New Clause 1 — Order for removal of defamatory statement from website

Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Prime Minister – in the House of Commons at 2:15 pm on 12 September 2012.

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Photo of Simon Hughes Simon Hughes Deputy Leader, Liberal Democrats 2:15, 12 September 2012

Let me begin by welcoming my colleagues who have just joined the team—the new Under-Secretaries of State for Justice, my hon. Friends the Members for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright) and for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant). I know my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald the better of the two, and have great confidence in her. If her colleague is as competent as she is, we shall be in good hands in the days ahead. I also welcome the new Secretary of State, who I expect will join us later. I have already had the welcome opportunity of holding a brief conversation with him about the Bill, and I look forward to a more general conversation with him about it after the completion of its House of Commons stages later today.

I have taken over responsibility for the Bill from my right hon. Friend Tom Brake, who has joined the Government as Deputy Leader of the House. I congratulate him on that. I shall be carrying out a holding operation today without other support, but we will bolster our troops when the Bill goes to the other place.

Our general position is that it is absolutely right to reform the law. These new clauses and amendments relate to a matter of great significance out there in the real world. As was pointed out by Helen Goodman, this is real live legislation for 2012 and beyond. Bills, and the drafting of Bills, may appear to be somewhat esoteric, but what is done with websites, how people are held to account for what is said, how the transmission of information is managed, and how inappropriately transmitted information is controlled are important issues.

Mr MacShane also raised the general issue of appropriateness. Items can appear on websites overnight, for instance on Wikipedia, and catching up with them, correcting them and ensuring that information is accurate is an extraordinarily difficult job. It may be thought that people’s reputations are not hugely adversely affected by something that may be there one day and gone the next, but that is clearly not the reality of the world. A message that has appeared on Twitter can subsequently be removed, but by that stage—I am afraid that I cannot quote “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” accurately—it will, like Puck, have gone around the world before anyone has had a chance to do anything about it.

I welcome the Government new clause and the two new Government amendments. All the matters with which they deal were discussed in Committee. It was decided that new clause 1 was necessary, and it is a welcome proposed addition to the Bill. It may need to be tidied up further, and I am sure the Government do not pretend that this will definitely be the end of the conversation.

We debated the issues raised in Government amendment 5 in Committee in June. It was requested that something be done, and they have put forward a proposal.

The Liberal Democrats have for a long time been calling for the sort of change that is made by Government amendment 6, because comment moderation is clearly a good thing and should not be discouraged by a risk of liability to an author who is trying to moderate and improve an intolerant comment. That may need additional work, too, however.

The Bill has returned to the House earlier than we expected because of the lacuna in the Government programme caused by a larger Bill—that on House of Lords reform—having been taken out and parked in the sidings for while. As a result, all of us—including the Department and the new ministerial team—have been caught short, and I therefore accept that the right place to deal with a lot of these issues will be the House of Lords, which is unusual for me because it is my general view that any changes to legislation that originate in the House of Commons should be undertaken by elected representatives in the Commons. We should leave the

Lords to sweep up and do other things, rather than rely on it as the place to make substantive changes. I accept that this will be a slightly unusual Bill, therefore, and I will willingly work with colleagues in other parties to get it into the best possible shape.

I do not think Labour amendment 7 offers the right approach. We should not remove clause 5. The Government amendments to the clause are welcome and, as the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland half-conceded, removing the clause would be inappropriate as we are adding two amendments and a new clause to improve its provisions. As I have said outside this place to shadow Ministers, however, I am sure more work will need to be done. So long as we all share that attitude, I trust we will be able to work constructively.

If votes are called, I will invite my party colleagues to support the Government on their new clause and the two amendments and to resist the Labour amendment, in the knowledge that Ministers, shadow Ministers and other Members are willing to work collaboratively together and with those outside this place who have taken a good and informed interest in helping us get the law right. There is a strong mood in this place and in the country in favour of reform to the law on defamation, as it has clearly fallen into disrepute. I pay tribute to those who have done all the work so far, and I support the Government, who are clearly in a constructive mood to improve the Bill.