Defamation Bill

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Fowler]

1: Clause 2, page 2, leave out lines 11 and 12

[Lord Fowler]

My Lords, I will be brief in moving this amendment. It has the support of the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, who apologises for not being in his place today. He is in the Far East on a long-arranged trip as one of the Prime Minister’s trade envoys there. He entirely supports my proposals. I also have the support of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, a former Attorney-General; my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, a former Lord Chancellor, and, according to the Times, a “Conservative source” has also given it a grudging approval. I am not entirely sure what a “Conservative source” is, but, of course, I always believe the Times.

As I understand it, it also has the support of the press, which perhaps is most significant of all. During the past months, those of us who have supported Leveson have been subjected to a campaign of vilification, being compared to Mugabe, Castro, Putin and any other dictator that you can think of. When we have spoken or written in favour of Leveson, we have been attacked in reports such as the one that appeared in the Daily Telegraph in November with the neutral headline,

“MPs tainted by scandal among group backing an end to free press”.

I looked down to see, slightly to my surprise, that among the little photographs at the bottom was my own photograph. The caption said:

“Lord Fowler: during 15 years as a government minister, he had plenty of run-ins with the left-wing press, particularly when he announced job losses and spending cuts in the NHS in the 1980s”.

That explains why I have had, according to them, this deep-seated antipathy towards the press, in spite of the fact that I was chairman of two regional newspaper groups after that time. Of course, it is doubtless made particularly painful for me by the fact that all my succeeding Health Secretaries have been carried shoulder high down Whitehall by representatives of the British Medical Association. So, it is not entirely surprising that some of us want to move on from this bitter debate and enter the calmer fields of gay marriage.

The trouble is that when the press have a genuine point, people tend to say, “Here they go again”. Here, as my amendment seeks to make clear, they do have a genuine point. I should make it clear that my amendment in no way challenges or changes my backing for the support generally for Clause 2 and for an arbitration service, as proposed by Lord Justice Leveson. Although a great deal has been written about this particular clause, all too often it has missed out the overall purpose, which is to provide a low-cost remedy for the public and the press without the expense of going to law. That is the essence of what it is saying: for the public to pursue a defamation case, as it stands at the moment, means certain cost and a very uncertain result. My amendment questions whether the two lines at the end of Clause 2 are necessary to bring that aim about. I do not believe that they are and I say that for two reasons.

First, as I made clear, I am a supporter of the Leveson report but it seems to me that the words at the end of Clause 2 go beyond what Leveson himself proposed. Referring to the proposed independent self-regulatory body, Leveson says:

“I also suggest that it considers offering a purely voluntary pre-publication advice service to editors who want support on how the public interest might be interpreted in a specific case before a decision is reached on publication”.

I think that the words at the end of the clause are fairly tentative and certainly go beyond the words in the amendment that,

“the court shall take into account whether a defendant first sought advice”.

Furthermore, as it stands, it gives the impression that we who support Leveson are all concerned with pre-publication controls when that is certainly not the case, and nor has it ever been the case. The authors of this clause might claim quite reasonably that they are also conferring an advantage on newspapers as well as on the public. Nevertheless, the false impression remains, and it would be a vast pity if the beneficial intent of the clause was to be harmed in this way and in so doing give ammunition to those who say that the supporters of Leveson are about statutory control, which I repeat and underline has never been our cause.

The second reason I tabled the amendment is that the whole idea of some kind of pre-publication check is anathema to most journalists. I emphasise that I am talking about working journalists. Remember that the NUJ, as opposed to the proprietors, is in favour of Leveson; it is not against it. It is against the kind of provision that I am seeking to amend for the good reason that in any story of any controversy there will always be people out there who want to stop the story, or at least take the guts out of it. I learnt that very early on as a young journalist. I had been advised to show a series of articles that I had written to the man who had given me access to the story. When I met him, he was furious about what I had written. Very obviously, so that I could see it clearly, a letter of protest to my editor was set out on his desk. Happily, the editor took no notice, but I have never shown an article in advance to any body or person since.