Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)

My Lords, I will be brief. I am very grateful to the Minister for what he said about the guidance. Obviously, the sooner it is made available the better, but some advance sight of it before it is formally published would also be very helpful; no doubt we will continue to discuss that. I will take 30 seconds to pick up on the point about parliamentary privilege. It is true that Amendment 66A excludes what is said in Parliament, although it also does not apply to “any expression of an honestly held political belief or opinion”. I can think of interesting private prosecutions that could be brought on the basis that something said by a politician was not an honestly held opinion, and that illustrates the wisdom of our forebears in placing blanket privilege where it has been resting for many centuries. I do not think the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, got an answer to her question. Without undertaking any legal obligations to the noble Baroness, the short answer is that everything said in Parliament enjoys absolute privilege, and if you tweet a report of it, you have qualified privilege. The main point about qualified privilege is, in short, that it has to be a fair report. Importantly, you would be wise to put in your report that it was said in Parliament. “Lord Wolfson said in the House of Lords that Mr Smith is a fraudster” is probably okay, whereas “Mr Smith is a fraudster, as Lord Wolfson says” is probably not. With that, and without sending in a fee note, I withdraw my amendment.