Defamation Bill

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Paul Farrelly]

I support the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) and the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr Garnier), who I see is still plain “Mr Garnier” on the monitors.

It has been a long road to libel reform. For newspapers and other media, the real issue is cost. Responsible newspapers have been concerned about conditional fee agreements with 100% success fees and the sheer costs involved in such cases, especially as it seemed to be a case of “always win, double the fee”. Of course, we have heard examples where that is not the case: my hon. Friend cited the case of Dr Peter Wilmshurst, consultant cardiologist at Royal Shrewsbury hospital and our local University hospital of North Staffordshire, who needed that measure to be able to defend himself and give some certainty in a fraught situation to his family that, if he were to lose his case, all their worldly goods would not be forfeit.

Over time, proposals have been made, including by Lord Justice Jackson and my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), who laid a statutory instrument which was—almost uniquely—defeated by a cross-party ambush in Committee, because Members felt so strongly about the issues involved. In addition, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, of which I am a member, produced proposals to limit the uplift in fees to 10%, rather than 100%, and not to recover after-the-event premiums—often, there is a false market in those premiums. I will put on the record now my belief that, in that report, we went too far, but our proposal was not to abolish an uplift, which would encourage lawyers to take on difficult cases, in their entirety. On the one hand, we are reforming libel law to protect responsible journalism, but on the other hand, we are potentially denying people access to justice, and I think the whole environment has become unbalanced.

What we have to remember, with phone hacking and Lord Leveson soon to report, is that we have a macho media world and some highly aggressive corporations. If we remove people’s ability to fight to restore their reputation, we risk giving a carte blanche to libel and going back to the bad old days when the only questions a newspaper asked were, “How much have they got? Can they afford to sue us?”

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

There seems to be some consensus that the main obstacle to pursuing a defamation claim would be lack of cash. Does my hon. Friend agree that, rather than resolve that crucial issue, the Government’s proposals could make the situation worse?

[Paul Farrelly]

I entirely agree. I do not propose a return to the bad old regime, but I hope that the Government will give some thought to the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South and the hon. and learned Member for Harborough. The situation is unbalanced now and we need to address that.

So often, if people do not sue, our media do not take them seriously. That simply increases the licence to libel. I know people who defend responsible journalism and investigative journalists who have had to take that course of action because newspapers with an agenda have been out to get them; if they did not threaten or take legal action, the situation would never change. I believe the culture of our media needs to be borne in mind, as we will be reminded when Lord Leveson reports next month.