DEFAMATION BILL

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26877, 1 November 1952, Page 7

DEFAMATION BILL

Success Of Private Member’s Measure LONDON, October 29. Mr N. H. Lever, the Manchester member of Parliament, has won what political correspondents call a “major Parliamentary success” now that the House of Lords has decided to offer no further objection to his Defamation Bill. Legislation as important as this is usually brought in by the Government, but Mr Lever saw it through as a private member’s bill. This new measure, which makes reforms in the law of t libel and slander, received Royal assent on the last day of the session and thus becomes law. “Mr Lever has done what no Government has bad the time or the inclination to do.” says the “Manchester Guardian.” “He deserved the thanks not only of journalists, but of all those who think that the British newspapers have been dangerously cramped in carrying out their proper task of illuminating dark places.’’ The “Yorkshire Post” says: “Though the newspapers have the strongest of reasons for rejoicing, it is not the newspapers alone that stand to benefit. All who put pen to paper, from novelists and poets to letter writers and contributors to parish magazines, are exposed to the libel laws; and those laws have been so full of anomalies, so stringent and so unfair, that they have proved a hindrance to the exposure of frauds and abuses.”

Mining In Australia.—The Australian Minister of Territories (Mr Paul Hasluck) announced yesterday that the output from mining in the Northern Territory reached the record level of £1,443,194 in the financial year 1951-52. He said, however, that any statement that the Northern Territory possessed a vast treasure store of payable minerals just waiting to be extracted was, at this stage, just a guess. —Sydney, October 31.