PARLIAMENTARY EARLY DAY MOTION
SCALLYWAG AND JULIAN LEWIS (14 June 1995)

leave out from 'Department'to end and add 'to clear his name of false and defamatory charges made against him by Scallywag magazine, which has previously libelled senior public figures including the Prime Minister and a former leader of the Liberal Party; realizes that it is impossible to sue this magazine directly without risking bankruptcy as it openly boasts of having no assets to repay legal costs - let alone damages - of any successful plaintiff; considers that firms which knowingly print and distribute scurrilous material do not deserve legal immunity acknowledges that Dr Lewis has sued only those companies who admitted knowing the scurrilous nature of previous Scallywag allegations, and that he is fighting to vindicate himself without any financial resources except his personal salary and the value of his home; congratulates him on outwitting devious professional defamers, who shelter behind their own impecuniosity whilst they expose their printers and distributors to the consequences of their cowardly attacks; regards any move to end the liability of deliberate disseminators of libellous material as tantamount to a Defamers' Charter for destitute character assasins; and views with great concern the support expressed by Labour Members of Parliament for this magazine, whose principal financier was revealed by the Sunday Times of 26 february 1995 to be an eccentric heiress who has claimed that the Government and the BBC are taking orders from the Commission for Racial Equality - itself run by "black savages like Idi Amin".'

Sponsored by:
Sir Edward Leigh (Conservative)