Defamation Bill

Debate between Lord Puttnam and Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Puttnam]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 1, 24 and 25 and associate myself with those tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady O’Neill and Lady Hollins.

Four months have passed since the Second Reading of this Bill—

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I ask those who are leaving the Chamber to, as a courtesy to the noble Lord, do so quietly.

[Lord Puttnam]

My Lords, four months have passed since Second Reading; two days earlier, on 7 October, the Prime Minister had committed to implement the Leveson recommendations so long as they were not, as he put it, “bonkers”. Since returning from the Christmas Recess, I do not believe myself to be the only Member of your Lordships’ House to have felt a little like the principal characters in Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy Waiting for Godot. As your Lordships will remember, they came even to contemplate suicide—anything, as they put it,

“to hold the terrible silence at bay”.

These amendments are designed to break that terrible silence.

Like my fellow signatories I was moved to act following the remarkable display of unity mixed with frustration that typified the delayed debate on the Leveson inquiry that was held in your Lordships’ House on Friday, 11 January. This mood was, I felt, brilliantly summed up by my noble friend Lord Alli when he concluded:

“I … say to my fellow Back-Benchers on all sides of the House that leadership … does not always come from … the Front Benches. We, too, have our role to play … this would … be a good time to intervene on timing. If we believe that the recommendations of Lord Justice Leveson require action, we on the Back Benches in this place have a … constitutional role to play in making that happen”.

He went on to say:

“There is an onus on us to ensure change. In doing so, we can help to restore trust in the press, in the police and in … Parliament”.—[Official Report, 11/1/13; col. 381.]

He is right, of course. I believe that we, as active Members of this House, have an obligation to act, and to be seen to act, on behalf of victims past, present and future.

I am no lawyer, but my concern to create movement has been enormously buttressed by the support of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, all of whose exemplary careers and knowledge more than compensate for my legal and constitutional inadequacies.

The Bill before us contains a fatal flaw: it does not deal with the manner in which ordinary citizens will be able to utilise the protection that it offers. The Bill has been drawn up with the help of newspapers, which understandably see the world through their own looking glass. Anyone who reads the Bill as it stands will not find so much as a hint of the fact that we live in a country that has spent much of the past two years debating the fall-out directly attributable to the unaccountable power of newspapers over our public life and over the lives of ordinary citizens. It is almost as if Leveson never happened.

In his reply, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, might wish to recall the absurd situation that he and I were placed in 10 years ago when we were asked to scrutinise the then Communications Bill but not to debate or discuss the implications of the emerging digital world. That was pushed safely back into the “too difficult” drawer. We have all looked a little daft ever since. These amendments seek to address those real-world concerns. They put into effect an arbitration system that would allow ordinary people to get redress if they are defamed under the new definitions that we are passing into law within the body of this Bill.

The Bill may deal with some of the perversities of the current libel system, which is largely to be welcomed, and it can be reasonably expected to lead to fewer defamation actions against newspapers. However, for the citizen who has a case in law that suggests they have been wronged by the press, the Bill has absolutely nothing to say about access to justice or the costs of seeking that justice in the courts, all of which is plainly unaffordable except for the very wealthy. After everything that we heard at the Leveson inquiry, the problems of access to justice and to remedies are far too important to be left unresolved. It is fundamental to the issue of balancing the rights of the citizen against the rights of the press; it cannot continue to be overlooked or shoved off to form part of some future piece of legislation.

Fortunately for us, Lord Justice Leveson has already proposed a ready-made and carefully considered solution. The advantage of our simple amendments is that they closely follow those recommendations, which laid out exactly the way in which this system of low-cost arbitration should be introduced to deal with legal disputes involving newspapers. They also have the merit of showing that the arbitration service proposed by Lord Justice Leveson can be put into effect in a remarkably simple and straightforward manner.

After his exhaustive and searching inquiry into the newspapers and their relationship with politicians, Lord Justice Leveson’s written recommendations said that the board, by which he means the new independent self-regulation body to be set up by the newspapers,

“should provide an arbitral process in relation to civil legal claims against subscribers, drawing on independent legal experts of high reputation and ability on a cost-only basis to the subscribing member. The process should be fair, quick and inexpensive, inquisitorial and free for complainants to use (save for a power to make an adverse order for the costs of the arbitrator if proceedings are frivolous or vexatious). The arbitrator must have the power to hold hearings where necessary but, equally, to dispense with them where it is not necessary. The process must have a system to allow frivolous or vexatious claims to be struck out at an early stage”.

That is the system that these amendments seek to put into effect. It also happens to be the system for which the newspapers have shown broad support, and it closely resembles the system welcomed by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, who is holding the national newspapers’ negotiations with the Government. In his evidence to the Leveson inquiry, the noble Lord said:

“It could prove extremely valuable to the UK system of self-regulation if such a provision could be inserted as an amendment to the current government Bill”.

He went on to say:

“I do not believe this in any way crosses a ‘red line’ for those of us who have serious qualms about a statutory regulator”.

The newspapers also know only too well that an arbitration service could save them collectively hundreds of millions of pounds a year in legal costs.