COMMONS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 2 November 1988)

§ Lord Young of Graffham
My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 74.
An exception to the paternity right is already made in Clause 75 for the purposes of parliamentary and judicial proceedings and a further exception in respect of Royal Commissions and statutory inquiries is needed for much the same reasons. It is important for inquiries and commissions to have access to many different kinds of material. For example, if the author of a work quoted from in the course of a public inquiry could not be identified, it would he undesirable if that were to prevent the quotation, or its repetition, in a report of the proceedings of the inquiry. This amendment will remove unnecessary constraints.
Your Lordships may notice that Amendment No. 74 does not include Clause 46(3) in the exception, so that if a substantial part of a work is included in a report of a Royal Commission or statutory inquiry the author is still entitled to be identified. In other words, the exception covers the submission of material to the commission or inquiry and the reporting of its proceedings, but not its own report. It seems to us that the commission must comply with the usual principle that authors must be identified. In any event, we doubt whether a quotation which failed to indicate its source would carry much weight, so there would seem to be no good reason why the usual rules should not apply in this case.

§ Lord Williams of Elvel
My Lords, we wholly agree with the thrust of the Commons amendment. Perhaps I may ask the Secretary of State what would happen if there were a pseudonymous contributor to a Royal Commission report. He might like to answer my previous question in the light of the question I have just posed.

§ Lord Young of Graffham
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on his ingenuity, but it is up to each author to choose his own name or pseudonym and to assert it so that there will be no doubt as to the correct form of identification. This would apply in other matters outside the scope of these present issues.