My Lords, I rise to support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, and to say that he has accurately recalled the discussion and the feeling of the Joint Committee. My sense is that we actually did get differing evidence. For example, I seem to recall that the Master of the Rolls was sceptical about extending privilege to academic conferences for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, has given us. On the other hand, we had a former Lord Chancellor, for example, who took the view that it was right to extend privilege. So there was a genuine difference of evidence from significant people. We were certainly much keener to protect peer-reviewed journals than we were to offer a new measure of protection for conferences for the simple reason that all of us who are academics have attended conferences that we are not sure would deserve this privilege. The Government may well have things to say to expand their thinking to produce a more enthusiastic response—on my part, at any rate. However, it is worth saying that were somewhat cagey on this matter.
Perhaps I may say very briefly, referring to the privilege matters discussed and to what is about to come, as the one person who was a member of the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege and of the Joint Committee on the Defamation Bill, that I am finding the discussion so far extremely helpful, I expect to find further discussions even more helpful, and I am learning a lot.