Thursday 2nd April
New York
Still haven’t acclimatised to the 5 hour difference and wake very early once again. I’m not alone as the first people down for breakfast in what is a very big hotel are another MP and myself.
In today’s New York Times there’s an item about post office closures in the US due to customers using the internet rather than their post office. Unusual to read a story about post office closures without a UKIP spokesman blaming it all on the EU!
Our first meeting is in the heart of the financial district of Manhattan, just up the road from the Stock Exchange.
When we arrive we are in the middle of a film set and are herded out of shot by a frantic Grip or Best Girl or whatever the job title is.
It looks like a big production given the number of people, lorries, vans, lights and cameras. It turns out it is a TV pilot titled ‘Rubicon’. Given the numbers involved and the fact they are filming on location in the most expensive city in North America, it is obviously a big budget effort.
Our meeting is with the New York State Solicitor General and her Special Counsel who happens to be British.
We ask about the impetus behind the New York State Libel Terrorism legislation – note the word Terrorism in the title, a sure fire way of getting something onto the statute book in the US is to include the word in your bill.
The Act came about partly as a result of a book ‘Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed, written by an American, Rachel Ehrenfeld, published in the US, but available on Amazon to anyone in the UK. 23 copies of the book were sold in the UK that allowed Sheikh Bin Mahfouz, a Saudi citizen, to use a British court to sue Rachel Ehrenfeld for libel because of something she wrote about him in the book that he claimed impacted upon his reputation and business interests in the UK.
In 2005 Ms Ehrenfeld refused to travel to England to defend herself in the High Court and a default judgement was entered against her. The allegations against Sheikh Bin Mahfouz were found to be wrong in law and judgement was entered against Ms Enrenfeld for £30,000, together with £100,000 costs.
Ms Ehrenfeld sought an order from the American Federal Courts that Sheikh Bin Mahfouz should not be able to enforce the judgement in the United States. The court held it was unable to make such an order against a foreign national.
It was in response to this that the New York Senator we met yesterday, Dean Skelos, championed new legislation to protect New York based writers from libel judgements in other jurisdictions unless a New York court held that the judgement satisfied the 1st Amendment.
Our next meeting is with Jonathan Bloom a leading lawyer who specialises in media and First Amendment, intellectual property, and art law.
He clearly knows his subjects but I don’t think we learn anything new, other than just how complicated it is going to be to find a way to defend the long held rights of people wishing to access our courts to avail themselves of the protection of UK libel laws against writers and publishers based outside the UK – essentially in the US – who apply a different standard and set of principles to what can be published.
Our final meeting of the day – we have a dinner in the evening so we haven’t finished work yet – is with New York Assemblyman Rory Lanceman (D-Queens, NY). He co-sponsored the Libel Terrorism Protection Act.
He cited the Rachel Ehrenfeld case as the impetus for the change in the law and there was much discussion about the fact that someone who takes money from the sale of a publication in one jurisdiction should not be protected from the consequences of their actions simply because they live in another jurisdiction with such an Act as the LTP.
He was very gracious about the UK and our democratic heritage that led me to point out afterwards the oft forgotten facts about our ‘democracy’ that is based on an unelected Head of State, an appointed Senate (House of Lords) and an electoral system that gives majority power to the largest minority.
I can live with the first, given the alternative possibilities, but will never be comfortable with Britain being described as a true democracy while the latter two remain unreformed.
Committee members with Assemblyman Rory Lancman in the British Consulate, New York.
Select Committee trips are a privilege but they also involve hard work and as one of my MP colleagues reminded me in advance of our dinner with the British Consul this evening, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
This is my fifth overseas trip with a Select Committee in twelve years and on each one the Embassy or Consulate or High Commission has arranged a reception or dinner at which guests are invited to meet us.
The guests are usually people with business, trade or cultural links with the UK and leading ex-pats from the city we are visiting. Our job, and I see it as a job, is to act as ambassadors for the UK. That means easy on the drink and don’t do what I did in Athens and set fire to the Ambassador’s garden.
The venue was the British Consul’s penthouse apartment in Manhattan and the guest list included media representatives from the BBC and the Telegraph, the editor of the New York Daily News, Mayor Bloomberg’s former communications director, Clinton’s former senior pollster, a university professor and Sir Harold Evans former editor of the Sunday Times when it had a reputation for investigative journalism.
I think it’s the first time I have actually enjoyed one of these events and the round table discussion flowed way beyond the appointed time we were all supposed to leave.
A misty evening greeted us for the short walk back to our Hotel.
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