Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Monday 6th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I offer a slight contrast to that. I hope that this clause will help with a couple of sorts of problems that I have come across over the last 20 or 30 years. One concerns children at university who become suicidal and their parents are never told because everybody believes they have a duty of confidentiality and cannot communicate with the parents. A friend of mine got very close to going over the edge but fortunately one of his friends told his parents and then everything got sorted out. Suddenly regarding parents as aliens when someone is 18 and in severe psychological difficulty is an uncomfortable effect of the way that current regulations are perceived. I hope that this provision might loosen things up.

Another aspect is dealing with schoolchildren with eating disorders. Many aspects of eating disorders present as social interactions with other children. However, if there is an absolute prohibition on discussing someone’s condition with other children, even the children who share a bedroom with them in boarding school, that seems to me destructive of the interests of the child. Therefore, I would like to see—and I hoped that I was seeing—a slight broadening of the current regulations which might lead to arrangements which allowed the best interests of the patient to come into effect rather than a strict adherence to the dogma of, “We can’t tell anybody”.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords, the Minister rightly signed on the face of the Bill his statement of its compatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights. I wonder whether the answer to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, is not provided by the Human Rights Act itself, which says that all legislation, old and new, must be read—and given effect, if possible—compatibly with the convention rights. One of those convention rights is the right to privacy. The right to privacy embraces the equitable duty of confidentiality referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar. Therefore, the reassurance is given by the Human Rights Act rather than by anything else. The relevant provisions of this Bill would have to be read compatibly with that. However, I may be speaking out of turn.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, if I have understood the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, wrongly, I am sure that he will correct me. However, the impression he gave was that the confidentiality between a doctor and a patient forbids the doctor to inform a family member if the patient is likely to suffer harm, even self-inflicted harm. That is not the case. The doctor is bound to respect confidentiality, but if that is likely to result in not informing the family of the harm that may be caused to a patient, or distress to the family, it is not true that confidentiality will still hold.

Defamation Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee for arriving late for a group in which I have amendments, but I am not fussed about having missed Amendment 10A. These are only for discussion anyway. I am also delighted that the Minister is not a lawyer, no more than I. We are in very intimidating company, but I shall be comforted by the thought that I am at least talking on a sort of level with him.

I declare an interest in that I run the Good Schools Guide, and therefore the whole matter of opinion is central to my life. Knowing what is and is not opinion is something to which I have to give daily consideration when I am looking at the comments that people have posted on our website and the comments that we choose to make about schools. I am conscious that I do not get good, consistent legal guidance in this area.

When things are put as they are in subsection (2)—

“the statement complained of was a statement of opinion”—

there are clearly a lot of factual statements which I treat as if they are statements of opinion. If someone says in a restaurant review that the food was cold, that is a statement of fact but the courts are going to treat it as a statement of opinion. On the other hand, if I say about a school that my child was bullied, that is not a statement of opinion but a statement of fact. Yet they both appear in the same English construction as the statement which will be taken as a statement of opinion. Dividing the two for people who are going to practically use this legislation is something which they will find difficult and I have always found difficult; it has frequently cost me lawyers’ bills to decide. I would be comforted if the Government were to make some effort, since we have a Bill on the subject, to enable ordinary users of this legislation to have some certainty as to what is an opinion and what is not. I do not see anything in this clause that makes life easier for me.

The second thing that causes me particular concern is subsection (4)(a), where it seems that in this matter of opinion we introduce the question of a fact:

“The third condition is that an honest person could have held the opinion on the basis of … any fact which existed at the time”.

Even if we go back to the restaurant review, and I say in a review on a website that the food was cold, how can I establish that fact? I am being asked by subsection (4)(a) to say that there is a fact there. I have no way of establishing that fact. If the restaurant disputes that the food was cold, how will I argue that I am dealing with opinion? In my interpretation of subsection (4)(a) as a user of this legislation, rather than being given the freedom of expressing a reasonable opinion based on my experience of something, I am being called back to establish a fact in order to justify my defence that this is an opinion. I have to establish that I have this opinion based on facts. Therefore I have to establish the fact, and I cannot, so I am not entitled to an opinion. As a lay interpreter of the Bill, I find that a worrying clause. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain why I should not be worried about it.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords, first, I am glad that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, referred to Lord Ackner. I remember when I was arguing a case called Pepper v Hart and the Attorney-General said, “Don’t pay any attention to what Ministers say at three in the morning, it is often rubbish”. Lord Ackner looked at him and said, “Mr Attorney, is the proposition that Ministers should think before they speak incompatible with good government?”.

The purpose of Clause 3 is to get rid of the uncertain common law and make sure that the problem that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has just raised will not arise again. It is curious that he should mention the example of the food critic, because what convinced me that we needed a Bill, and particularly Clause 3 of the Bill—which was invented by Heather Rogers QC, in my view the most knowledgeable and open-minded of all the QCs practising at the libel Bar—was a case that I did in Northern Ireland about a food critic. A restaurant called Goodfellas, which was probably funded by the IRA, was reviewed in the Irish News by Caroline Workman, the newspaper’s food review critic. The review was very rude about the quality of the food in the restaurant. However, counsel on both sides and the trial judge—and certainly the jury—confused facts and opinion. Caroline Workman was put in the witness box for three days and cross-examined on whether the food was, or was not, of the standard that she had put in the review. When I came in on appeal, I attempted, successfully, to repair the damage by persuading the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland that if it is a food review, and everyone can see that it is about opinion, you need very few facts in order to justify the opinion. There are, for example, food or theatre reviews that just use stars, so that no stars means that it is terrible and five stars means that it is worth eating or seeing. It is defamatory to put no stars, or only one star, but it would be absurd for the reviewer to have to prove anything more than that they were there at the time; in other words, that it was not malicious. Leaving aside for the moment the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, the beauty of Clause 3, as it stands, is that it really does, for the first time, make the distinction between honest opinion and the defence of truth as good as I think one can get it.

