My Lords, I wish to add to what my noble friend Lady Buscombe has just said, but I can do so a little more briefly, not least because she has made all the points that need to be made.
I would disagree with her on only one point, which is that she said—I am not sure that she wanted to be called old-fashioned, but she certainly wanted to have it explained to us—that the purpose of our amendment was to deter people from making malicious posts to the detriments of businesses and so forth. I think it is about more than deterrence, if I may say so. It is about fairness and justice.
It is very natural for a civilised, humane person to want to protect those who cannot protect themselves because of the anonymity of the perpetrator of the act. Over the last nearly 50 years, I have practised at the media Bar, including in cases based on the tort of malicious falsehood, trade libel or slander of goods. Essentially, my noble friend and I are trying to bring into the criminal law the torts that I have advised on and appeared in cases involving, so that the seriousness of the damage caused by the people who do these anonymous things can be visited by the weight of the state as the impartial prosecutor.
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I say to my noble friend on the Front Bench that this is not just a complaint by those who like eating meat, those who earn a living through country pursuits or those who wish to expand their legal practices from the civil sphere to the criminal. It is a plea for the Government and Parliament to reach out and protect those who cannot help themselves.
Now, there will be evidential difficulties in getting hold of anonymous posters of malicious comments and reviews. It may be said that adding to the criminal law, as we would like to do through amending Clause 160, will interfere with people’s Article 10 rights. However, Article 10 does not permit you to make malicious and deliberately false remarks about others. Section 3 of the Defamation Act 2013, which provides for the defence of honest opinion, is not affected by the criminalisation of false and malicious posts about other people’s businesses or services.
We have a very simple remedy here, which goes with the grain of British fair play, the need for justice to be done and a Government who care for the people they govern, look after and make sure do not fall victim unwittingly and unknowingly—unknowingly in the sense that they do not know who is trying to hurt them, but they know what has happened to them because their profits, turnover and ability to feed their families have been grossly affected by these malicious, dishonest people. This amendment needs careful consideration and deserves wholehearted support across the House.