I fully understand those reasons, and if the hon. Gentleman will bear with me and allow me to progress on to an explanation of those amendments, I hope that all will be revealed to him.
The separate but related issues are whether there should be any restrictions on the rights of bodies corporate and other non-natural persons to bring an action in defamation and whether any non-natural person, which is performing a public function, should be prevented altogether from bringing a claim in relation to a statement concerning that function. In relation to the first issue, the amendment would mean that in order to bring a claim, a non-natural person would first have to obtain permission of the court. The court would be required to strike out any such application, unless the claimant could show that the publication of the statement complained of had caused, or was likely to cause, substantial financial loss. We believe that a permission stage for this purpose would create unnecessary duplication and additional costs for both parties.
If the claimant was required to show substantial financial loss in order to satisfy the permission requirement, it would in effect mean that the claimant would satisfy the serious harm test introduced by clause 1. We have asked the civil procedure rules committee to consider rule changes to support a new early resolution procedure under which either party could apply at the outset of
proceedings for the court to decide certain key issues, including whether the serious harm test is satisfied. The addition of a permission stage would therefore add little or nothing, because any case where the existence of serious harm was disputed could have that issue resolved at a very early stage in any event.