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English Libel Law (Parliamentary Proceedings)

As I understand it, the substantive proceeding had not been set down. The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme mentioned the costs—£300,000, I think—of going to a substantive hearing. That is clearly a huge amount of money and I am bound to say, making a political point, that I recognise that The Guardian does not have a lot of money, which is why it has closed down offices of the Aldershot News in my area: it has sucked them dry to fund The Guardian itself, which does not make money, whereas my local newspapers, and many others around the country, did. We need to consider whether, having failed in the court to obtain its desires, it then resorted to other means. I understand that the court made an anonymity order because it appeared to it that""publicity revealing the identity of the Applicants is likely unfairly to damage the interests of the Applicants"," and that that was accepted by The Guardian. I also understand that the view of leading counsel for The Guardian was that the effect of the order as it stood would be to prohibit The Guardian from reporting the hon. Gentleman's question, and that therefore it required variation. It would appear to me—I may be wrong—that there is a certain amount of agreement between the parties as to how the court proceedings should be resolved. I think it entirely legitimate for this House to be able to say that in exceptional circumstances there are overriding issues that affect our constituents and the wider public interest, and which require us to intervene. This may be one such case—I do not know; but I think that we have, as a House, to consider fairly carefully the number of times we might think it right to interfere in decisions of the court, whose job it is to try to reconcile the differences between the parties. In this case the court clearly found that making an injunction was the right thing to do.