Defamation Bill

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, I was approached by two organisations to speak on this Bill. I have not followed the Bill, although I have had some dealings with my noble and learned friends as a technical expert. As a scientist, I generally support this Bill because of the importance of freedom of speech in science and, of course, for many organisations. Like many others, one feels very gratified that one has much greater freedom of speech in this country than in others—in the press, in Parliament and in the scientific world. However, even in parliamentary committees, civil servants are advised to be extremely careful about what they say about individuals; as I found myself when I was in front of the Public Accounts Committee in the Met Office.

The limitations of press freedom have been covered by other speakers and, as a scientist, I am very aware of the importance of freedom of speech for progress in science and its application. However, the importance of the internet has not been emphasised very much in this debate, which is included under Clause 5. The internet can greatly expand freedom but it can also create dangers, as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, has just explained. I declare an interest as I chair an environmental software company. We put all the formulae that we use on the web—rather unusually—so that other companies and organisations can follow them. However, if more companies and organisations were more open, it might solve some of the problems that arise.

In the UK, there is of course a widespread practice of individuals and organisations suing, or threatening to sue, individuals who express opinions and produce data that affect the complainant. Scientists, universities and journals are now quite fearful of being sued, or threatened to be sued, because of the very high fees of lawyers. I have colleagues at University College London who receive vexatious threats of suing from organisations when they have simply repeated certain points on websites. Even if these opinions are not finally disproved in court, this can lead to considerable costs to these individuals—so much so that universities, journals and newspapers do not necessarily support their employees or their contributors. I know a young journalist in London who reported about certain Russians in London in a certain well known newspaper. When it started getting tricky, he went to the law firm of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, and the problem was solved. However, there was a nasty withdrawing of support from the newspaper that had published his article. This aura of threat and so on has been a very nasty feature of the current situation. I was once threatened by a scientific colleague for a statement in the minutes of a meeting of the National Physical Laboratory; he said that he would sue me. I quickly changed the minutes as it was not worth the cost. He is now quite a good friend. I do not remind him of this very often but he is passionate sometimes.

When the Met Office became a trading fund, it had to consider whether to take out insurance against being sued for inaccurate weather forecasts. Noble Lords can imagine that many weather forecasting organisations have considered such an idea. However, we decided against it because there has been only one half-successful case about weather forecasting—noble Lords may tell me something else—which was in the United States about some dodgy data from a buoy off Newfoundland. We can be secure in this club of weather forecasting organisations.

The Bill has a very important public interest clause that should help to deal with some of these issues because it recognises the public interest in the defamation processes. However, other noble Lords have mentioned that there is nothing in this clause, or in the Explanatory Notes, about having much more inexpensive procedures for the assessment of defamation claims. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, quite rightly mentioned this. This will become increasingly needed with regard to claims and opinions expressed on the internet. Given the extraordinary powers of extracting and organising data now demonstrated by Google, and the popular involvement in the internet shown by Wikipedia and other sites, surely Clause 5 should now include the setting up of a defamation website by some independent body—for example, the Law Commission, the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, or whoever—in which claims and counterclaims on scientific and technical questions could be presented. There could be some editorialising as on Wikipedia. The clause might contain the provision of such a website. It could state that judges and courts should not consider claims on technical issues until there has been public debate on the internet for some defined period—for example, six months. During this period, there could be a completely open process whereby the complainant, the defendant, their friends and their enemies put material on the website. When the process finally arrived in a court, the court would see what had happened over these months on the internet. This is a very powerful method of seeing the evidence for and against.

I think that the point made by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, in opening this debate is that we must think to the future. There will be some new approaches and extraordinary new possibilities. The present clause is looking backwards slightly because this procedure happens in any small community. Someone makes a statement about somebody else, such as, “Did you see him do this? Did you see him do that? My God, his potatoes are terrible”, and so on. There is a community assessment and, after a time, people see Mr So-and-so selling bad potatoes, people hear about it and the community decides. It does not normally end up in blows. We might have a solution if we go back to primitive society and we go forward to the internet.

I quickly sent some e-mails this afternoon, having thought about this in the morning. I gather that there is a free online Canadian dispute resolution service at www.eQuibbly.com—I am sorry for my lawyer friends that it is free. Apparently, eBay tried to set up a similar site in the UK but we are obviously so full of lawyers that there were no takers for this free service. It now operates in the Netherlands, in Dutch—so I will not give you the website. If an independent body were to run such a defamation website, it would enable web organisations generally to operate more freely and would ensure a wider dissemination of data and opinions.

Finally, an important point made by noble Lords concerning the dangers of libel tourism is that it is having quite a chilling effect—a term used earlier—in Africa, where well-to-do people are threatening poorer people, communities and organisations with defamation cases in London. The inhibition of libel tourism in the Bill is a very important development and I support it.