Damages-Based Agreements Regulations 2010

I strongly support all the points that the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, made about the current deficiencies in the substance and procedure of the law of libel. I very much hope that those matters will be reformed, but the harsh reality is that they are not going to be reformed in the short term; we will have to wait at least months for that to occur. In the mean time, there is an urgent and serious problem about freedom of expression that, for the reasons that I sought to give, needs to be addressed—and it needs to be addressed in the context of the instruments that we are discussing.