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Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation

I am the secretary of the National Union of Journalists parliamentary group and will speak in that capacity, but I am also a victim of the Goldsmith foundation, which the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) referred to. If Members are unaware of what the Goldsmith foundation was all about, it was basically an organisation funded by James Goldsmith that employed Carter-Ruck to identify people who James Goldsmith politically disagreed with, and targeted them. In my instance, I was writing to expose the then MP for my constituency—a Conservative MP—who was being hosted on a series of trips to Iraq by Saddam Hussein and then coming back here to justify the gassing of the Kurds in Halabja, where 4,000 people were gassed to death. I was then sued by Carter-Ruck.

It was the same issue overall: you just cannot afford to fight. In fact, as a result of that action, I had to hand over the deeds to my property—we simply could not fund it. Even though there was some Labour party support for funding, the general view was that we could not match that sinking pit of funding. That is just one example of how the Goldsmith foundation operated. It is an example of the operation of SLAPPs, which, as the right hon. Gentleman said, have happened over a long period of time—that was way back in the ’90s.

Reference has been made to how the issue of SLAPPs is not just about journalists. It is not, but they have been the main target, and the consequences for some have been devastating because of the legal costs they have had to incur just to try to demonstrate that they have been writing truthful analyses of the events they have been trying to report. SLAPPs stifle free speech and undermine the right of the general public to know information. Exactly as has been said, there is a deterrence effect: they are a form of intimidation against telling the truth.

The previous Prime Minister gave a commitment with regard to legislation; unfortunately, that was not in the King’s speech. Now is the time to pick up the pace. I am grateful to the Minister for now offering briefings on how we can move forward, as well as for working on a cross-party basis. The issue for us is that although everyone who has spoken so far welcomed the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, it just applies to economic crime reportage. Therefore, even though some journalists will be protected under that legislation, the individual they have been reporting on will find another matter on which to take action, and as a result the journalist is not protected. The thresholds and criteria of judgments taking place—whereby the judge has to consider the intent of the SLAPP filer and the intent of the defendant—are far too high. We can cite case after case, but the most recent to have caught publicity was that of Dan Neidle. He exposed a firm operating a tax avoidance scam and won the case, but he was left with £146,000 of legal fees.

As has been said, there have been various attempts by hon. Members to try to tackle the issue. The Scottish Government have also said that they are awaiting an opportunity to bring forward legislation. The NUJ is part of the Anti-SLAPP Coalition. The proposals put forward include: clear, 10-point criteria to identify SLAPPs; a higher merits threshold for likely success at trial; and a filter mechanism for swift disposal of actions that clearly seek to gag individual journalists and others. We welcome the Government’s engagement now—hopefully including with the NUJ over these coming weeks—so that we can get this legislation on the statute book as rapidly as possible and protect freedom of speech.

9.39 pm