# Higher Education Act 2004, Section 17: Privilege in relation to law of defamation


(1) For the purposes of the law of defamation, any proceedings relating to the review under the scheme of a qualifying complaint are to be treated as if they were proceedings before a court.
(2) For those purposes, absolute privilege attaches to the publication of—
(a) any decision or recommendation made under the scheme by a person responsible for reviewing a qualifying complaint, and
(b) any report under paragraph 6 or 7 of Schedule 3.
(3) In this section “the scheme” means the scheme for the review of qualifying complaints provided by the designated operator.

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Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/8/section/17 (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/higher-education-act-2004/section-17
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.