Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation
House of Commons · Commons Chamber · 1 Sep 2026 · 14 speeches · Official Report
[Relevant documents: Seventh Report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights of Session 2024-25, Transnational repression in the UK, HC 681, and the Government response HC 1405; Oral evidence taken before the Joint Committee on Human Rights, on SLAPPs: Human Rights Implications, 2 November 2022, Session 2022-23, HC 840.]
I call Alex Sobel, who will speak for up to 15 minutes.
I beg to move, That this House notes the critical threat that Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) pose to press freedom, public interest research, and the right of citizens and campaigners to speak out on matters of public concern; recognises that SLAPPs predominately target individuals, including private citizens, utilising novel legal tactics, with the weaponisation of libel law and data protection claims and the aggressive use of injunctions, which often come hand in hand with other forms of harassment including smear campaigns and surveillance; further recognises that the anti-SLAPP provisions within the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 are ineffective due to their complexity and insufficient due to their narrow focus on economic crime; further notes the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) view that the ‘main way to address the problem of SLAPPs is through a robust legislative solution that gives the courts more powers’, and that SRA regulation will inevitably be severely limited absent a new law; highlights concerns over the suppression of public interest information and acts of public participation in the absence of a universally applicable anti-SLAPP law; and also recognises the urgent need for the Government to find a legislative vehicle for simple, comprehensive anti-SLAPP provisions that filter out abusive lawsuits swiftly and fairly. I rise to speak on this motion on the impact of strategic lawsuits against public...
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...
As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption and responsible tax, I would like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) for working with me to secure today’s debate. It has been about nine months since I initially presented the application to the Backbench Business Committee, but I am pleased to say that it has already been worth the wait. I also congratulate the Minister on her reappointment. It was a real pleasure to work with her in my role as a Ministry of Justice Parliamentary Private Secretary in the last Government. I found her no less supportive, engaged and collaborative when I have come to her with constituency issues, as I will speak to in more detail later. I would like to take this opportunity to share at least one particularly egregious example of vexatious litigation in the form of a SLAPP. Before I go any further, let me confirm that the cases I will mention today are not subject to ongoing legal proceedings. Back in 2016, Jennifer McAdam invested the inheritance that she received from her late father into a cryptocurrency called OneCoin, but OneCoin was a £3 billion lie. In reality, it was a global Ponzi scheme. When it collapsed the following year, millions of people from 125 countries lost money. In order to raise awareness and protect other investors, in 2017 Jennifer organised a webinar for other victims and cryptocurrency experts to explore ways to hold the company to account. Three weeks...
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...
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) on securing this important debate. I really welcome being here with friends who are so committed to this issue, and who have been for such a long time. This debate is about much more than press freedom, although it is very much about that; it is about whether ordinary people can speak out in the public interest without fear of being silenced by those with deeper pockets, greater resources and access to expensive legal representation. Strategic lawsuits against public participation-SLAPPs, as they are so unattractively described-are designed not necessarily to win in court, but to intimidate, exhaust and suppress scrutiny. They are increasingly deployed against journalists and campaigners, whistleblowers, survivors of abuse, community activists and ordinary citizens. Anyone who raises legitimate concerns about matters of public interest can find themselves on the receiving end of aggressive legal threats, as we have heard. The consequence of that is a chilling effect that extends far beyond the individual target. When one person is punished for speaking out, countless others are forced to conclude that it might be safer for them to remain silent. That should concern every Member of this House. One case that demonstrates that danger particularly clearly is that of my constituent, the investigative journalist Clare Rewcastle Brown, founder of Sarawak Report. Ms Rewcastle Brown played a key...
When debating this issue, I crudely used to think of Greenpeace activists taking on multinationals or journalists writing books about oligarchs-Erin Brockovich-style figures exposing injustice-but, as has already been raised, SLAPPs are far more relevant to ordinary people than these cases indicate. Those people include my constituent Jeff Thomson. Jeff moved to Penrith to enjoy his retirement. What he did not expect was the Penrith pong, a foul odour that periodically hangs over the town. Many residents believe the smell is linked to the Omega Proteins rendering plant operated by Leo Group. The company disputes that it is the only source of the odour. Jeff set up a Facebook group called Fresh AIR for Penrith-a place for residents to moan about the pong, share information and learn how to make complaints to the Environment Agency. For running a Facebook page, Jeff received his first legal letter in February 2023 and found himself living under the threat of a defamation claim, with all the stress and fear of legal costs that that brings, all because he spoke up on an issue that he and his neighbours cared about. When I was elected, I said publicly that I wanted to tackle the pong. I grew up in Cumbria and people have talked about the smell for decades, so I was genuinely surprised by how many people warned me not to get involved. People said I might be sued, but until I learned about Jeff’s case and the basis of the action against him, I dismissed those warnings as absurd. I...
