Contribution
I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) on obtaining this debate. It is a subject that we have discussed in this place a number of times over the years, and each time the need for action becomes even greater. Indeed, the hon. Member picked up the baton from the hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell), who was initially going to hold this debate before he was elevated to high office.
I speak in my capacity as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on media freedom, and also, as the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley said, as the sponsor of a private Member’s Bill, which I shall introduce in November. SLAPPs have been a stain on this country’s reputation as a defender of media freedom for too long. We actually set up the Media Freedom Coalition in 2019, and I am delighted that under the outgoing Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley (Yvette Cooper), the UK has taken back the co-chair position with Finland.
The UK’s position on media freedom is one that we can be proud of. We have gone up in the world press freedom index ranking—we are now 18th—but in its commentary on the UK, RSF said
“lawsuits aimed at gagging journalists”
are one reason why we are not in a higher position.
SLAPPs are not new; they have been around for a long time. I spent part of my summer in my deckchair, reading an excellent book by David Hooper that recounts the history of SLAPPs, starting with James Goldsmith and his war on Private Eye, followed by Robert Maxwell, who took on Aurum Press and the biography written about him, and then, perhaps most notoriously, Mohamed al-Fayed, whose appalling actions in abusing young employees at Harrods were known about and reported on, but then suppressed as a result of the lawsuits that he sprayed around liberally, using very expensive lawyers.
It is generally the case that SLAPPs are used by rich people seeking to suppress information that is clearly in the public interest. When I chaired the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, now 15 years ago, we looked at the advent of libel tourism—the fact that the UK courts were specifically being used by people with very little connection with the UK to bring libel suits, because we were seen to be sympathetic to the idea of libel actions, in order to suppress information. Since then, Russian oligarchs in particular have queued up to come and use the British courts. As the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley said, we have talked to and met some of the brave people who have sought to expose those oligarchs’ actions and have been subjected to SLAPP cases—people like Catherine Belton, the author of “Putin’s People”, and Tom Burgis, the author of “Kleptopia”. It continues today. I am not going to go into a number of cases; we will perhaps have more opportunity to do so when the private Member’s Bill comes forward. However, I am particularly grateful to the Anti-SLAPP Coalition for its help in taking forward this campaign.
Progress has been made: the Defamation Act 2013 sought to address some of the worst aspects of libel tourism, and the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 focused specifically on those who are alleging economic crime, and it put in place some protection. However, the problem is that some of the worst cases—I go back to the work of both Catherine Belton and Tom Burgis—were not allegations of economic crime, but were more serious than that. Clearly, the provisions in that Act would not have been sufficient. In the previous Parliament, Wayne David sought to extend its provisions to cover a far wider range of actions, but sadly his private Member’s Bill did not complete its passage due to the calling of the general election. My intention is to try to complete the work that Wayne David started with his Bill.
As the Minister will be very much aware, at the beginning of this year, 120 editors—including the editors of every major publication not just in the UK, but across the world—called on the Government to act. I know that the Government were committed to taking action, but unfortunately could not find a slot to do so. I am extremely grateful to the Minister for the discussions that we have already had about how we might work together to bring that legislation on to the statute book.
The hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley is right that Baroness Stowell has introduced a private Member’s Bill in the other place. Her Bill has been published. There is some debate as to the mechanism that is most effective; there were concerns that the attempt in Wayne David’s Bill to set out lengthy definitions might make it more complex, and there is an argument for trying to make the test of a SLAPP simpler. Those are details that we will want to continue to discuss with the Minister and her officials. For my part, I very much hope that we can find an agreement that all of us are happy with and that will achieve the objective we all share.
I should say that I am not opposed to people having the right to bring defamation actions or other suits where they feel that they have been wrongly accused of something—that is a fundamental right. What I am opposed to is the abuse of lawsuits with the deliberate intent of suppressing information that is clearly in the public interest. It is that definition that we will seek to explore how best to set out in legislation.
I look forward to further meetings with the Minister. I welcome this as perhaps the first opportunity to debate what I believe is a very important issue for the freedom of speech and journalism in this country.