My Lords, I rise briefly to give warm support to this amendment tabled and so ably presented by my noble friend Lord Dear and others. I firmly believe that the threshold in the Bill is set far too low.
I have been a lifelong supporter of Newcastle United Football Club. My friend, the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, who unfortunately is no longer in his place—and I call him “friend” in the social sense, not in the parliamentary sense—is for reasons best known to him, despite having been leader of Newcastle City Council, a Sunderland supporter. If I were to chide him and say that he is foolish to continue to support that team, which has been absolutely hopeless all season, despite beating Manchester United last night, and if I were to say that the team is in fact languishing at the foot of the Premier League and in imminent danger of relegation, I think that he would be extremely annoyed because he is a loyal supporter of Sunderland. If I persisted with that theme, he would reasonably regard me as a confounded nuisance.
If one looks at this clause and interprets it in a strictly literal sense, I would potentially be in breach of this statute if I said those things. In fact, I do not for one moment believe that he would seek an injunction; at least I hope not. Having said that, I believe that the clause is absolutely unacceptable and needs to be amended. There is even a possibility that the clause as drafted could act as a sort of charter for individuals of paranoid personality or malicious intent in leading them to seek this kind of injunction much more frequently than would ever have happened in the past. This clause is unacceptable and I strongly support the amendment.