My Lords, I support what my noble friend has just said. Having listened to the various alternatives, I think that the idea of having to involve the courts is just going to freak out any website operator, particularly those who deal in any volume. You are asking for some sort of cheap way to get to a judgment that is essentially expensive because there are a lot of things to be considered.
I think that the right answer to this, as my noble friend just said, lies in giving really good guidance to the courts and to website operators as to what is protected under the Bill and what is not. That comes back to points that I made under previous clauses. I do not understand what is going to be protected under the Bill; what is going to be regarded as fair comment; what is going to be required in terms of the person making the complaint or statement stating the basis on which they have made it; or the references to “fact” that creep in, which is something that you as a website operator know that you can never establish. As my noble friend said earlier, we all have insurance to cover those things. I am sure that the same applies to Facebook as it does at the bottom end, which I occupy. That insurance is not vastly expensive and is available on sensible terms from sensible insurers. As long as you
have reasonable systems to ensure that you are doing your best not to publish things for which you may be sued, you are protected.
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However, in deciding what it is reasonable to do, one could do with a much better answer than, “Spend £1,000 with your lawyer”. We could do with something provided by the Government to say, “This is what we mean by the sort of comment that we expect you to be able to produce”, and that my writing in to say that the food and service was absolutely terrible is all right, as long as I actually had a meal in the place. On a practical basis, what do I have to establish to feel comfortable in myself that I am not risking ending up on the wrong side of a court case, to make it possible for me to make an informed judgment? As someone who is keen to publish when I can and to preserve people’s right to publish and be heard, I am prepared to go some way, but that does not include trotting off to the wrong end of a lawyer’s bill. I want some real support from the Government, some practical guidance as to what the Bill will allow me to publish and what will get me into trouble—not just the mechanics, which still leaves me at the mercy of the earlier clauses, not knowing what they mean.