My Lords, I think my noble friend in his careful reply hinted vaguely that I might have been motivated by a touch of cynicism. I am
surprised about that given how long this has been in the hopper. A second Joint Committee has now been established and part of its job will be to review the findings of the first Joint Committee. Were I to be accused of cynicism, it might more usefully be applied in those circumstances rather than simply on the basis of time elapsed.
It is probably a somewhat unusual set of circumstances for a Joint Committee to be established in part to review decisions taken by a previously properly established Joint Committee, and I look forward to the potential for an exciting debate in your Lordships’ House about which of the Joint Committee reports the House gives most credence to were the two reports not to be identical.
As regards the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, my understanding is that malice is always outside qualified privilege. As regards the question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, I was careful to draft this amendment in general terms. I did that in part because as a former Minister I know well that if the spirit of the amendment is adopted, officials will always find an opportunity to tell the Minister that the amendment is not quite correctly drafted and that he needs to do this, that or the other. They do that extremely well, and I have been the beneficiary on many occasions, so I am not being in any sense rude or aggressive. I am simply explaining that it did not seem to me to be worthwhile to try to think up every set of circumstances. If the Minister accepts the principle, when the Bill emerged from Report, it would be drafted in the way that would be most sensible as far as the Government were concerned. On this issue, I guess that would be most sensible in terms of the House as well.
The issue is that day in, day out constituents correspond with their Members of Parliament and there ought not to be an inhibition on that. Personally, I would probably restrict it to the direct communication between the constituent and the Member of Parliament because it would be that on which the Member of Parliament would stand up and address the House of Commons. Anyway, the Member of Parliament has to exercise some judgment about what he or she wishes to say in the Chamber. I do not think our Joint Committee—I look to the noble Baroness to correct me if I am wrong—was trying to be picky to the last detail. We were trying to persuade the Government to accept this principle, which is why I worded my amendment simply to get the principle in front of my noble friend. I have heard what he said and have some sympathy, but do not feel encouraged that the Government’s timeframe will be such as to meet the urgency that I think the Joint Committee wanted him to feel on this subject. Of course, I will be happy to withdraw the amendment but, in doing so, I ask my noble friend to give it serious thought and perhaps to bear in mind that, were this to go into the Defamation Bill, when the Government’s all-singing, all-dancing piece of legislation comes forward, this clause could at that point be taken out of that Bill and put in to the new Bill so that all of defamation was in one place. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.