ the trial of Rosemary West. In a significant 【22】______ of legal controls over the press, Lord Irvine, the Lord Chancellor, will introduce a 【23】______ bill that will propose making payments to witnesses 【24】______ and will strictly control the amount of 【25】______ that can be given to a case 【26】______ a trial begins. In a letter to Gerald Kaufman, chairman of the House of Commons media select committee, Lord Irvine said he 【27】______ with a committee report this year which said that self regulation did not 【28】______ sufficient control. 【29】______ of the letter came two days after Lord Irvine caused a 【30】______ of media protest when he said the 【31】______ of privacy controls contained in European legislation would be left to judges 【32】______ to Parliament. The Lord Chancellor said introduction of the Human Rights Bill, which 【33】______ the European Convention on Human Rights legally 【34】______ in Britain, laid down that everybody was 【35】______ to privacy and that public figures could go to court to protect themselves and their families. 'Press freedoms will be in safe hands 【36】______ our British judges,' he said. Witness payments became an 【37】______ after West was sentenced to 10 life sentences in 1995. Up to 19 witnesses were 【38】______ to have received payments for telling their stories to newspapers. Concerns were raised 【39】______ witnesses might be encouraged to exaggerate their stories in court to 【40】______ guilty verdicts. 【21】