Parliamentary Privilege and Libel, Part III: Stockdale v. Hansard

The third of a series of blogs on parliamentary privilege and libel, this one deals with the notorious case of Stockdale v. Hansard

Parliamentary Privilege and Libel, Part II: from Wilkes to 1835

This is a series of three blogs about Parliament and Libel. The first, Privilege, Libel and the long road to Stockdale v. Hansard, Part I: from Strode’s Case to Article IX, dealt with the earliest encounters, in the seventeenth century, between parliamentarians and the court over the publication of material that the parliamentarians believed was…

Privilege, Libel and the long road to Stockdale v. Hansard, Part I: from Strode’s Case to Article IX

In 1836 the House of Commons published a series of reports of the new prison inspectors appointed under an Act of Parliament passed the year before. Their shocked claim that a pornographic book had been discovered in Newgate jail set of a train of unintended consequences that led to a series of law suits that are collectively referred to as Stockdale v. Hansard, a Gilbertian political farce and the biggest crisis in the relationship between the courts and parliament in British history.

Zoom and the Technology of Parliamentary Debate

The current controversy over the extension of the house of commons emergency procedures is very much sui generis. The technology to enable parliament to debate and vote without most members being physically present is only a few years old and was of course not available when previous public health crises of this order occurred: the…

The Zircon Affair, Parliament and the Courts

The Zircon Affair The Zircon affair concerned a BBC programme made in 1986 by the investigative journalist Duncan Campbell. It covered a secret defence project, an intelligence-gathering satellite named Zircon, and particularly the failure to submit it to parliamentary scrutiny. The BBC, under pressure from the government and its governors, decided not to screen it.…

Yonge, Haxey, and the Privilege of Freedom of Speech in Parliament

These days, the parliamentary privilege of free speech is regarded as deriving from the assertion in Article IX of the 1689 Bill of Rights that ‘Freedom of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any Court or Place out of Parliament’. That it is considerably older than that is certain, but how old, very much not so.

The Spectacular Pantomime of the Budget

Proceedings in parliament are often described in theatrical terms; and the budget is one of the most theatrical of all parliamentary performances.

On Swords and Pink Ribbon

Daisy Cooper, the new Liberal Democrat MP for St Albans, wrote yesterday in incredulous tones of her discovery in the cloakroom of the House of Commons: On my second day as a new MP, during my induction tour of parliament, I was shown the members’ cloakroom, but it wasn’t until last week that I had…

Black Rod and the Door of the House of Commons

  Image: UK Parliament via Flickr CC The earliest description of the ceremony in which the Commons are summoned to the Lords by Black Rod comes in a notebook that belonged to Sir Thomas Duppa, who filled the position between 1683 and 1694, and had been deputy to his predecessor, Sir Edward Carteret, from 1675.…

The Address in reply to the Queen’s Speech

Though a speech from the monarch or the chancellor at the opening of the session had long been one of the main rituals of each session of parliament, the process of giving formal thanks for the speech is not recorded in the Commons journal before the Restoration in 1660. It became common in the 1660s…