Defamation Bill

Lord Bew Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Bew]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, for putting forward this amendment, and I am very sympathetic to his efforts. However, the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, has asked one question and I will ask two questions in the same vein. This is just for reassurance, because I think that we understand that there could be great benefit from this amendment, and a powerful case has been made.

First, the noble Lord knows this world and the world of academic journals. Is he sure that the person editing a website for a chartered professional association is necessarily of the same calibre as the person editing a peer-reviewed academic journal? The second question is related, and perhaps more profound: is he sure that there is the same requirement for qualified privilege as there is in certain areas for academic journals, where there clearly is a severe chilling effect? The questions are in the same vein as those posed by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, but are in the vein of a very sympathetic interest in the proposal that the noble Lord has put to us. He is quite right to say that he is speaking entirely in the spirit of Clause 6. I would like to have a little more reflection on the detail.

[Lord May of Oxford]

It is perhaps a little more complicated than some people think. I am not sure that people understand that some journals are purely electronic. Some of the major journals—PLOS ONE, for example—are online, while most of the conventional, older journals offer an option to publish additional material electronically. More than half the journals are run by the same learned societies that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is talking about, so it is not a juxtaposition of things that you can physically hold up and others. It is a seamless continuum, and the spirit of this definitely needs some refining to make central what has been said so clearly: that the issue is peer review.