UK Government backs bill to end intimidatory SLAPPs lawsuits stifling free speech

Corrupt elites will be pre­vent­ed from mak­ing spu­ri­ous legal claims to gag jour­nal­ists and silence crit­ics through a land­mark Bill that gained Government sup­port today (23 February).

• The Bill will pre­vent cor­rupt rich from gag­ging jour­nal­ists and avoid­ing scrutiny
• New law to crack down on SLAPPs moves clos­er to statute book
• Judges to gain tough new pow­ers to throw out friv­o­lous claims

Aggressively liti­gious Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs, are legal threats brought to intim­i­date and finan­cial­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly exhaust jour­nal­ists, cam­paign­ers and any­one who would crit­i­cise or expose corruption.

The Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation Bill, put for­ward by Wayne David MP, will end this per­ni­cious prac­tice and uphold free speech by allow­ing inde­pen­dent judges to dis­miss spu­ri­ous claims before they go to tri­al and pro­tect defen­dants from pay­ing exor­bi­tant costs.

The Private Members’ Bill builds on the work the Government began in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, which includ­ed new laws to stop wealthy elites using SLAPPs on issues around eco­nom­ic crime, includ­ing cor­rup­tion and embez­zle­ment. Under this Act, we became the first coun­try in the world to leg­is­late against SLAPPs at the nation­al level.

Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, Alex Chalk KC, said:

This Government has already proved its com­mit­ment to crack­ing down on those with deep pock­ets who abuse our courts, so we thank Wayne David for bring­ing for­ward this impor­tant legislation.

Free speech and the free press are lynch­pins of our democ­ra­cy, and to muz­zle peo­ple in this way is chill­ing. We want peo­ple to feel con­fi­dent stand­ing up to the cor­rupt, know­ing the law is firm­ly on their side.

Wayne David, MP for Caerphilly, said:

Well-heeled cor­rupt and mali­cious elites have been using SLAPPs to intim­i­date and threat­en jour­nal­ists, com­mu­ni­ty cam­paign­ers, aca­d­e­mics or any­one chal­leng­ing them and speak­ing out in the pub­lic interest.

This impor­tant Bill seeks to pro­tect free­dom of expres­sion for every­one, and I am pleased that it has the sup­port of the main polit­i­cal parties.

The Bill which had its sec­ond read­ing in the House of Commons today has cross-par­ty sup­port, and will update the mea­sures in the 2023 Act to cov­er a broad­er scope — block­ing SLAPPs across all types of lit­i­ga­tion, includ­ing sex­u­al harass­ment, not just eco­nom­ic crime.

It will cre­ate a new dis­missal mech­a­nism to stop SLAPPs claims as ear­ly as pos­si­ble. Claimants will be required to prove they are like­ly to suc­ceed before it goes to tri­al, allow­ing SLAPPs to be rapid­ly thrown out by judges and mak­ing them less effec­tive as a tool with which to threat­en free speech advocates.

A costs pro­tec­tion scheme will be cre­at­ed to pro­tect defen­dants, like jour­nal­ists, from claimants, like oli­garchs, who delib­er­ate­ly run up exor­bi­tant legal costs. Ordinarily the par­ty which los­es the case must pay all the costs, but new rules would mean that the defen­dant will not have to pay the claimant’s costs, unless direct­ed oth­er­wise by a judge.

Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lucy Frazer KC said:

Protecting and enhanc­ing press free­dom is vital — our democ­ra­cy depends on the press hav­ing the free­dom to hold the pow­er­ful to account.

We are mak­ing it hard­er for pow­er­ful peo­ple to stop the pub­li­ca­tion of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism through unscrupu­lous law­suits and this leg­is­la­tion will enhance that fur­ther, ensur­ing that there are com­pre­hen­sive pow­ers with­in UK law to pro­tect jour­nal­ists from all forms of SLAPPs. I thank Wayne David, who shares the government’s stead­fast com­mit­ment to pre­serv­ing press free­dom, for intro­duc­ing a bill to achieve this.

The Government’s endorse­ment comes in response to a ris­ing tide of this per­ni­cious form of lit­i­ga­tion. Some of the most high-pro­file cas­es have involved Russian oli­garchs and allies of Vladimir Putin. Typically, they employ SLAPPs on bogus defama­tion and pri­va­cy grounds, pre­vent­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of infor­ma­tion in the pub­lic interest.

A call for evi­dence in 2022 and fur­ther research since has found the prac­tice is spread­ing into new crimes, includ­ing vic­tims of sex­u­al harass­ment being silenced by their abusers, and oth­er mis­con­duct such as land­lords using heavy-hand­ed tac­tics to mute ten­ants suf­fer­ing in their homes.

Further infor­ma­tion

• SLAPPs leg­is­la­tion will only apply to England and Wales. We are dis­cussing with devolved admin­is­tra­tions in Scotland and Northern Ireland the leg­isla­tive changes we are making.
• In 2022 the Government launched a Call for Evidence on SLAPPs, which saw 120 respons­es received: Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs): Government response to call for evidence
• The con­clu­sion was that SLAPPs are a per­ni­cious form of lit­i­ga­tion which seek to silence, intim­i­date, and harass oppo­nents and have a con­cern­ing impact on free­dom of speech and on pub­lic inter­est inves­ti­ga­tion and reporting.
• The Government com­mit­ted to intro­duce new mea­sures to strike out SLAPPs and avoid lengthy SLAPP lit­i­ga­tion. This com­prised of three parts:

1. A set of cri­te­ria for the courts to deter­mine whether a case should be clas­si­fied as a SLAPP based on one or more of the com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tics of such actions.
2. A mer­it test lead­ing to ear­ly dis­missal for those SLAPP cas­es that fail it.
3. Costs pro­tec­tion for SLAPP cas­es that progress.

• The new mea­sures on SLAPPs relat­ing to eco­nom­ic crime were brought in by Government amend­ments to the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill in June 2023: Crackdown on crim­i­nals silenc­ing crit­ics to be added to Economic Crime Bill

Original source: GOV.UK