Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 10:34 am on 4 February 2011.
Robert Buckland
Conservative, South Swindon
10:34,
4 February 2011
My hon. Friend is right to put a high degree of faith in the judgment and good sense of ordinary people in making the distinction between what they would see as authoritative sources of information and the sort of tittle-tattle that fills far too many social networking sites. A judge giving a direction to a jury can deal with such mischief and, if I may say so, my hon. Friend sounded a little judicial in his Intervention, because I can imagine a judge saying to a jury at the beginning of a trial, "Please disregard any gossip you may see on websites. Don't tweet. Don't look at Facebook. Disregard all those websites." There is a great difference between information and knowledge.
An intervention is when the MP making a speech is interrupted by another MP and asked to 'give way' to allow the other MP to intervene on the speech to ask a question or comment on what has just been said.