In parenthesis to what I was saying about the right hon. Member for Rotherham, I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice for his kind remarks and congratulate him on his new position. I congratulated the new Under-Secretaries of State, my hon. Friends the Members for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright) and for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) earlier this afternoon. If my right hon. Friend maintains the tone that he adopted during his speech, this Bill will not only be improved, but markedly so. I am grateful for the stance that he took, which was in marked contrast to that taken by the right hon. Member for Rotherham, who thought it amusing, no doubt, to make personal remarks about others who cannot protect themselves here; but let us leave that there.
I also thank the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), the shadow Secretary of State for his words and the approach that he and his Front-Bench team will take as the Bill goes to the other place. There is now an opportunity to develop a new defamation Act that will meet some apparent needs, such as how the law is applied and libels dealt with in relation to the internet. It is time to deal with such things.
I have noted on my copy of the Bill something that my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) said earlier about clause 1. As drafted, the clause confuses what is defamatory and the consequences of a defamatory statement. I hope that by the time the Bill becomes an Act, the clause will read: “A defamatory statement is not actionable unless its publication has caused, or is likely to cause, serious harm to the reputation of the claimant”. Many things are defamatory that might not cause much damage, and many things are not very defamatory but can cause disproportionate damage. The wording that my hon. Friend and I have coincidently come up with deals with that point. I dare say that others will think more carefully about that as the Bill moves forward.
On the issue of truth and honest opinion, the way the Bill is constructed is sensible. In my opinion, the law did not need changing but, if it is to be changed, clauses 2 and 3 deal with it.
I have said what I had to say about clause 4 and the Reynolds defence. I want briefly to talk about clause 6. There has been a huge amount of campaigning from various groups, such as PEN, Sense about Science and so forth, largely based on the case of the chiropractors against Simon Singh. I will not go into the facts of the case. Much of it was misunderstood, but the nub of the case was this: did the words complained about constitute
allegations of fact or comment? That does not matter, because the argument and the campaign decided that academic criticism should almost be free from the law of libel.
Once we have got over that concern, we need to think more carefully about whether learned societies, which are not corporate bodies or profit-making companies, should have a right to sue in damages. We no longer allow local authorities to sue for damage to their governing reputation. Thirty five years ago, I used to get injunctions, for goodness’ sake, on behalf of local authorities, as corporate bodies that felt that they had been defamed by the local paper. Looking back, it is ridiculous to think that the Derbyshire county council case was not decided earlier, but it was not. For some decades now, it has not been possible for local authorities to sue in defamation. I rather suspect that the royal college of this, that or the other should not be allowed to sue either, although I must distinguish between that and the right of presidents and other officers of those associations to bring a personal action, if they are defamed.