Far from enhancing freedom of speech, the new Defamation Bill will constrict it, by removing the right to trial by jury "unless the court orders otherwise"—which the court will very rarely do. So goodbye to our glorious history of juries who acquitted "Freeborn John" Lilburne, and the Quakers, Penn and Mead, for disrespectful writing and speeches; to Fox's Libel Act, protecting radicals from judges biased in favour of government; to A.V. Dicey's aphorism about a "jury of shopkeepers" providing more protection to the press in England than any law of Napoleon. There are still cases where a jury might find a spirit of liberty in journalism that is undetectable to a literal-minded lawyer. The Defamation Bill ensures that public-spirited journalism will no longer be judged by the public.

There are a few good things in the Bill—a tighter definition of defamation and slightly more procedural protection for US papers sued in London. But by and large it does no more than encapsulate in statute the existing, and defective, common law. It could have been worse: Labour almost pushed through an amendment which would have allowed relatives to sue for defamation of the deceased. The right to speak ill of the dead is justified in the interests of historians, and by the practical difficulties of subjecting deceased persons to cross-examination. This amendment would have given the BBC a sure-fire excuse for dropping its programme on Jimmy Savile.

What has been astonishing is the faux-polite way in which the Defamation Bill and the Leveson Report circle around each other, avoiding contact. Leveson is about irresponsible press behaviour, and defamation is about irresponsible press behaviour that damages reputations, so there is a considerable overlap. Labour (and seemingly the Lib Dems) demand Leveson's enactment in full, which would require a special statute that could not complete its parliamentary passage until 2015, or become law until 2016—leaving its proponents "hacked off" for another three years. Meanwhile, the Defamation Bill is going through its committee stages in the Lords, and there is still time for amendment before it becomes law by summer 2013. Might a touch of Leveson actually improve it for the press—and the public?