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Libel Laws

There is a world of difference between complaining about the activities of a firm of solicitors in conducting its business and calling on the Law Society to investigate, but I will let the matter rest there. Perhaps I should have declared at the outset my interest as a practicing solicitor, although, having had the conduct of libel actions in the past, I no longer have any libel practice. What we have here is the clash of three conflicting rights against each other: freedom of expression, the right to privacy and the right not to be libelled. There is an important distinction to be made between the right to privacy and the right not to be libelled, or between privacy and libel. If someone engages, for example, in sadomasochistic sex in private and a newspaper publishes that fact, it is open to the people concerned to complain that their right to privacy has been breached. If someone has said, obiter, ““Sadomasochistic sex is not the sort of thing I get up to,”” the press are quite right to say that that person does not have a right to privacy, because he is, in effect, being a hypocrite. If, however, someone does not engage in sadomasochistic sex but a newspaper says that he is, that is libel. There is a big difference between privacy and libel, and I hope that on another occasion we might have a debate on the right to privacy rather than on libel. The press focus on the right to freedom of expression. My hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath highlighted the fact that the press have done noble service in exposing crimes. However, it is not that that people are complaining about; of course the press have a role in exposing crime, wrongdoing and hypocrisy. They are complaining about individuals' right to privacy being breached. That is where I suspect my hon. Friend and I interpret the same set of facts differently with regard to what is in the public interest. Is it in the public interest that someone who engages in a private activity on his own property should have that fact published in a newspaper or broadcast? The right hon. Member for Rotherham discussed the publication of a New York Times article and its worries about libel laws here. The point, which relates to my intervention, is that if The New York Times is published in the United Kingdom, the newspaper must stand by its statements under the jurisdiction of UK laws. If the United States passes a law saying that that cannot happen, that will not affect what goes on here, because the United Kingdom is the jurisdiction to which any publication or statement made in the United Kingdom is subject. That applies to books as well. A book published in the United Kingdom, although it may have been written overseas, is subject to UK laws.