It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), with whom I have had many promising discussions on the issue. I am delighted that the Bill is back in the Commons. There was a period when, due to the actions of the Labour peer Lord Puttnam, there was a risk. I am glad that that risk did not eventualise and that it turned out not to be a problem.
This Bill will make a significant change to the costs of libel and to free speech and it will reduce libel tourism. I am particularly pleased about clause 6, which provides specific protection for peer-reviewed academic and scientific publications. That is something that I value greatly and I am delighted that we will be able to make those protections, because we have heard of too many cases of learned journals being silenced.
The issue remains, however, of corporations and non-natural persons. As I argued earlier, they are different. They do not have feelings. They are categorically separate and there should be different rules for what happens when they wish to bring libel actions. Significantly, we have heard that they can abuse power, as in the cases of Peter Wilmshurst and Simon Singh. I was going to talk more about them, but a number of speeches have covered them.
There is, largely, cross-party agreement, with the notable exception of the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier).