ན་མཐོ་
2
6.
Some of their evidence will be taken in public and published as soon as possible after the hearing (usually after about three weeks). Other evidence will be heard in private, but may be published at the end of the inquiry. Evidence heard in private must not be published in any form until it has been reported by the Committee to the House. At the end of the inquiry (in about July 1969) the Committee will make a Report to the House of Commons.
7.
All evidence taken before a Select Committee is fully privileged in the sense that "all witnesses examined before this House, or any committee thereof, are entitled to the protection of this House in respect of anything that may be said by them in their evidence" (Commons Journals, 1818, eol. 389). "Moreover, the Courts will not now entertain an action for slander based on statements made in evidence before a committee" (Goffin and Donnelly, 6.Q.B.D. 307, 50.L.J.Q.B. 303, and see Erskine May's Parliamentary Practice, 17th Ed., at p. 130-1).
8.
In general the Committee does not function as a court of law;
neither does it conduct public inquiries in the normal sense of the phrase. Its purpose is to gather as much information and take as much evidence from as wide a variation of institutions as possible, providing a Parliamentary forum, unconnected with the Government as such, for the discussion and investigation of a topic of national importance on which it will report to the House of Commons.
:
دم
M.T. RYLE
Clerk to the Committee
21st January, 1969
}