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...
I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) on leading today’s important debate and for setting out comprehensively, but also succinctly-I am very grateful for that-why we are here debating SLAPPs. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) on originally securing today’s debate. Our justice system was built on the principle of fair and equal treatment for all who go through it. It should not be a tool for the rich and powerful to systematically silence accusers and avoid accountability, but the growing use of SLAPPs makes it abundantly clear that the system is in fact tilted towards those who harness power or wealth. Victims, journalists, academics, whistleblowers and many more, all attempting to speak truth to power, are being silenced by mechanisms within the justice system that are being weaponised and abused. Those mechanisms are not intended to protect these rich and powerful individuals but are doing just that and preventing access to justice. Lawsuits and threats with immense financial implications and additional time constraints are being used to intimidate and coerce individuals into stepping out of the legal system and stopping their actions. They are keeping cases of immense importance and significance to the public out of the courts, undermining the fair and equitable justice system that we should all strive to achieve. I know many today have been supported by the work of the Anti-SLAPP Coalition, which...
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) on securing it and the hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) on his previous efforts. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) for his long-standing work in this area. It was helpful that he set out in his contribution that the issue is not new and that similar attempts to use the law in such a manner go back quite some time. Free speech is not simply a “nice to have”-it is one of the foundations on which free society is built. It allows whistleblowers to come forward, victims of abuse and misconduct to tell their stories and be heard, and journalists and campaigners to hold the powerful to account. However, free speech is not real if it can be exercised only by those wealthy enough to defend it. When people are frightened into silence not because what they have said is false but because of the cost of being right is too high, something is fundamentally wrong. That is the danger posed by SLAPPs. At their worst, SLAPPs are not really about winning in court but about using the process itself as a punishment. They are designed to make the journey to court so expensive and exhausting that the journalist, campaigner, whistleblower or victim gives up before a judge ever considers the merits of the case. That chilling effect is not accidental-it is the point. Claims that go all the way to trial can cost...
Let me start by echoing the thanks to my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) and for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) for securing time for this important debate. I thank everybody across the House who has contributed so thoughtfully to it. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate and ensuring that time has been given for considering this vital subject. It is perhaps all too rare that cross-party consensus breaks out on such an issue, as it clearly has done at this slightly ungodly hour, but it is all the better for it. Let us be clear: SLAPPs are an abuse of power and the legal system, designed to shut down scrutiny, not to seek justice. As we have heard, they are brought to harass, intimidate and wear down opponents through financial pressure and psychological strain. They are often brought by wealthy individuals or corporations to silence journalists, authors, publishers and academics, and, as we heard particularly powerfully from my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and Solway (Markus Campbell-Savours), to silence ordinary individuals and to seek to exploit the power imbalance that exists in our society. In this David and Goliath situation, it is not just individuals who lose out. This issue is corrosive to the principle in our society that respects the rule of law and says that everyone should be equal before the law. This is a media freedom issue, but it is not just that; it is about access to justice. When...
I call Alex Sobel to wind up the debate, briefly.
I think that tonight’s debate has shone a light on the practice of SLAPPs, and that the whole House now understands the urgency with which we need to move forward, and we have two opportunities to do so through private Members’ Bills. All the contributions to the debate, but particularly the Minister’s winding-up speech, have made clear the determination throughout the House and across parties to ensure once and for all that those who speak up about these vital public interest issues can be heard, and are not crushed by those with the money and power to use our legal system to ensure that their voices are not heard, so that we can end this terrible practice for good. Question put and agreed to. Resolved , That this House notes the critical threat that Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) pose to press freedom, public interest research, and the right of citizens and campaigners to speak out on matters of public concern; recognises that SLAPPs predominately target individuals, including private citizens, utilising novel legal tactics, with the weaponisation of libel law and data protection claims and the aggressive use of injunctions, which often come hand in hand with other forms of harassment including smear campaigns and surveillance; further recognises that the anti-SLAPP provisions within the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 are ineffective due to their complexity and insufficient due to their narrow focus on economic crime; further...