BNP MEPs granted free access to House of Lords

BNP members of the European Parliament, including leader Nick Griffin, will be given free access to part of the Palace of Westminster despite the attempt of MPs to bar them, it was revealed [yesterday].

The Commons last year decided to remove the right of MEPs to hold photo access passes to Parliament in a bid to keep out Mr Griffin and fellow party MEP Andrew Brons. But peers objected to the decision and tonight head of the administration in the Lords, Lord Brabazon of Tara, said MEPs would now be given special passes which would allow them into only the parts of Parliament controlled by the Upper House.

Debating the move last year, peers described the measure as a 'messy, shoddy little administrative proposal' but were told that, as both Houses issue passes, the decision of MPs could not take proper effect unless agreed to by the Lords. Peers unanimously demanded further consideration of the matter by MPs, but Lord Brabazon said tonight in a written statement that the then chairman of the House of Commons administration committee, Frank Doran, had replied that it was not 'appropriate to revisit the issue'.

Lord Brabazon said: 'It was clear, not least for administrative and security reasons, that it would be preferable for the two Houses to operate identical rules in respect of Parliamentary passes for UK MEPs.'

But he told peers that the House committee in the Lords had nonetheless agreed to continue issuing Parliamentary passes to UK MEPs. He added: 'However, because of the decision taken by the House of Commons, it will be necessary to alter the appearance of UK MEPs' Parliamentary passes to make clear that they only grant access to the House of Lords' areas of the Parliamentary estate. In addition, the new passes will only operate the pass readers in the Lords' area.

'The work is already under way and the new style of pass will soon be issued to UK MEPs who have requested one. In the meantime, the officials of both Houses are working together closely to ensure that the new arrangements bed in as smoothly and effectively as possible.'

At the time peers rejected the approach taken by the Commons, Labour's Lord Tomlinson said MEPs had enjoyed the right to passes 'for the last 29 years without, as far as I'm aware, having produced any problems'.

He said the issue threatened to be 'a very serious irritant between ourselves and the European Parliament'.

Daily Mail

BBC Director-General - BNP will get annual Question Time slot

The British National Party will be granted up to one appearance on Question Time each year if it maintains its current level of public support, the Director-General of the BBC said today.

Giving evidence to the House of Lords communications committee, Mark Thompson was asked about the controversial appearance of Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, on last week’s instalment of the BBC’s flagship political panel programme.

Mr Thompson said that the party’s showing in the European elections earlier this year, when it gained two MEPs, meant that the BBC had no choice but to include it in some editions of Question Time. He said: “The underlying support for the BNP is 2 to 3 per cent. In the European elections they got 6 per cent. This isn’t an absolute, precise science. I think you’re talking about a party, if it continued to get that level of support, [getting] no more than one [appearance] a year and perhaps less.”

Mr Thompson admitted that it was the BBC that approached the BNP to appear, rather than vice-versa, adding that the corporation had been considering the move for “months and years”. He said that it was his decision, as editor-in-chief of the corporation, to extend an invitation to Mr Griffin, and that as Parliament had not banned the party it was not appropriate for him to deny it access.

Under a barrage of questions from Lord Fowler, the chairman of the committee, Mr Thompson said that the BNP was also likely to appear on other political programmes such as Radio 4’s Any Questions.

“He could appear on any of the programmes that deal with UK politics,” he said.

The Director-General said that he could not give a view on whether the show had been a success, as he may have to adjudicate on complaints made by the public, which he said numbered in the low hundreds.

The BBC secured record ratings for Mr Griffin’s appearance on Question Time. More than 8 million people tuned in to watch him receive a mauling from his fellow panellists and the studio audience at Television Centre in West London. That figure was the highest in the 30-year history of the programme — which normally attracts 2 to 3 million viewers — and meant that the show edged out the Saturday night celebrity talent contest Strictly Come Dancing in the week’s ratings.

At least 500 protesters massed outside Television Centre as Mr Griffin arrived for the taping of the show last week. Three officers were injured during clashes with demonstrators and six protesters arrested.

