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Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours (Workington): The hon. and learned Gentleman is a lawyer, and I am sure that he could give us excellent advice. I want to ask him a simple question. People have tried to sue me on three occasions in 20 years. On each occasion, I have refused to appoint a lawyer and nothing has happened; the attempts have fizzled out. I wonder whether hon. Members realise that we can do that; we can simply ignore such attempts. If the case is invalid, it seems to fall away.
Mr. Garnier: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his successful inactivity. I am not here to give general legal advice; that would be dangerous. However, it is not always safe for any defendant to do nothing, whether he is a Member of Parliament or not. One has to be extremely careful that the aggrieved complainant does not get judgment in default. In that case, damages may be assessed. If one does nothing about it, the plaintiff can execute judgment against the non-attending defendant. I shall leave the matter there before I am accused of advertising. That would never do.
Mr. Gerald Bermingham (St. Helens, South): It has occurred to me in the past 17 years here that if one writes letters carefully, one is fairly safe. For example, one can use the old phrases, "I'm given to understand;" "Could you please comment?" Perhaps we should teach Members of Parliament to write letters so that they do not get sued.
Mr. Garnier: Doubtless the hon. Gentleman will be putting up his placard along the Library Corridor so that Members of Parliament who need his advice will be able to find him.
Mr. Bermingham: I declare an interest.
Mr. Garnier: I do not want to take up too much time because those who spoke before me were commendably brief. However, provision exists for the protection of elected councillors. It is unclear where exactly the provision can be found. However, section 111(1) of the Local Government Act 1972 states:
- a local authority shall have power to do any thing (whether or not involving the expenditure, borrowing or lending of money or the acquisition or disposal of any property or rights) which is calculated to facilitate, or is conducive or incidental to, the discharge of any of their functions.
Mr. Tipping: Another route that local authorities take is that which we propose--the use of an insurance fund.
Mr. Garnier: I am grateful to the Minister for his intervention because it enables me to ask him some
questions directly. Given paragraph (1) of motion 9, will the insurance be provided by one policy to cover all Members of Parliament or may Members negotiate their own private policies and pay for them from either their office costs allowance or other parliamentary funds? What is the annual estimated cost of the insurance? He said that £10,000 per Member of cover would cost about £18,000 a year for the entire House. I do not want to sound like a bleeding heart, but, with the greatest respect, £10,000 of legal costs does not go far in the defence of a legal action. I say in my own defence that the charge to my much afflicted, but highly respected hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire was a good deal less than that. I shall not mention the figure, but I do not mind if he does. However, it was but a fraction of £10,000, although costs build up.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Vale of York): Will my hon. and learned Friend give way?
Mr. Garnier: I will, but I am embarrassed about the time that I am taking up.
Miss McIntosh: I do not wish to encroach on my hon. and learned Friend's time, but he refers to French and other jurisdictions in Europe where those Members of Parliament are covered whether they are in or outside the House of which they are Members. Is he convinced that the insurance will cover all situations?
Mr. Garnier: I am not convinced because I do not know the details of the insurance policy. When I do, I shall no doubt be able to answer that question with greater confidence.
Mrs. Teresa Gorman (Billericay): Will my hon. and learned Friend clarify something? I understood him to say that Members should contribute to the insurance policy from their office allowance, but did he mean to imply that Members should take out the insurance separately? He will know that insurance is not available for defamation or libel actions.
Mr. Garnier: On the last point, such insurance is available. On the first point, I neither said what my hon. Friend suggests I said, nor did I want anyone to draw such an inference. I asked the Minister to explain whether one insurance policy would cover the House and all its Members or whether we could negotiate our own private insurance policies and have the cost of the premium funded by the House in one way or another. He may be able to deal with that.
What will be the financial limits under paragraph (2)(a), (b), (c), (d) and (e)? We are not dealing only with defamation, so what financial limits are proposed? Who will administer the relationship between the Member of Parliament and the insurance cover?
When the Nolan committee first reported in 1996, it said in relation to board members of public bodies:
- The government should seek to ensure broad consistency and adequate protection in respect of the personal liability of all appointed or elected members, directors, trustees, or others responsible for bodies providing public services.
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It suggested that the Government should make proper funding arrangements for the protection of appointed directors or members of public bodies so that they would not be left out of pocket if sued in carrying out their public duties.
Mr. Garnier: I will, but I hope that my hon. Friend will notice that time is marching on.
Mr. Bercow: I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend; giving way is a penance for his being an expert on the subject. Is it his understanding that the insurance proposal would cover a Back Bencher defending a defamation action brought against him or her by a Minister?
Mr. Garnier: I do not know that my hon. Friend, who is a highly intelligent Member, needs my explanation of the words of the motion; they are self-explanatory, but unclear in their detail. If he knows of such a case, no doubt he will have drawn it to the attention of someone outside the House so that he can be properly advised. I do not want to give him off-the-cuff advice at this juncture.
Other bodies, such as housing associations and the national health service, provide for their members--whether lay directors or lay trust members--to be indemnified, but the position is not uniform and we are unable to fit the scheme proposed by the Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire and the hon. Member for North Cornwall into any particular category or box. If we are to have our own scheme--which I would applaud, for all the reasons advanced by the Minister, my right hon. Friend and the hon. Gentleman--it must be of sufficient capacity genuinely to protect Members of Parliament. As I said at the outset in response to the Minister's remarks, minimal protection is no protection at all.
I urge the Minister, the Leader of the House and others to study the schemes made available by the national health service executive, the National Housing Federation and other public bodies, for example, to ensure that we provide a system that is just and not extravagant, but which none the less meets the obvious needs of Members. This is my final word: it is generally far better to say, "Sorry, I have got it wrong," than to involve lawyers.
7.37 pm
Mrs. Fiona Jones (Newark): Although I support the motion, I thought carefully about speaking in the debate because I seek to distance myself from action against Members taken by the press. Hon. Members will be aware of my difficulties in relation to my court case: a picture of my children was consistently used in the newspapers. This is not a political issue; all Members would have sympathy with that. I accept that, as a Member or an individual, I have the right to take action against newspapers for what they may have said against me during and after my court case. However, to this day I do not accept that they had a right to use a picture of my children, who have no connection with my actions as an individual.
The Press Complaints Commission let me down significantly. It said that, because a picture of my children had been used with my permission, it was acceptable for the photograph to be used in the newspapers. I do not accept that. It has been suggested that the motion should include Members' staff, but infringements of Members' privacy should be carefully considered, especially if minors are involved. My children were extremely distressed because their photograph was widely published in the national newspapers. I was unable to take action against any body for using the picture because of involved circumstances in which a local newspaper, which apparently held the copyright of the photograph, passed that photograph informally to a press agency. I would never have allowed a press agency to photograph my children, but the costs involved effectively prevented me from taking the case to court.
I feel strongly--I hope that most Members on both sides of the House will agree--that there is no excuse for the media using photographs of children in relation to anything that we might do as Members of the House of Commons, regardless of whether we are right or wrong in what we say.
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