LORD HARRISMy Lords, with your Lordships' permission I should be grateful if I might make a personal statement. In the remarks I addressed to your Lordships last week, endorsing the Questions I asked, I stated that in consequence of the legal actions in which Sir Joseph Robinson had been engaged, he had been described in the Press as a fraudulent trustee. My attention was called to the following statement in the Daily Mail of Saturday:—
A communication made by Sir Joseph Benjamin Robinson, who has asked the King's permission to decline the Peerage that was offered to him, says:'As regards Lord Harris's statement in the House of Lords on June 22, that it was stated in the public Press that I was a fraudulent trustee, this is absolutely untrue. Had a newspaper made such a statement, I should have certainly taken action against it for libel.'That reads to me as an accusation that I have misled your Lordships, and I thought, therefore, that it was only due to me,, out of respect to the House, to give my answer as promptly as I could. I was quoting from a paper entitled the National Champion, which was published on June 9, and the extract from which I quoted is on pages 13 and 14.
§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT BIRKENHEAD)My Lords, I naturally do not desire to protract this discussion, but, as Sir Joseph Robinson is not present in the House, I merely enter two qualifications, without, of course, making the slightest complaint as to the personal explanation which the noble Lord, has made. The first qualification is that we must assume—a not inconsiderable assumption—that Sir Joseph Robinson has been accurately reported in the interview. It has happened to many of us to be inaccurately reported. Tin; second qualification is that the world-known paper the National Champion—of which, I confess, I am in blameworthy ignorince—is also known to Sir Joseph Robinson.