Defamation Bill

Debate between Helen Goodman and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries), who has spoken a lot of common sense this afternoon. I recognise her descriptions of constituency cases. A constituent of mine who was a victim of domestic violence has been defamed in a newspaper, the family of a murder victim was trolled by the offender’s family, and there is also the case of the family of a soldier who died in Afghanistan, about whom remarks were made which, had he lived, would have been defamatory. All these cases are very alarming and serious.

The police are not up to speed on such internet crimes. When we go to the police with such issues, their mentality is such that they in effect say, “Well, it’s on the internet, so it can’t be too serious. Don’t worry about it.” As the hon. Lady pointed out, however, such cases are very serious.

The previous Labour Government initiated post-legislative scrutiny. I do not know whether the coalition Government are continuing with it, but it provides an opportunity for checking and reviewing the effectiveness of legislation.

While at the other end of town Lord Leveson is examining the practices and ethics of the press and is mainly focused on its misbehaviour, it is a pleasure to have before us a Bill which will perhaps offer a more positive agenda and support good quality journalism.

Change is undoubtedly needed, which is why the manifestos of all three main parties contained commitments on libel reform. There are four glaring problems. The first is access to justice, which is clearly lacking for most people. I do not know why, but libel in the UK is much more expensive than it is in other countries. Secondly, there is the problem of libel tourism, when cases that have nothing to do with British citizens are brought through the English courts. Thirdly, there is the chilling impact on scientific debate when legitimate criticism, especially of large companies and their products, is sometimes suppressed. Other Members have referred to the cases of Simon Singh and Peter Wilmshurst. Finally, the law needs to be brought up to date to address the new technologies and the internet.

I welcome the Government’s intentions in bringing forward the Bill, but I have some doubts about whether it goes far enough. I hope that the Bill Committee will consider making changes so that we do not miss the opportunities that the Bill presents. Ministers need to make it clear what they mean by “serious harm”: it must relate to reputation and not just to material harm. I agree that the threat of bringing libel proceedings as part of reputation management must end, but we need greater clarity from Ministers than we have had so far.

The Bill introduces a defence of “Responsible publication on matter of public interest”, in clause 4. That is an improvement and should strengthen journalists’ freedom to undertake serious investigations. Of course, everyone in the House favours a free press and wants it to fulfil one of its key roles in an open society of uncovering corruption and wrongdoing. Quite rightly, this defence should facilitate that. I am sympathetic to Ministers’ unwillingness to define “public interest” but I hope that they will be able to give some examples. For example, do they share the definitions in the current Press Complaints Commission code and Crown Prosecution Service guidance? It would be helpful to acknowledge that public interest covers both substance—the importance of the issue being debated—and process: how thoroughly journalists have checked the story they are publishing. What is not quite clear is why and in what respects the Bill has departed from the Reynolds defence. It does not match the Reynolds defence exactly and it would be helpful if Ministers explained why they have chosen to change the Reynolds defence in a number of respects.

Clause 5, “Operators of websites”, looks too weak in the sense that by abandoning the publishing role that exists for parallel situations in other media—for example with the letters column of a newspaper or the broadcasting of a TV chat show—clause 5(2) makes things very hard for a person who is defamed on the web because they would have to track down the originator even if they had been given the address by the website’s operator. That seems rather unfair. Surely it should be a basic principle, which we should establish across the board, that the net is not outside the law and cannot be, like the forest in the 14th century and the time of Robin Hood, a place of pure anarchy. The rights and responsibilities that we have developed in the real world should be reproduced in the virtual world. In some respects the net is different in that it is large, vast and global, so we cannot simply have the same rules to secure the same outcomes, but unless we tackle websites rather more effectively than the Bill appears to, I fear that a massive loophole will remain. One problem is that the measures produce unfair competition for newspapers, which are bound by more restrictive and tighter definitions.

[Zac Goldsmith]

Does the hon. Lady agree that there has to be a sense of realism in relation to the web? If every defamatory comment posted on Twitter, Facebook and so on was followed up with some kind of state action we would need a new Government just to police the web. That would be structurally and practically impossible. There has to be a sense that if a lonely Twitter tweeter with 15 followers were to make an insulting comment, that could not be anything like as serious as its being made by someone with 1 million followers. There has to be recognition of the fan base or platform at which insults are hurled.

