My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, is the most frustrating of colleagues, because, the moment that I am tetchy with him about his cavalier approach to procedure, he then intervenes to make a very helpful comment. The question that he has asked, as well as the one asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, are ones on which I would be interested to hear the view of the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, because my reply is going to be to preach caution to the Committee.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, unusually for him, expressed a degree of cynicism about how long the path ahead was for us on this, but I think that we should proceed with caution at this stage. It is an issue of relevance in a wider context than just defamation proceedings.
As noble Lords will be aware—and this is partly an answer to the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, that the Government were somehow dragging their feet—the Government published a draft Bill and Green Paper on parliamentary privilege in April last year. This sought views on a range of issues, including, in the broad context which I have mentioned, those which form the subject of this amendment and those in subsequent groups. Consultation on the draft Bill and Green Paper closed at the end of September, and a Joint Committee of both Houses has recently been established to consider the issue further. Therefore, in these circumstances we consider that it is clearly preferable for the issues relating to parliamentary privilege to be left to the Joint Committee to consider and take forward rather than pre-empting its considerations by including the provision in the Bill. No doubt, the deliberations of the pre-legislative scrutiny committee to which the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, referred and, indeed, these contributions will inform the deliberations of the Joint Committee, but on that basis I hope the noble Lord will be prepared to withdraw the amendment and leave the matter in the hands of the Joint Committee that has been established.
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