Schedule. — (Newspaper Statements Having Qualified Privilege.)

Part of Orders of the Day — Defamation (Amendment) Bill – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 27 June 1952.

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Photo of Mr James MacColl Mr James MacColl , Widnes 12:00, 27 June 1952

I beg to move, in page 7, line 8, to leave out from "Britain," to the end of line 9.

This Amendment refers back to Clause 6. I ought to draw the attention of the House to the provisions of Clause 6, because it is difficult to appreciate the scope of the Schedule unless hon. Members have in mind what the Clause says. The Clause is a repetition of the existing statute law. It provides that publication in a newspaper of certain reports is privileged unless the publication is proved to be made with malice. That is the substance of subsection (1). Subsection (3), which is a limitation of the Clause, says that: Nothing in this section shall be construed as protecting the publication of any matter the publication of which is prohibited by law, or of any matter which is not of public concern and the publication of which is not for the public benefit. The protection given to newspapers for their reports is limited by the fact that it must be a matter of public concern and that it must be a publication which is for the public benefit.

The Schedule gives two lists of statements which are to be protected under that Clause. The first group are statements which are protected without any need to publish an explanation or a contradiction of what has been said. The second group are only privileged if the newspaper is ready to publish an explanation or a contradiction by somebody who has been defamed.

The part of the Schedule with which my Amendment deals is the first part. Line 8 begins: A fair and accurate report of any proceedings in public of the legislature of any part of Her Majesty's dominions outside Great Britain or of any foreign country or province or state of a foreign country. In other words, the position is that up to date the statutory protection given to a newspaper has not included the proceedings of any legislature outside Great Britain.

Statements made in this Legislature are not covered. We have discussed them at some length on the Amendment dealing with the reprinting of Parliamentary reports. This Schedule deals with legislatures outside Great Britain, and the purpose of my Amendment is to limit the protection to those legislatures in the Commonwealth and not to include reports from foreign legislatures.

There is one interesting point to which I want to draw the attention of the House. In the case of reports of the proceedings of foreign courts that distinction is drawn. There is no statutory protection for reports of proceedings of foreign law courts, but this Schedule is proposing to introduce protection for the proceedings of foreign legislatures, and that would seem to be an entirely contradictory thing to do. The question was discussed by the Porter Committee, and the reason for this distinction arises from the views taken by that Committee. They say, in paragraph 108 of their Report: Had not the practical difficulties proved insuperable, we should have desired to add to the list of reports entitled to qualified privilege, reports of proceedings in some foreign courts. But the legal system of the different countries of the world vary considerably and drastic changes in the character of their judicial tribunals may occur with little prevous warning. Legal proceedings may be of a political character, and may take place in absentia.We have found it impossible to put forward any criterion of general application which could be adopted to limit and define such foreign courts as maintain a standard of justice and a method of procedure which would justify our recommending that reports of their proceedings should be entitled to qualified privilege without any droit de reponse on the part of the person defamed. That is a clear statement of the difficulty of the problem: that one cannot look at all the courts of the world, with their manifold procedures, different legal bases, and so on, and be sure that a fair report of those proceedings is a fair report of what is in general a court according to recognised rules which civilised countries would accept. Therefore, the Porter Committee were forced to suggest, against the general trend of their views, that it was not possible to extend this protection to foreign courts.

I am suggesting that if it is not possible to extend it to foreign courts it is an extraordinary situation to extend it to foreign legislatures, because if one cannot be sure in the case of a court that they give the person a right of reply to any personal attack made on him, if one cannot be sure that they may come to a decision without giving someone due notice of the allegations to be made, if one cannot be sure that they maintain a standard of justice and a method of procedure which would justify our recommending them to have the protection—all those criteria may apply even more strongly to a foreign legislature.

It seems to me that if we cannot extend the protection to a court—which, at any rate, goes through the forms of having some kind of just procedure regulating the proceedings—it is quite absurd to extend the protection to every legislature in each totalitarian country, to every country behind the Iron Curtain, to every obscure legislature in the obscure State of some federation, with all those manifold and varied bodies, many of them sharing none of our ideas of fair play and justice.