Publication of Wills (Hansard, 9 February 1983)

§ Sir Anthony Meyer (Flint, West)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make a new provision as to the law governing the publication of wills. My Bill proposes to amend section 124 of the Supreme Court Act 1981 so as to provide that, although continuing to be open to inspection at the probate registry, wills will have their publication in the press restricted in such a way as to ensure that, unless the next of kin expressly authorises full publication of the estate's value and the details of legacies, the press will be allowed to publish only the fact that the will has been proved and information as to where any interested person can obtain details of any will which may concern him.

I have been struck, as I am sure many other hon. Members have, by the distress caused to individuals by the publication, particularly in the local press, of full details of exactly how much a recently lost and dearly loved husband, wife or parent was worth financially and just what he or she did with the money. I have had many letters on this subject, some of them very moving. They tell how the pain of bereavement is gratuitously added to by the embarrassment of unwanted publicity arising from the publication of such details.

Is such knowledge something that the public has either a need or a right to know? I cannot accept that the public has a right to such information. Morally it seems that the general public has no more right or need to know the size of a man's estate than it has to know the size of his bank balance or the details of his tax return. Both those matters would be of great interest to potential creditors and perhaps to those hoping one day to be legatees. Bank balances and tax returns are not published, and I hope that we are a long way from suggesting that they should be.

The attitude of Governments of both parties that no change is required in the law was strengthened by the Younger report on privacy in 1972. It is true that that committee recommended: So far as the wide dissemination of the contents of wills by the press or any other agency is concerned, we do not think that there is a good case on grounds of privacy for imposing restrictions with regard to wills". But that recommendation is preceded by a passage that says: 1012 No reason, other than that it was of news value, was advanced by the press for the publication of the amounts of wills and identities of beneficiaries; and by an even stronger passage which says: This arbitrary publicity serves no good purpose and can be distressing and embarrassing to the deceased's relatives and beneficiaries: the publication of, say, a man's unconventional testamentary bequests or of the small estate of someone thought to have been of substance may be humiliating to the relatives; widespread knowledge of a large inheritance often leads to begging letters. That is not the first report in which the conclusions hardly follow from what preceded them. I find it hard to accept the Younger committee's conclusions. We live in an age when privacy is subject every day to fresh intrusion. We all know far too many facts about one another—perhaps that is why we understand so little. What the press likes to call "investigative journalism", and what the rest of us call "snooping", is on the increase. That is why it has become much more important to push back the frontiers of privacy from the individual's doorstep.

People have a right to keep something of themselves to themselves, however much the mass media would like to have us all—themselves excepted—exposed to the full glare of X-rays at all times. Just because it has been accepted in the past that the publication of wills should be allowed as an exception to the normal rules of privacy, that is no reason why that encroachment, among a thousand others, should continue to be tolerated unless it is absolutely necessary—and that it cannot be, by any stretch of the imagination.

My Bill has the support of several women's organisations and will, I hope, meet with the approval of the House.