Defamation Bill

Debate between Helen Goodman and Sadiq Khan

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving the important and outrageous example of people being trolled. It is worth saying for clarity that the clause deals only with defamation cases. I would not want the public to think that it was a panacea for all sorts of outrageous behaviour that takes place on the internet. He is right to remind us that other legislation, including criminal law, needs to be updated to allow authorities to take action against those who troll against innocent victims. We are all aware of the case of our colleague, the hon. Member who had outrageous words said against her, leading to a successful prosecution. If there is a lacuna, it needs to be filled, but we should be clear that clause 5 deals simply with cases in which a defamation claim is made.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The situation that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) mentioned has two aspects to it. One is the aspect of comments appearing on a website, with which my right hon. Friend has dealt, but there is also the question whether defamation can be against a deceased person. The Bill does not address that. Does my right hon. Friend believe that it should be considered in Committee?

[Sadiq Khan]

As my hon. Friend will know, it has always been the case that a dead person’s estate cannot sue for defamation. It is worth the Public Bill Committee considering the issue of deceased people’s reputations and the injury that defamation causes to their family. I am not sure whether the Joint Committee did so. However, there are very good reasons why a deceased person’s estate has never been able to sue for defamation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention was so long that I cannot remember what he said, but I know that when I was listening I agreed with both his major points.

The solution of notice and takedown proposed by the Joint Committee on the draft Bill is a good, pragmatic one, recognising that although we cannot legislate for the net in exactly the same way as we do for other areas, we can reproduce the rights and responsibilities in the real world. I must say to Ministers, however, that given that the Joint Committee report was produced last October, they ought by now to have got parliamentary counsel to have drafted the regulations, so that we could see them and be confident that they were right.

Clause 10 is extremely welcome. We should probably call it the Private Eye clause. For years, high street newsagents refused to stock the Eye because they thought they might be sued over its potentially litigious content. The clause is welcome, therefore, given that we are all deeply dependent on the Eye for keeping up to speed with what is going on.

As is often the case with this Government, however, the problem is not so much with what is in the Bill as with what is not in it. There is nothing to tackle the lack of access to justice for ordinary people, whether as claimants or defendants. That inequity was demonstrated in the case of Trafigura, which damaged the environment in Ivory Coast, and in the case of Barclays and Freshfields concerning tax avoidance. Those large corporations were able to hide and threaten The Guardian, which was trying to publish stories about them. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) will say more about those cases. When I am told, not by the editor of The Guardian but by the editor of another quality national newspaper, that his major, No. 1 problem is oligarchs threatening to sue his newspaper when he tries to report on them, I know we have a problem that needs addressing. The Libel Reform campaign, which campaigned for the Bill, has called for it to include a clause requiring non-natural persons to show actual or likely financial harm. The campaign is right. Such a clause should be inserted and would be a helpful strengthening of the Bill.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) said, the Government have done nothing to right the wrong of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 through their failure properly to implement the Jackson proposals on no win, no fee cases. The McCann and Dowler families would not have been able to take the newspapers to court under the laws that the Government have implemented. That is a complete disgrace. We want a justice system available to all and a free and responsible press, but we will not achieve the latter without the former.

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend is talking about access to justice. Does she accept that if the Government took on board the Joint Committee’s recommendation to have alternative dispute resolution much earlier, it would reduce costs and improve access to justice, notwithstanding her concerns about the changes in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act?

[Helen Goodman]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. A further thing that we need to tease out is whether as much as possible has been done in the Bill to bring down the costs of libel cases. I very much hope that the Minister will be able to respond positively—if not this afternoon, in Committee.