Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Borrie and Lord Bew

Monday 2nd July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bew]

My Lords, I rise briefly to speak on Amendment 148 and to express my support for the sentiments expressed so eloquently by my noble friend Lord Pannick. There is no doubt, as he made clear, that the case for this amendment has been dramatised by the events of April and May of this year, when the Attorney-General for Northern Ireland raised his intention to bring contempt of court proceedings against Mr Peter Hain, former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, on the publication of his memoirs and observations that he made therein on a member of the Northern Ireland judiciary and a case of particular importance when he was Secretary of State. The reaction of Parliament was quite dramatic, with 120 MPs rallying to Mr Hain’s defence. In Question Time on 18 April, the right honourable Mr David Blunkett in the other place asked the Prime Minister:

“Should not respect for the independence of the judiciary be balanced with the rights of individuals to fair comment on that judiciary?”.

The Prime Minister replied, expressing sympathy for that sentiment, and said that,

“there are occasions … when judges make critical remarks about politicians; and there are occasions when politicians make critical remarks about judges. To me, that is part of life in a modern democracy, and we ought to keep these things, as far as possible, out of the courtroom”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/4/12; col. 317.]

In mid-May, following a less than enthusiastic response in the political world to his original move, the Attorney-General for Northern Ireland effectively set aside the proceedings. There has been a tendency to regard the whole business as an explosion of provincial self-regard now thankfully passed, but that is a short-sighted way in which to look at what has happened. The Attorney-General made it clear that he would not have set aside the proceedings until the receipt of the letter from the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mr Hain. In that letter, Mr Hain effectively argued that it had not been his intention in any way to challenge the independence and fairness of the judiciary in Northern Ireland. This is an important point, because I think it quite likely that the Attorney-General for Northern Ireland had in mind the dictum of Lord Russell of Killowen, perhaps the greatest of all the Northern Irish judges of the last century. In 1900, as Chief Justice of England, he offered a dictum in this sort of case that intention was crucial and that there had to be a calculated and clearly deliberate attempt to challenge the independence of the judiciary. By his letter, the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mr Hain, put himself on the right side of that dictum by saying that he had no intention in any way to challenge the independence of the judiciary in Northern Ireland.

What this reveals is that the Attorney-General and Sir Declan Morgan, the Lord Chief Justice, as far as I can understand from the remarks that he made at the time that this was a public matter, believe that there was in principle a case in law here, and a legal case that could be taken. That is why we have proposed this amendment. If there is any possibility that there could be such a case brought, which I think would widely be regarded as absurd, we must do what we can to eliminate that possibility.

In this country, we have a long tradition of freedom of speech, from which the judiciary is not immune. John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress is a classic example in the 17th century of how that tradition has operated. In the view of those of us who support the amendment, the common-law offence of scandalising the judiciary is obsolete and has an unnecessary chilling effect on free speech.

[Lord Borrie]

My Lords, some 40 years ago I co-authored a text book entitled The Law of Contempt. Some 50 pages were devoted to the subject now before us in this Committee of scandalising the court. I should add that the current edition of that book is written by a group of somewhat younger lawyers, and since my name appears only on the spine of the book I no longer receive any royalties and therefore have no interest to declare. However, I admit to a certain nostalgic interest for this curiously and rather charmingly worded crime of scandalising the court, which is the subject of Amendment 148. It is the opinion of a number of eminent lawyers; in addition to those who have spoken, we also have the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, whose 85th birthday it is today. That has been recorded already by the Minister.

I accept from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that the offence of scandalising the court has somewhat dubious and ancient beginnings and that it has largely fallen into desuetude, at any rate in this country, although it is quite often used in ex-colonies of Britain that have adopted our law. The reason for its doubtful origins is that a Chief Justice in the 18th century gave a judgment that there was such an offence as scandalising the court but never actually gave that judgment in court. It was recorded and given as his view, but that to lawyers is a very dubious precedent.

As for the purpose of the offence, it is said to help to ensure that the authority of the courts is not undermined. Furthermore, potentially at least, as both proponents of the amendment, who have spoken already, have said, the offence or its existence has a chilling effect on freedom of speech and the freedom to criticise judicial decisions. However, I have to admit—this was not mentioned by the two previous speakers—that the 1974 Phillimore committee said that there was not much evidence that the press was unduly inhibited by this aspect of the law. In 1987, the Daily Mirror referred to the judges in the Spycatcher case as “fools”, alongside an upside-down picture of the Members of this House who were sitting in their judicial capacity. No prosecution followed.

It is over a century ago that in the case of Gray, to which the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Bew, referred, Lord Russell of Killowen said that,

“any act done or writing published calculated to bring a court or a judge into contempt, or to lower his authority, is a contempt of Court”.

I need not give the facts about the references to Mr Justice Darling, as they have been given by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. In addition to the points that were made, one phrase used by the journalist there was that Mr Justice Darling was,

“a microcosm of conceit and empty-headedness”.

Lord Justice Sedley, a current judge of the Court of Appeal, to whom the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, referred, wrote recently that the reference to Mr Justice Darling was among the,

“finest passages of invective in the annals of British journalism”—

not a bad record, I suppose. I think I am right in saying that there has been no successful prosecution for this offence since 1931. That surely gives a great deal of emphasis to the point made by the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Bew, that this offence is out of date. There would be hardly any loss, and not much gain either in practical terms, if the crime were abolished.