Mr John Browne: To ask the Prime Minister if she has received recent representations regarding civil defence.
Mr John Browne: Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that the recent Government announcement on planning for emergencies in peacetime will in no way change their attitude to civil defence in time of war?
Mr John Browne: rose—
Mr John Browne: My hon. Friend has said that if the Bill were passed it would intrude on the rights of the press. He is really saying that it would intrude on the rights of the press to bully individual people and that is the whole question. He places reliance on the Press Council, whose members are very hard-working people, but they have no teeth, and of course they lack credibility. He talks about...
Mr John Browne: rose—
Mr John Browne: rose—
Mr John Browne: Does the hon. Gentleman remember that, although the Government have announced a review, that is exactly what happened when the late Lord Mancroft introduced his privacy Bill and when Mr. Alex Lyon and Mr. Brian Walden did the same? The Younger committee reported in 1972 and since then the situation has got worse and worse. All we shall have is the eyewash of yet another review.
Mr John Browne: Will my right hon. Friend give way on that specific point?
Mr John Browne: With regard to the European convention, my right hon. Friend mentioned that he wished to keep enterprise alive, yet, as drafted, article 16 of the convention will allow a receiving country to shut out the signals from a direct broadcast satellite if they do not conform to the rules in that particular receiving country. If that country does not have commercial television, it can cut out all...
Mr John Browne: Does my right hon. Friend accept that, while the Government's statistics published under the Animals (Scientific) Procedures Act 1986 are most welcome, they do not cover certain very important areas, such as the severity of the pain caused to animals under live experiments over a length of time? Does my right hon. Friend accept that these gaps exist, that corrections have already been made in...
Mr John Browne: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 2 February.
Mr John Browne: Does my right hon. Friend accept that the apparent lack of enthusiasm by the Soviets for bilateral nuclear arms control completely vindicates the Government's policy of adopting a unified NATO response to arms control?
Mr John Browne: I understand that the Legal Aid Act 1988 enables the Lord Chancellor to extend legal aid to areas of the law by regulation. We should be pleased to see the Lord Chancellor do that. We are not precluding legal aid, but we have not included it in the Bill because we do not want to give officials the chance to hit it out of Parliament.
Mr John Browne: Is my hon. Friend saying that serious consideration by the Government about whether they should offer the individual citizen protection before the law, which would fill a serious existing gap—protection already approved of by the Government as a consequence of their international obligations—could be precluded because it might, as my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Knight)...
Mr John Browne: I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again. In the example of the United States the first amendment, not the fifth, sixth of seventh amendment of the constitution, provides for free speech and a free press. How is it that the United States can live with the privacy law when its first amendment also has to be balanced in the same way as article 8 and 10 in the convention?
Mr John Browne: That is protected precisely in the Bill and it would be a classic case of public interest.
Mr John Browne: The basic point is clear. There would be a defence of public interest. If there were any doubt in the mind of the court about the validity of the case for privacy versus public interest, the court would decide in favour of publication. The case that the hon. Lady has cited is a clear case of public interest. I hope that the hon. Lady will concentrate on the fact that the Bill is not designed...
Mr John Browne: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. At the outset, I should declare that I have interests in the media industry, both as a director of a satellite television company and as a member of the board of an international newspaper. I should declare, too, a general interest in this Bill, for I, like every man, woman and child, will stand to benefit from the protection that it...
Mr John Browne: My hon. Friend raises a valid issue, which is at the crux of the debate: where should the balance be struck? At the moment everything is wide open and there is no balance. The aim of the Bill is to strike a balance that protects the individual citizen's privacy. Why do we not have laws similar to those in other countries to protect privacy within the United Kingdom? As the learned Lord Ross...
Mr John Browne: I am glad that the hon. and learned Gentleman has raised that point because he anticipates my next statement. Critics have said that the Bill is for the rich only, but I must drive home the fact that the Bill is designed for the ordinary man and woman in the street. What the hon. and learned Gentleman says is perfectly correct, and after the Lord Chancellor's review a person will be able to...
