To be afforded the benefit of the Article 9 protection, the NAO report must have, firstly, been established as within the scope of ‘proceedings of Parliament’. The Speaker put forward that the report did for four main reasons:
<ul>
 	<li>First, because the NAO is headed by the Comptroller and Auditor General, whose appointment and functions are provided for by the National Audit Act 1983 and whose work is done on behalf of the House of Commons and to assist it;</li>
 	<li>Second, because of the NAO’s relationship with the Public Accounts Committee (<strong>PAC</strong>);</li>
 	<li>Third, because NAO reports are subject to the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840, which confers immunity on the publisher; and</li>
 	<li>Fourth, because relevant case law supported the argument.</li>
</ul>
This is, of course, not the first time the parameters of Parliamentary privilege have been tested in the courtroom.

Lord Pannick KC, for the Claimants, disagreed with the Speaker’s position, suggesting that NAO reports are regularly relied upon by the courts and that the facts of the matter meant the conclusions in the ostensibly supportive case law were not applicable to the scenario.

The court sided with the Speaker, concluding that the NAO report did indeed fall within the scope of proceedings of Parliament.

The relationship between the NAO and the PAC was central to the court’s reasoning.

The PAC plays a pivotal role in scrutinising government spending and, as such, performs an essential Parliamentary function. To do so, the PAC relies on expert assistance from the NAO and, more specifically, its ‘value for money’ reports. Given that these reports are often critical of individual Ministers or departmental conduct, the court felt that the usefulness of the NAO’s reporting would be substantially undermined if the authors of the reports feared legal liability.

Although, in this instance, the claimants were not seeking to impose any legal liability on the authors of the NAO report, to conclude that the report did not fall within the scope of ‘proceedings of Parliament’ would be to do away with the Article 9 protection entirely and set a dubious precedent.