Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation — House of Commons, 2022-03-17
Topic: Civil Rights
Dominic Rennie Raab (Conservative, Centre-right): Mr Speaker, forgive the exuberance in communicating at least the trail of this statement. Of course, you are absolutely right, and I will make sure that it does not happen again Today, I am setting out the proposals to tackle strategic lawsuits against public participation—the so-called SLAPPs—to end the abuse in UK courts, and of UK laws, by corrupt oligarchs and Putin allies to protect democratic debate and to uphold our fundamental liberties of free speech and a free press Let me offer the House a recent illustration of the problem we seek to tackle. Earlier this month, the British journalist Tom Burgis was sued for libel in the High Court by the oligarch-owned mining company ENRC. His book "Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World" seeks to chart how dirty money is being used around the world, highlighting instances of money laundering, corruption and other wrongdoing ENRC did not just bring its claim against Mr Burgis’s publisher, but made multiple claims against him personally, as the author of articles, tweets and podcasts about his book. The High Court dismissed ENRC’s claim at a preliminary stage, on the grounds that the statements it had complained of were not defamatory, and awarded costs to Mr Burgis. It should be said that ENRC has also been under criminal investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, and during that period, ENRC has also brought two separate High Court civil claims against the SFO itself, in 2019 and in 2021 That is not a one-off case, however, and such cases often do not end well. Certainly, they do not always end in the way the libel suit I mentioned did. I give it as an illustration, but that one-off case is part of a worrying and growing pattern of conduct that we are starting to see, whereby those accused of wrongdoing try to use their deep pockets and the UK courts to financially bully their critics into submission I will try to give the House a sense of the scale of the problem. Provisional figures from the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe, CASE, estimates that there were 14 such cases in the UK last year. It is worth pausing to reflect that that is a significant increase from just two in 2020 and one in 2018. This is a relatively recent, but burgeoning, phenomenon. Across Europe, CASE has identified 538 SLAPP cases over the past decade, 26 of them brought in this country, so this is not just a UK problem As a matter of plain principle, it is wrong that unscrupulous individuals and corporations are able to exploit our laws and our courts in this jurisdiction with claims designed to muzzle respected journalists, academics and campaigners, explicitly to stop them from shining a light on corruption and links to organised crime. If we think about it for a moment, this is a modern-day struggle between David and Goliath. We have individual journalists, authors and academics on the one hand, pitted against billionaire oligarchs, some of whom bankroll the Kremlin, on the other. We in this House cannot, and will not, allow our courts and our justice system to be used by those kleptocrats to intimidate and harass those who lift the lid on their murky dealings and wrongdoing The stark reality of the problem runs far deeper than the relatively small number of cases that will ever reach court. It is fair to say that the high-profile cases that we know about are likely to represent just the tip of the iceberg. This is probably the most important point for the House today: SLAPPs have their most pernicious impact through the pre-action letters and legal pressure applied well before court proceedings are initiated. Understandably, if a researcher or campaigner of relatively modest means finds themselves on the receiving end of such bullying tactics, the risk is that they will back down before a formal case is begun, for fear of the sky-high costs and damages that most working people in this country could not possibly afford to bear That is the harm we must guard against—publishers and authors forced to hesitate before publishing properly grounded stories, and legitimate, well-researched investigative reporting reined in, or perhaps not begun in the first place, for fear of the crushing legal costs. The most serious and surreptitious danger in all this is that SLAPPs then have a chilling effect on the transparency that is essential to a healthy democracy Of course, the war in Ukraine has highlighted the urgency of tackling what is a recent but none the less growing problem. The same kleptocrats availing themselves of SLAPPs are often found bankrolling President Putin’s war machine. As the Kremlin silences Russia’s independent press and jails critics of its illegal war, in this House and in this country we will stand up for those shining a light on corruption and cronyism So today I have set out proposals to reform our libel laws and launched a call for evidence, a copy of which is available in the House, that asks for views on how to make these reforms as targeted and effective as possible. Let me briefly summarise the measures we are taking. First, we will consider whether it is necessary to establish a legal definition in order to create a higher threshold for SLAPP-type cases, and look at whether we need to introduce stronger powers to enable our courts to strike them out earlier as an abuse of process to deal with the risk, the threats and the bullying that these cases involve. Secondly, we will set out for consideration options to strengthen the public interest defence. Thirdly, we will consider limiting legal costs in SLAPP cases, perhaps capping the costs that claimants can receive, to address the issue of the glaring inequality of arms between the parties in these kinds of cases. Fourthly, our proposals allow courts to put restraint orders on repeat litigants and consider the case for a specific requirement for SLAPP claimants to prove malice in libel cases. Fifthly, we will review the wider existing defences in our libel laws to assess whether and how they could and should be reformed to counter the growing threat from SLAPPs. Sixthly, we will look at the regulatory regime. In fairness, I should point out that the Solicitors Regulation Authority recently issued new guidance reminding solicitors of their duty to report misconduct, identifying SLAPPs as an example of litigation for improper purposes. We will assess how that regulation is working and whether it is adequate in the light of the evidence that we have This call for evidence is necessary to provide us with the most robust basis on which then to move swiftly to introduce the targeted reforms to deal with the problem at hand. These reforms sit alongside our proposals for a Bill of Rights that will reinforce freedom of speech and freedom of expression. This is a good example of why that Bill of Rights is necessary Today in this House we have an opportunity—I hope that hon. Members on both sides will embrace it—to put President Putin and his cronies on notice. We will not allow our courts to be abused to censor those brave enough to call out corruption. We will protect our free press, which is there precisely to hold the powerful to account. We will defend freedom of speech—the liberty that guards all our other freedoms in this country. Our reforms will further strengthen free speech so that those with blood on their hands and those with dirty money in their bank accounts are no longer free to hide in the shadows. I commend this statement to the House.