Times Online

Lords rule in favour of Searchlight in BNP libel appeal

The House of Lords has rejected an appeal by two members of the British National Party against a decision that an article about them in the anti-fascist Searchlight magazine is protected from a defamation action by the reportage defence.

Brothers Barry and Christopher Roberts had petitioned the House of Lords for permission to appeal against the Court of Appeal's decision upholding the judgment of Mr Justice Eady that the article was protected by the reportage defence. In their petition to the House of Lords, the Roberts brothers had argued that journalists must always verify allegations of criminal conduct.

The brothers had sued journalist Gerry Gable, Steve Silver, editor of Searchlight magazine, and its publisher, Searchlight Magazine Ltd, over an article which appeared in the magazine in 2003. It reported a dispute within the BNP, including allegations that Christopher Roberts stole money collected at a BNP rally, and allegations that the claimants made threats to others, and that they might be subject to a police investigation.

Mr Justice Eady upheld the reportage privilege in a decision in May 2006.

In July last year Lord Justice Ward, upholding that decision in the Court of Appeal, said a review of the authorities showed that a journalist had a good defence to a claim for libel if what he published, even without trying to verify its truth, amounted to reportage. The best description of "reportage" was that it was "the neutral reporting without adoption or embellishment or subscribing to any belief in its truth of attributed allegations of both sides of a political and possibly some other kind of dispute", he said.

The reportage defence, a form of qualified privilege, was first established in Al-Fagih v HH Saudi Research and Marketing (UK) Ltd.

The House of Lords rejected the Roberts brothers' petition for permission to appeal on January 31. As is usual, the Law Lords gave no reason for the decision. Had the petition been granted and appeal gone ahead, it would have been the first time that the House of Lords had considered the reportage defence.

Press Gazette

Mobility scooter rampage ends in conviction

It can be racist to make reference to "bloody foreigners" even if the insult is no more specific than that, the House of Lords has ruled.

The decision was made in a case where a man's abusive words and behaviour were judged to have been racially aggravated.

A Mr Rogers was on his way home from the pub in the mobility scooter he uses because of his arthritis. When he came across three Spanish women on the pavement there was an altercation and he was said to have pursued them aggressively into a kebab house.

There he was found to have used abusive, threatening or insulting behaviour, and he called them "bloody foreigners" and told them to "go back to your own country". He was convicted by Winchester Crown Court of using racially aggravated abusive or insulting words or behaviour with the intent to cause fear or provoke violence, and was sentenced to 80 hours of community service.

Rogers appealed to the Court of Appeal but lost, and appealed to the House of Lords, where he also lost his case that the abusive behaviour was not racially aggravated.

While Rogers' legal team conceded that he would have been guilty of racial aggravation had he used a more specific term, such as "bloody Spaniards", they argued that "foreigners" is not a group of people identifiable as a race and as therefore racially insultable.

"It is argued that the hostility must be shown towards a particular group, rather than to foreigners as a whole," explained Baroness Hale of Richmond in her judgment. "Mere xenophobia, it is said, does not fall within the ordinary person's perception of hostility to a racial group.

"It is argued for [Rogers] that the [Crime and Disorder] Act requires that the group be defined by what it is rather than by what it is not," said Hale. "Hence it is argued that Spaniards are covered but foreigners, that is the non-British, are not. The same argument would presumably be made about a person who showed hostility towards all non-whites, irrespective of the particular racial group to which they belonged."

"This cannot be right as a matter of language. Whether the group is defined exclusively by reference to what its members are not or inclusively by reference to what they are, the criterion by which the group is defined – nationality or colour – is the same," she said.

"The mischiefs attacked by the aggravated versions of these offences are racism and xenophobia," said Hale. "Their essence is the denial of equal respect and dignity to people who are seen as 'other'. This is more deeply hurtful, damaging, and disrespectful to the victims than the simple versions of these offences. It is also more damaging to the community as a whole, by denying acceptance to members of certain groups not for their own sake but for the sake of something they can do nothing about. This is just as true if the group is defined exclusively as it is if it is defined inclusively."

The appeal was dismissed in a ruling that could have implications for employment cases which involve a definition of racist or racially aggravated abuse.

The Register