Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I am pleased to move this amendment. I understand that the night is getting on and we have all been here for many hours. I say in the nicest possible way that, as the hour gets later, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, seems to get a bit more edgy or, as we say in Scotland—I do not know if the term is used south of the border—a wee bit crabbit. The noble Lord would not give way. The Jackson report has been mentioned many times tonight, and it sounds as though it is a commendable report. However, I put it to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that we are not here just to take a report and rubber-stamp it. That would be easy. It has to be debated and thought through. It would be very easy for our democratic institutions if we just got a report and passed it through, saying, ““It's a good report””. It has to be tried and tested. In that spirit, I am moving this amendment. I declare an interest. I successfully took the Times to task on a no-win no-fee basis. Even on that basis, it was very daunting to be up against a large media organisation. I have been in politics for a long time and I feel as though we have all been hardened to what the media do and say. It must be even tougher for men and women who never expected to be in a situation in which their reputation was tarnished. It is a great loss that we are losing no-win no-fee for libel damages. My thoughts go to Mr Christopher Jefferies, the landlord in Bristol who was accused of all sorts of things because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was very sad for the poor victim of that murder, but Mr Jefferies was also a victim. The media said all sorts of things about that poor man. He must have thought to himself that he must take them on, and he did so on a no-win no-fee basis. Mr Jefferies probably took them on knowing—or his lawyers would have known—that whereas he had one solicitor, every national newspaper has a whole team of solicitors. There is not a time in the day when a media editor does not have access to a solicitor. I do not need to reiterate the things that the media said about that poor man as your Lordships know what was said. I was appalled that when the editor—I believe it was the editor of the Mirror newspaper—spoke at the Leveson inquiry, his apology was so cold and unmoving that you would not have known from it that he had destroyed that poor man's very reputation. We all know that the media act as a pack. They have a pack mentality and when one of them went after the man, the others followed suit. I listened to that editor say, ““I spoke to the night-shift lawyer and to the day-shift lawyer, and they both said that the story was all right to run. I therefore ran the story and I am very sorry about the difficulty that Mr Jefferies has had””. I think you would have made more of an apology to a next-door neighbour if you had forgotten to take the strimmer back after borrowing it to use in the garden. That is how cold these people are. Anybody else from any other sector, knowing what had been said about that poor man, would have said, ““My God, we have done a terrible thing. Let us make sure that we never, ever do it again””. The fact that there was a night-shift lawyer and a day-shift lawyer indicates that the media has an absolute team of lawyers behind them, whereas the complainant gets a lawyer on a no-win no-fee basis. Mr Jefferies is not the only victim of this: a lady in the Essex area sought damages, but not from the media. She was a local councillor and did her civic duty, which was recognised by the council which elected her as mayor. A very rich person who had more money than sense, as they say, decided that he would falsely allege that the lady was a shoplifter and was unfit to hold public office. He went to the extent of hitching a great banner to his private plane, and flew around Essex saying all sorts of things about this lady. That was not the only time that he had done that. He did the same thing to Christine Butler, a former MP. After the relevant lady had won her case, he said that she was falsely claiming incapacity benefits. The lady was seriously ill but she had to go to court again. At least, with a no-win no-fee situation there is no concern about your mortgage or about any savings that you may have, and your lawyer will tell you whether your chances are good or bad. We know about the things that some newspapers do because we have heard about phone hacking and the type of newspapers that were involved in that. However, I was disappointed in the Guardian as I have always found that newspaper to be very decent and reasonable. In my experience, its staff have not doorstepped people. If they want to make an inquiry or get a quote from you, they have done it through the usual channels or approached you directly in a reasonable way. However, somehow or other they got it wrong in the case of a career Army officer in the Intelligence Corps when they said that he was involved in torture. He took the newspaper to court—or, rather, he did not at first take it to court but sought damages. The newspaper offered him a derisory amount. He was then successful in obtaining a no-win no-fee case, which he won. It was disappointing that the Guardian should have pushed the matter to that extent. The judge awarded £58,000 in damages and described that man as a distinguished soldier. A former commanding officer gave evidence to the effect that the man embodied the best traditions of the British Army. It is getting late in the evening. I have referred to cases, particularly that of the lady councillor who was on disability benefit. The no-win no-fee arrangement would have taken a great worry away from her, as it certainly did in the case of the soldier. I have declared an interest; the salary that I was earning as a Speaker was on public record, but there is still a worry if you are going to court and you have to engage barristers and lawyers, and take witness statements. You say to yourself, ““Am I at risk? Will my mortgage and finances be at risk?””. I urge the Minister to think again. I know what he said about the Jackson report, but in this House and the other place you do not take a High Court judge's report—no disrespect to High Court judges—fling it on the table and say, ““There you are; it is a good report. We'll all agree to it and go home””. That is not what democracy is about. It has to be tried and tested; and if it needs changing, then we change it. I beg to move.