Defamation Bill

Helen Grant Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

The decision is deliberately left to discretion, so in the end an experienced judge will have to decide whether a case is suitable, but one can conceive of a few exceptional cases whereby the whole thing depends on a question of the veracity of two teams of hard-swearing witnesses, and whereby the judge is persuaded that, because of the particular nature of the case, he would be helped by the judgment of a range of men and women, from a variety of backgrounds, who would bring their collective wisdom to deciding which side to believe.

That is simply one off-the-cuff example which comes to my mind, but if the whole thing turned on an elaborate argument about the application of the defamation laws to the particular circumstances of the publication of a scientific journal, for example, that would be a wholly unsuitable case to leave to a jury, and the whole thing would take longer and cost a lot more, even if the jury got it right in the end. That is the problem we are trying to address.

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the proposal could assist with earlier settlement, not just with reducing the length or cost of a hearing?

[Mr Clarke]

I agree strongly with that extremely good point. The more these things can be dealt with by way of a preliminary judgment by a judge, the more settlements we will get, because sometimes the whole thing really turns on one point, which can be dealt with much more quickly if a jury is not involved.