Contribution
Our society is grossly unequal. Local councils have been hollowed out by years of austerity, people need food banks to survive, kids go to school hungry and people are trapped in low-wage, precarious employment, all while corporations make record profits and the super-rich become even wealthier. Inequality destroys society and ultimately reduces people, places and systems to nothing more than commodities and assets to be used and exploited by the wealthy. That is obvious in our legal system. With SLAPPs, the law can be used as a weapon by the powerful and wealthy, making a mockery of things we like to believe are the foundations of our justice system: fairness, equality, transparency, and the notion that money should have no bearing on someone’s receiving justice.
Every debate that we have in this place comes down to the fundamental issue in British politics and society, the same issue we have had for hundreds of years: class. SLAPPs are the embodiment of capitalism and the inequality it creates, because SLAPPs are used to intimidate people, restrict activists and campaigners, and exhaust their time, energy, emotions and, crucially, as we have heard from so many hon. Members, finances—all to suffocate freedom of speech.
I wish now to speak about Lucy and Verity Nevitt, who in 2018 reported allegations of sexual assault and rape to the police. Following an investigation, at the end of January 2019 the police decided that they would take no further action due to insufficient evidence. After Lucy and Verity’s cases were dropped, the ladies decided to speak out online to warn others about him. Specialist Metropolitan police officers encouraged them to speak out online, but told them not to name him, to say “alleged” and to call it serious sexual assault instead of rape. However, the sisters decided to say who he was and what he had done. Their attacker responded by bringing a legal action against the sisters, based on accusations of misuse of private information, harassment and defamation. As legal action continued, the sisters became aware of cease and desist letters being sent to CrowdJustice, where they were raising money for the defence, and to supportive MPs.
In May 2020, the High Court decided on a number of applications made by Lucy and Verity and by the claimant. The sisters were allowed to lift their anonymity order to allow themselves to be publicly identified, while the court allowed the claimant to remain anonymous. However, the court rejected his application for reporting restrictions. In its intervention to oppose this application, PA Media, then called the Press Association, argued that
“the main thrust of the claimant’s application for anonymity is to protect his reputation rather than his privacy”.
In her rejection, Justice Steyn stated that
“a reporting restriction order is a peremptory order affecting the right to freedom of expression of the press and the public. It is a form of censorship.”
After numerous hearings and, obviously, hugely increasing legal costs, all parties agreed on a settlement, allowing Lucy and Verity to speak about what happened to them, as long as they did not name their abuser. Lucy said,
“It was a really difficult decision…If we had the money we would have gone the whole way…This wasn’t just about us, there are so many other victims out there.”
After founding the Gemini Project in 2018 and fighting back against their attacker’s attempt to shut down the organisation during the legal battle, the sisters’ campaign in support of survivors against SLAPPs and other abusive tactics continues today.
As legislators, we in this Chamber are not exempt from blame. We, the state, allow this practice to happen. Our inaction makes us complicit in this inequality. I say to the Minister tonight that we must stop wealth, both corporate and personal, from buying silence and evading accountability and justice. We must do everything in our power to equalise the legal system and wider British society. An end to SLAPPs would be a big step forward towards achieving that.