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Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, I will speak also to Amendments 119, 126, 127, 129, 131, 135, 140, 141 and 142. These amendments fulfil an undertaking that we gave in Committee in response to similar amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, to whom we are extremely grateful. We indicated then that we agreed that the common law offences of sedition and seditious and defamatory libel can and should be abolished forthwith. The amendments would also abolish the last remaining criminal libel offence, namely that of obscene libel. If I may, I shall briefly outline to the House the specific offences that we propose to abolish. I will then move Amendment 67 in the appropriate way, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, who is a co-signatory to the amendments, will then make his speech. The first point to make concerns the term "criminal libel". As the House knows well, that term is often used synonymously with defamatory libel, but it is also a generic term used to describe all forms of libel that amount to a criminal offence. Criminal libel originally covered four distinct categories of libel: blasphemous, obscene, defamatory and seditious. As this House knows, blasphemous libel was abolished in England and Wales by Section 79 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. Publication of obscene material is now covered by the Obscene Publications Acts 1959 and 1964, so the common law offence of obscene libel is effectively obsolete. Our Amendment 67 therefore abolishes the offence of sedition and the remaining offences of criminal libel—namely, seditious, defamatory and obscene libel. Our view is that those are arcane offences which have largely fallen into disuse. They stem from a bygone age when freedom of expression was not seen as the right that it is today. As we heard in Committee, taking the initiative to abolish them will be a positive step in helping our country, the United Kingdom, to take a lead in challenging similar laws in other countries where they are used to suppress free speech. In the Government’s view, the time is right once and for all to abolish those archaic offences. I beg to move.