Defamation Bill

Debate between Lord Bew and Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Thursday 17th January 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Bew]

The noble Lord makes a very good point, one that I was actually aware of. While I fully understand the ambiguity to which he referred, the reason why I am more open to the provision as it stands for press conferences is that in recent time we have had, to my knowledge, at least one celebrated case where a particular government department gave a press conference and people subsequently wrote perfectly legitimate articles on the basis of what was said by that department but none the less, the case went to court and substantial payments were made.

I cannot bring myself to say that it is reasonable that if a department of government holds a press conference and people actively report or elucidate on what is said there, there should subsequently be libel actions, which there have been in recent times. That is the reason why at the moment I am living with the press conference issue.

I am open to persuasion on this question of conferences, but those of us on the Select Committee want to know that the Government have thought enough about the fact that some academic conferences are not very well run and are somewhat chaotic, and that they have some way of thinking that responds to that. A fundamental thinking of our committee was that the deepest problem is that academics, in the sciences or in the humanities, can be driven by their research to certain conclusions, and at this point there is a chill point that means they would discover it was difficult to find an academic outlet because a journal might say, “Our budget is so small that if there is a libel action here, even though your research looks very interesting to us, we can’t possibly publish it”. We know that this is currently going on, and that seems to be the greatest single evil in this field that needs to be addressed. I feel less concerned in principle about defending the rights of someone who may be spouting off a little at a conference.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords, I had not expected to need to reply about press conferences but, in the light of my noble friend Lord Phillips’s intervention, I better had. This question was dealt with by the House of Lords in a case that I was involved in called McCartan Turkington Breen v Times Newspapers, 2001 2 Appeal Cases, 277; the noble Lord, Lord Bew, may remember it.

[Lord Bew]

I do indeed.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

What happened was that a soldier was found guilty of murder for, I think, killing a woman at a roadblock in Northern Ireland and sentenced to imprisonment. He was represented by a firm of solicitors in Northern Ireland. A group of senior military men had a meeting in a castle in, I think, Yorkshire in order to accuse the solicitors of negligence in the way that they had gone about defending the soldier. The meeting in the castle was open to the public, but very few members of the public were in fact able to get in. The law firm sued for libel and the defence was that it was a public meeting and therefore covered by statutory qualified privilege. The argument was that it was not really a public meeting but a press conference; they gave out a press statement and it was in a castle.

Lord Bingham gave the lead judgment, making it clear on free-speech grounds that the press are the eyes and ears of the public, and that where the public cannot get in easily on an occasion like that and the press can, the press must be free to make a fair and accurate report—it must be fair and accurate—of what is alleged at the press conference, which is to be treated as a public meeting.

On Article 10 grounds, the House of Lords clarified the meaning of “public meeting” to include press conferences. In fact my memory, although I may be wrong, is that the Faulks committee in 1975 had recommended that press conferences should be included. So I have no difficulty at all with the express words in the Bill making clear that it covers press conferences anywhere in the world, for the reasons given by the House of Lords, per Lord Bingham, in that case. My difficulty is with what is to be done with the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney. I was looking at the Joint Committee report about it. Paragraph 48 states:

“The draft Bill goes some way towards tackling this problem by extending qualified privilege to include fair and accurate reports of what is said at a ‘scientific or academic conference’. We welcome this development, provided the conference is reputable”.

The report goes on to deal with peer-reviewed articles and recommends extending it to peer-reviewed articles in scientific or academic journals. Then, as the noble Lords, Lord Bew, and Lord Mawhinney, have done, it explains the definitional problems, and towards the end it recommends,

“that the Government prepares guidance on the scope of this new type of statutory qualified privilege in consultation with the judiciary and other interested parties”.

As I read this, the Joint Committee are saying that it is a good idea, but there are definitional problems, so include it, but with proper guidance.