Day 309 - 03 Dec 96 - Page 14

     
     1        because one witness or another has said, "Yes, I would
     2        agree with that", or, "I would take no exception to that",
     3        which I am treating as approval of it.
     4
     5   MR. RAMPTON:  Sure.  I do not believe they need to be agreed,
     6        because it is our belief -- and we have dealt with it in
     7        our written submission in paragraph 9, starting on page 18,
     8        and one needs to look at the whole of that, we would
     9        submit, but, in particular, looking (e) and (f).
    10
    11   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Where is that?
    12
    13   MR. RAMPTON:  That is page 18.  Paragraph 9, it starts, public
    14        works and works of reference.
    15
    16   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Let me just turn that up.
    17
    18   MR. RAMPTON:  I am sorry there is no date on this.  I call it
    19        the submissions of September, because that is when they
    20        were served, the end of September.
    21
    22   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  You say this is such a document, do you?
    23
    24   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes.  If one looks at (e) and (f) on page 20,
    25        which certainly overlap, this is unquestionably, we would
    26        submit, a document of that character, or one of those
    27        characters.  It may be more (f) than (e).  I am not sure
    28        about that.
    29
    30   MR. JUSTICE BELL: The same would apply to the World Health
    31        Organisation Report, would it?
    32
    33   MR. RAMPTON:  Undoubtedly.  I would -----
    34
    35   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  And the Scottish report and the Secretary
    36        General (sic) -----
    37
    38   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes -- anything of that kind.  We have submitted,
    39        though we do not find any clear English law to this effect,
    40        that courts nowadays at least move with the times, and an
         English court would, we would submit, be very ready to
    42        accept factual material in, for example, United States
    43        documents, public documents, government documents, as being
    44        prima facie evidence of the truth of their content.
    45
    46   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  And the New Earnings Survey, when one comes
    47        to wages.
    48
    49   MR. RAMPTON:  Or whatever, yes; not, however, necessarily such
    50        documents as might be produced by non-governmental 
    51        campaigning bodies; that is quite different. 
    52 
    53        I suppose the reason for the difference is likely to be
    54        that, by and large, one can expect that government
    55        documents and reports are, as near as anything can be, free
    56        from bias, whereas with other documents one is always going
    57        to be a bit suspicious.  That is number 1.  Number 2, the
    58        governments, with their enormous resources, are able to
    59        collect and process large amounts of information into
    60        digestible form for public consumption.