However, I agree with everything that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, has said about the Telnikoff case. I am not sure about the precise words of the amendment, but if the Minister were able to make a Pepper v Hart statement to indicate that whereas in subsection (8) we overrule the common law defence of fair comment—that we abolish it and start afresh—and that the intention in doing so is, among other things, to overrule the majority decision of the House of Lords in that case, then it might not be necessary for an amendment to proceed. One of the difficulties I have with the amendment is that although it singles out newspapers, there are of course other publishers as well—but that is a matter of boring technicality. I strongly support the spirit of that amendment and I hope that I have clarified why the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, can sleep easily tonight.

Defamation Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Monday 17th December 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords, I declare an ancient professional interest. I was counsel in the Derbyshire case from beginning to end. I think that I should explain some of the background, which I hope will not bore the non-lawyers more than the lawyers. In the New York Times and Sullivan case in the United States, the problem was that a police officer brought libel proceedings against the NAACP. The Supreme Court of the United States, in a landmark case, decided that where a public figure was the alleged victim of a libel, he could sue only if he showed bad faith or a reckless disregard of truth.

In the Derbyshire case, Derbyshire County Council, rather than Mr Bookbinder, decided to bring libel proceedings to protect what it called its governing reputation. I argued that the Sullivan rule should apply in English law. I failed—and I failed for a very good reason, which is that American law, illogically, looks at the identity of the claimant rather than the subject matter of the libel claim. When the case reached the House of Lords, however, that great Scottish judge— I repeat for the benefit of the noble Lord, Lord Browne—that great Scottish judge, Lord Keith of Kinkel, said that you do not need the European Convention on Human Rights to win this case. The common law matches Article 10 of the Convention, and Derbyshire County Council should not be permitted to seek to vindicate its governing reputation by using libel law and instead can go by way of malicious falsehood. In other words, rather like the United States, it could proceed if it proved bad faith or reckless disregard of truth.

That is the law as it stood and as it has stood ever since. Subsequently there have been some cases where for example a political party has been held to fall within this rule on a case-by-case basis. When the Human Rights Act came into force it could have listed, as does the Freedom of Information Act, hundreds of public authorities that would be subject to the Act. Instead it adopted a different test from this amendment—namely, whether the body was performing functions—even though it was a private body—of a public nature. Tomorrow the Commission on a Bill of Rights which my noble friend Lord Faulks, and I are both on, will be reporting about that definition and what has happened to it.

The argument in favour of an amendment of this kind would be that it would somehow clarify the law. I put my name to it because of my interest in the subject matter. Unfortunately, I do not think it does clarify the law because it does not use the same kind of test of what is a public authority or a private body performing public functions. It uses a different test. The argument, I suppose, against this approach is that it is better to leave it to the judges to do this on a case-by-case basis. I myself am attracted to the idea of including something of this kind. I did not put it in my own Bill—I did not think about it at the time. I failed to persuade the Government to put it in their draft Bill, but there was a consultation on it. I am bound to have to say that there was little enthusiasm in the consultation for doing this. So, although I put my name to it, I have some hesitation to the way it is worded.

This is a very important constitutional question. What we are really saying is that a public authority or a body exercising functions of a public nature should have to go through malicious falsehood and prove malice or recklessness.

We would also go on to say that, of course, the individual councillors or public officers could themselves still sue and therefore that we would not be doing any injustice to public bodies in doing this.

I have taken too long to explain all of that, but it is important that one understands the full context of this. I am sure that this is a matter on which the luckless Minister will have to reflect further.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, if this amendment was passed, it would make my life notably more comfortable, but none the less I do not think it should be. In my business of running The Good Schools Guide, I spend a lot of time being uncomfortable to schools and we have on regular occasions in the past 27 years been threatened more or less successfully with legal action for defamation. That seems reasonable. I do not see why schools should not react to what I say because what I allow to be published can have a considerable effect, not just on independent schools, which obviously rely on parents paying fees, but on state schools as well. That is because if children are discouraged from going to a particular state school, that school will suffer.

There are many occasions when parents say things about schools which are entirely unjustified and it is therefore proper that I or anyone else in my position should be careful of what we say and the basis on which something is said. We must ensure that we can reasonably believe that there is some truth behind what is being said. Although I agree that one should be uninhibited in one’s attacks on political parties and government generally, as you move away from them, you reach institutions that are smaller and more personal. An unjustified attack could have a very damaging effect, and so the law of defamation probably should apply. I would much rather see defences against the right to protest against bad public services as part of Clause 4; indeed, I think that Clause 4 could be made more specific so that it is clear that raucous views about public services are to be encouraged and given a wide latitude by the courts. Only under exceptional circumstances should those views be stamped upon. That puts the rights of the public in the context where they belong in this Bill, but to have a blanket prohibition would make schools and universities vulnerable to unjustified attacks. There has to be some form of protection against the most vitriolic.