Defamation Bill

Debate between Lord Lloyd of Berwick and Lord Triesman

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the intervention because it will cut out my saying a great deal more. However, it would be helpful, in the same spirit as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, intended when he said greater enunciation might be sensible, for the legislation that we are looking at to somehow indicate what that distinction is, so that somebody who does not study law as a matter of practice can pick it up, read it and understand exactly what is meant by it. I am very grateful for the intervention because that is precisely the point that I wanted to make.

Finally, I will say something about the list that is about to be removed. It goes back to the point that I was trying to make about Parliament and the Government giving at least some indication of the things that might concern them. I was intrigued by—and at one stage convinced of the importance of having in subsections (2)(d) and (2)(e)—the words that appear there. Even if the words do not finally appear in the Bill, it should be understood, under subsection (2)(e), that when somebody publishes information, the reliability of the information is capable of being subjected to some real test. I do not know whether that is another point that the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, may have in part answered. However, what seems to be true is that there are often few demonstrations of the sanity or motives of those who have provided information that simply gets reproduced and, on occasions, is not withdrawn. I say to my noble friend Lady Bakewell and to the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, that not every journalist uses the standards that I am pleased to acknowledge that they plainly do. Not every journalist does that by a long chalk.

In those cases, knowing about the credibility of the information seems important. It is something that one would want Parliament to have expressed, even if it does not appear as a list in the Bill. Equally, in subsection (2)(f), although I am conscious that bad experiences should not be promoted into the making of law, it seems important that people about whom things are to be written should have at least some knowledge of them or some opportunity to say something about them before the event happens. If those were the ways in which interpretation of the law by judges were achieved, that would amount to great progress here. I conclude by stating that if judges do that, and if lawyers put arguments to the judges, my anxiety—which I guess I will just have to live with—is that we will not be talking about a cottage industry but rather a major multinational for the time being.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

To correct the record, the noble Lord, Lord Lester, referred to Sir Brian Neill and the huge contribution that he made to this part of the law, but he did say that he was in hospital. I am happy to tell the Committee that he is now back home and will no doubt be following this debate with the greatest interest, either in Hansard or possibly—he is sufficiently technically minded—on television.