The Justice Secretary is reported to have pledged to make English defamation laws fairer. Index on Censorship reports
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Junior Justice Minister Bridget Prentice revealed on 21 October that Justice Secretary Jack Straw has called on senior judges and lawyers representing major newspapers to discuss the fit and proper use of super injunctions. It follows the issuing of a super injunction by the courts that inadvertently prevented the Guardian newspaper from reporting parliamentary proceedings. Although the Lord Chief Justice, Judge Judge, pointed out that some super injunctions were justified, Prentice nonetheless admitted to being “very concerned that super injunctions are being used more commonly”. Having appeased MPs by assurring them that their absolute right to address parliament was protected by law, Prentice said that further guidelines on the issuing of super injunctions might be useful to the judiciary.
Gordon Brown’s promise today to extend freedom of information is welcome, but how much difference will it make? FOI needs to be deepened, not widened, if it is truly to hold power to account.
In Parliament today, Gordon Brown paid tribute to the “vital role transparency has played in sweeping aside the discredited system of allowances, and holding power to account”. Consequently, he argued, “we should do more to spread the culture and practice of freedom of information.”
What is clear from the expenses scandal is that FOI is pretty well untouchable just now, even if it was a leak that did the real damage. After the House of Commons authorities failed in their bid to keep MPs’ claims under wraps and a group of MPs had to drop a plan to exempt themselves, any attempt to restrict the public’s right to know will not get very far.
But neither are things moving very far in the other direction. Brown’s promise that Justice Secretary Jack Straw will look at broadening the application of FOI to include new bodies that spend public money is not new and is an easy pledge to make at virtually no cost to to central government.
What would be more impressive would be a commitment from ministers that they will release more information themselves. But in vetoing the release of the pre-Iraq war cabinet minutes, despite rulings from the Information Commissioner and information tribunal, Straw has shown that holding power to account has its limits.
Instead of undermining the enforcement process, Brown and Straw should be strengthening it, for example by increasing the powers and resources available to the Information Commissioner to crack down on abuses.
As a recent study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism showed, the response of ministers and civil servants to FOI is a perpetual game of cat and mouse to prevent — or delay — embarrassing disclosures. There are so many exemptions that finding reasons not to be transparent is child’s play. While Brown and Straw talk up FOI, government officials are strangling the life out of it.
Four years since FOI came into force, I recently experienced the most blatantly obstructive tactics I have seen yet. I asked for a copy of a letter that Colin Matthews, chief executive of airport owner BAA sent Geoff Hoon, then transport secretary, lobbying for the expansion of Heathrow. The Department for Transport refused to disclose the document, on the grounds that BAA had issued a press release that included “the substance of the letter”.
It should go without saying that if we have to be satisfied with the version of events put out by spin doctors, instead of finding out what really happened, freedom of information is meaningless.
Similarly, while Brown’s pledge to get Tim Berners-Lee to help government “drive the opening up of access to government data in the web” is welcome, it will be of little use if government only opens up the data that it wants people to have. Direct access to the information that we want would be truly revolutionary, but without a complete change in the culture of government, the tendency to bury bad news will prevail.
And on the third part of Brown’s pledge the story is the same. The 30-year rule will become a 20-year rule (not 15 as Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre recommended) but, of course, “there will be protection of Royal Family and Cabinet papers”. Brown may say that the exemptions will be strictly limited, but it’s the exemptions that undermine the rule. Once again, freedom of information on the government’s terms, when it suits them, looks like the order of the day.
The UK parliament edged a step closer to repealing the archaic crimes of seditious libel and criminal defamation yesterday, as the House of Lords debated the government’s Coroners and Justice Bill on its second reading.
Liberal Democrat peer, Lord Anthony Lester QC, indicated his intention to table an amendment to the Bill that would abolish seditious and criminal libel, saying:
It took us 140 years to abolish the crime of blasphemy; I hope that this House will see fit to remove these crimes from our statute book as well. I hope that the government will support the amendments; indeed, there were straws in the wind indicating that they might do so.
This is very encouraging: should peers agree to an amendment, the change would need the tacit support of the government to remain in the Bill.
In March, Dr Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP, tabled similar amendments in the House of Commons (unfortunately never debated due to time constraints). Speaking at a meeting in Holborn yesterday evening, Dr Harris said that he too has heard supportive noises from the Ministry of Justice on this issue. Index on Censorship and English PEN will be lobbying the government to formalise this support, as soon as possible.
For campaigners, the abolition of seditious libel and criminal defamation in the UK would be an invaluable tool in the fight for free expression worldwide. In recent years, both Article 19 and International PEN have produced research on the widespread use of sedition and criminal defamation laws to silence legitimate political protest. Abolition in the UK should reinvigorate campaigns for change elsewhere.
The Coroners and Justice Bill raises several other free expression issues, which peers will debate in committee in June. These include the question of whether convicted criminals should have royalties from their memoirs confiscated, and whether laws that forbid hate speech on the grounds of sexual orientation need an amendment to protect those who might wish to question the morality of homosexual practices.
However, some peers criticised the government’s use of portmanteau bills to legislate on myriad topics. Lord Thomas of Gresford complained that the Bill was a “miscellany of no fewer than 15 discrete and complex topics that have been thrown together.” If the Coroners and Justice Bill succeeds in expanding the space for free speech in the UK, it will be ironic that the vehicle for reform is a method of legislation that many regard as undemocratic.
Robert Sharp is campaigns manager at English PEN