My Lords, the Minister shares with me the view that this is a fiendishly complicated challenge. I welcome his reluctance to embroil us in a debate on the recommendations of Lord Justice Leveson’s report but I hope that before Parliament’s deliberations on the Defamation Bill are concluded, we will know the recommendations of the Civil Justice Council and have some clarity on the way forward in relation to
Lord Justice Leveson’s report and, in particular, his recommendations about costs in defamation actions. We will then be at least in a position of knowing that when the seal is put on the Defamation Act—which broadly we all support and consider as progress in the development of the law—we will not have to revisit the issue quickly thereafter. That would be nonsensical.
I know that sometimes it is not possible get all stars aligned but surely it must be possible with draft legislation of this nature, where there is such substantial agreement, for parties to timetable the proceedings of Parliament in such a way that we maximise the possibility of coherence and consistency rather than minimise it. I hope that we do not get caught up in the demands of people who are timetabling other business, the usual channels and so on, and are railroaded into a timescale on this Bill which makes our deliberations look foolish shortly after we have concluded them.
I am grateful to the Minister for his response. We will certainly return to this issue on Report; there is no question about that. The application of the LASPO Act to these proceedings sits in the context of a very clear undertaking, which we intend that the Minister and the Government will live up to. We will come back to that and I hope that we will have more specification of some description, or at least that the tripartite talks may have concluded in relation to Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations. Pending that day, I will keep the rest of my powder dry and, for the moment, seek the leave of the Committee to withdraw the amendment.