Let me make one further point about the internet.

Media Regulation

Debate between Helen Goodman and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on securing this debate. The issue is important, and as ever he made an excellent speech and a compelling case. I want to make an undeclaration, and to make it absolutely clear that I am not related to Clive Goodman.

Her Majesty’s Opposition are basing their perspective of the issue on two principles. The first is the importance of free speech, which is guaranteed in the European convention on human rights, and the Human Rights Act. From that flows the free press, which is essential in our open democracy.

The second critical perspective is that of the ordinary citizen. The phone hacking of the abducted and subsequently murdered schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, led to public horror and was why the Leader of the Opposition called for a public inquiry. We were pleased to support the Prime Minister in establishing the Leveson inquiry and agreeing the terms of reference. My hon. Friend described the horrors of the phone hacking that have emerged before the Leveson inquiry, but I suggest, as everybody in the Chamber will know, that the issues run wider than that.

I have heard from a number of ordinary constituents who have been abused by the press. Such cases seem to have become a common occurrence, and I want to tell one story—although I have others—about a woman who had a double-page spread written about her and photographs taken inside her home. She was described as a person who could not keep a house—in truth, her house was a tip; the Aggie programme would have had a field day—or control her children. The newspaper did not say, however, that the woman was a victim of domestic violence, which was crucial to understanding her situation. This woman was extremely alarmed, hurt and upset by the coverage that she received, but she was the sort of person who did not know that she had any rights and would not begin to understand the notion of redress. We want a system that works for people like her: we do not have such a system at the moment.

The press is already subject to a vast number of laws. For example, on matters of content such as racial incitement, the press is subject to the same laws as everybody else, and as my hon. Friend said, there are also laws that relate to the process by which stories are acquired. The big issue currently under discussion around the country is whether the press should have any special legal privileges.

Before Christmas, the managing editor of The Sun argued that the press should have an exemption from the Bribery Act 2010. Following yesterday’s evidence to the Leveson inquiry, however, we are bound to think that such an argument may have something to do with The Sun’s business model. I do not think that the press should have special legal exemptions. I agree with the Lord Chancellor: everybody should be subject to the law. The Attorney-General has made a number of sensible statements to say that although a free press and free speech are vital, the press must respect people’s other rights, such as the right to a fair trial.

My hon. Friend raised the issue of whether the press should have a public interest defence when acquiring stories, and we look forward with interest to the guidance that the Director of Public Prosecutions has promised to produce. At the moment, the public interest test is applied by the DPP when deciding whether to prosecute a journalist.

[Zac Goldsmith]

Does the hon. Lady agree that a legal definition of the public interest would provide the flexibility that commentators in the press are asking for? Most of the corruption and the abuses that we heard about yesterday, and over the past few months, do not amount to the noble pursuit of truth but are actually pretty squalid. There are exceptions, however; Watergate, which was cited by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), is an example in which laws may have been broken in the pursuit of something valuable. A legal definition of the public interest would provide the flexibility that we need to ensure proper, genuine and useful journalism, and help to weed out the rubbish and abuse that we have seen over the past few years.

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and we must distinguish between occasions when the press pursues the public interest or public good, and occasions when it does not. When the DPP produces his guidance, however, I do not think that he will define the public interest. If, for example, I were to say that the public interest includes uncovering crime and corruption, or demonstrating hypocrisy by people in high office, the problem is that it would be difficult to encapsulate everything. Therefore, if we were to go down that path, we would have to think about including everything else as well. I am not convinced that the public interest itself needs to be defined, although we do need greater clarity in the way that the test is applied.

The problem is that the press has ignored the law and the police have not enforced it. Another major problem concerns the inequity that exists in this country when people deal with the press. A person on a low income can go to the Press Complaints Commission, but it can offer them only a published apology or perhaps a letter. Wealthy people, however, can go to court, which is why we have seen them receiving big payouts. People have said, “There seem to be an awful lot of celebs at the Leveson inquiry”, but that is because celebs can afford to pursue their cases, and those are the stories that we know about. We do not know about the victim of domestic violence whom I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, or about the child involved in the criminal justice system, because they have not been able to pursue their cases.