The UK Parliament is sovereign – but do those who know of and respect this constitutional principle really understand how limited Parliament’s sovereignty is? Much has been said of parliamentary sovereignty in light of Brexit: by those who wish to leave the European Union to reestablish UK parliamentary sovereignty; but also by those who feel Parliament could wrest decision-making about how the UK actually leaves from Theresa May and her flailing Government.
In fact Parliament is not sovereign in the sense that the collective will of MPs and/or Peers in the House of Lords holds sway. It is parliamentary legislation that is, in effect, sovereign. In the traditional formulation “the Crown in Parliament” is sovereign, meaning legislation having passed its three stages in the Commons, Lords and Royal Assent will be recognised by the courts. And, for the most part, it is the Government that brings legislation to Parliament, not individual MPs or Peers (though there are exceptions: see below).
One thing MPs can do is bring down the Government in a vote of no confidence. The assumption is that this leads to a General Election (under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act) – but there is also a useful traditional power for MPs to vote out the Government – and replace it without an election. This might be a handy ploy if there is enough cross-party opposition to Theresa May’s Brexit deal – though it would amount to a parliamentary coup. The implications are looked at below (subhead: Bringing down the Government).
But generally in the great debate on May’s Brexit deal, Parliament has found itself somewhat constrained – hence some of the innovative procedural schemes that have come forward thanks to Dominic Grieve and others to allow backbenchers to “take back control”.
For example, hitherto one would assume that, constitutionally, MPs certainly couldn’t meet together and decide for themselves the form of Brexit they wanted – or if they did, they would have no special powers to issue legislation to ensure it did so transpire. Yet, one of the options discussed by certain soft- and anti-Brexiters was just such a plan if Theresa May’s deal fell: give the matter over to the Liaison Committee, which normally has a minor advisory role, to draft and bring forward legislation that might command support of a majority in Parliament. The Daily Mail described this as: “tearing up the Commons rule book – giving backbench MPs the power to propose legislation instead of the Government”.
Monroe v Hopkins libel case: a retrograde judgment
Is it possible that Britain’s populist polemicist Katie Hopkins may be right? Perhaps, just on this one thing: the outcome of the Jack Monroe libel trial. She says the High Court judge who found against her for her inaccurate and rude tweets against Monroe was wrong and she intends to appeal.
Monroe was awarded £24,000 in damages in the High Court in a row over a tweet implying the food writer and activist approved of defacing a war memorial during an anti-austerity demonstration in Whitehall. Hopkins had simply confused Monroe with left-wing polemicist Laurie Penny. She deleted the tweet but then sent one out suggesting that, nonetheless, Monroe was a pretty awful person (“social anthrax” was the term used).
In the case Mr Justice Warby noted that:
“Libel consists of the publication by the defendant to one or more third parties of a statement about the claimant which has a tendency to defame the claimant, and causes or is likely to cause serious harm to the claimant’s reputation.”
Serious harm to reputation is crucial, particularly since the Defamation Act of 2013, which enshrined the concept in legislation – with the clear intention of curbing defamation actions seen as wasteful of court time and (one suspects) irritating to the Conservative Government’s friends among newspaper owners. It says at Section 1:
“(1) A statement is not defamatory unless its publication has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the reputation of the claimant.”
The intention was to focus on real harm and deter trivial cases. But reading the Monroe judgment, one can’t help thinking that Warby underplayed “serious harm” and somewhat overplayed Monroe’s hurt feelings once Hopkins’s loyal fans got to work on Twitter. This apparently skewed judgment might be the grounds for an appeal.
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Filed under Analysis, Comment, Defamation, ECHR, European Convention on Human Rights, Human rights, Law, Legal, Media, Media law, Politics, tort, UK Law, UK Politics, Uncategorized
Tagged as Defamation Act of 2013, Lord Atkins libel test, Monroe v Hopkins libel case, Nigel Smith v ADVFN Plc and others [2008], Sim v Stretch (1936), Thornton v Telegraph Media [2010]