David Norris (Independent)

There was a very nasty rape case recently and one sympathises very strongly with the victims. However, there is a lack of proportion in the attacks upon a Member of the other House who apparently wrote a letter about the family background which said that the parents were decent people. As far as I know, that may well be a fact. Yet people attacked the Member when they did not even have possession of that letter.

It is very important that we have a sense of proportion because included in that is a suggestion that the judge would not be able to reach a proper decision because of a simple letter like that. I have much more confidence in judges. When we impugn people like that, we damage things. It is a different, for example, when we put on record matters of fact, as I did, about the professor of psychiatry. I pointed out a fact, of which the public must be informed, that the authors of a Swedish report that she quoted contradicted her.