Coroners and Justice Bill

We on these Benches support the amendment in the name of my noble friend. It is interesting that, having gone through the lengthy debate on the last amendment, we should be here promoting freedom of speech as the touchstone of democracy, which undoubtedly it is. The ability of individuals to criticise the state is crucial to maintaining freedom. In this day and age, when we have so many journalists, bloggers and so forth who give us their views all the time, we should get rid of anything that may in any way curb their criticisms of the state. We need a vigorous culture of free speech in order to keep government up to the mark. It is not just the use of these laws but the threat that they might be used that has a chilling effect. Even Peter Hain, in his Young Liberal days in 1974, when he was a bit of a protester—as those who are following the Test in Cardiff at the moment may remember—was threatened with imprisonment for criminal libel. It has been used in this country to intimidate writers and campaigners without any prosecution ever having taken place. Of course, the laws of seditious and criminal libel are very active in other countries. Some of them look at us and say, "You have them, so why shouldn’t we have them? It is up to us whether we should use them". Turkey, which is applying to become a member of the European Union, presents our laws as a reason for retaining its notorious Article 301, which forbids denigrating Turkishness. The murdered journalist Hrant Dink and the Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk were prosecuted under that provision. Elsewhere, Iran, has a poor record. Uzbekistan has prosecuted many—one in particular in 2006. Saidjahon Zaynobiddinov—I am sure that your Lordships will forgive my Uzbek accent—was prosecuted and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for defamation and anti-government activities. What had he done? He had provided the international media with eyewitness accounts of the Andijan massacre in 2005. We can see how, in the absence of a free press and the freedom to criticise, liberties can be curtailed. If Britain is seen as a beacon of parliamentary democracy, even after the Governments that we have had in recent years, the laws created here have a profound influence. It is time that these antique and out-of-date laws were repealed.