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Libel Laws

If the right hon. Gentleman is upset about something, perhaps we could discuss it outside—then we can get on with the debate in here. Some serious points have been made about internet libel. There have been calls from the judiciary and from practitioners for an international instrument to deal with it. If the current British Government or any future one, encouraged by Parliament, wished to enter any such international agreement, we could get on with negotiating it, but we should not complain when judges apply the law as it stands. On the Reynolds defence, yes, it was an advance on what previously existed, but the House of Lords did not go as far as the New York jurisdiction and other US jurisdictions on public interest defences. If we want to do something about that, we should do so, rather than whingeing about it. We could do something in Parliament, perhaps by persuading the Government to introduce a law. It is strange that we have within our power, allegedly, the ability to influence Government, but that all we do instead is be rude—if I may use that expression—about lawyers who are applying the current law and about judges who are implementing it. If we are big enough and grown-up enough to praise, as we rightly do, the freedom of the press and the ability of journalists properly to investigate those who need investigation and to expose their inequities, we should also be big enough to admit that it is our fault if we do nothing. Over the years, we have had any number of inquiries, Government and otherwise, into the state of privacy laws and the relationship between the citizen and the fourth estate, but we have done nothing about it, because we lack the bravery and the political will to influence the press through legislation. We should either do it and get on with it, or stop whingeing and allow the judges and lawyers to do the job that they are perfectly lawfully entitled to do. I was prevented in 1995 from sitting on the Committee that scrutinised the Defamation Bill, later the Defamation Act 1996, on the basis that I would talk too much and because I knew too—well, too little, actually. That is what the deputy Chief Whip told me at the time. I have learned a lot in the past 35 years about human nature, the desire of newspapers to do their job and the harm that is inflicted on individuals when the newspapers sometimes get it wrong. There is a balance to be found, and it is up to us as parliamentarians to engineer such a balance.