British Justice System and International Corruption Cases
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Gareth Bacon)
I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in this debate, and I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) for having secured it. He has been an exemplary advocate on the challenges that corruption poses to the rule of law and freedom of speech.
My right hon. Friend has raised some serious issues. As he will know, investigations are conducted independently of His Majesty’s Government, and we are unable to speculate or comment specifically on any individual allegations. This debate engages issues of fundamental importance to our democracy and values. We must confront the reality that, while our justice system stands as a beacon of fairness and equality for many, the corrosive effects of corruption can undermine justice here and around the world. In acknowledging that challenge, we affirm our commitment to uphold the principles of justice and to ensure that the rule of law remains steadfast. Corruption can threaten our national security and prosperity through a slow erosion of trust in institutions at home and overseas. Development is slowed when poorer nations have their resources drained away, which hampers their ability to mobilise revenue and facilitate growth and investment while undermining wider efforts to reduce poverty.
At its most extreme, corruption can fuel state capture, where private interests trump the public interest as corrupt actors take over the state institutions and decision-making processes to serve their own agendas. While instances of corruption may be isolated, their impact reverberates far beyond the confines of individual cases, undermining public trust and confidence in the legal system as a whole.
The British justice system has in recent years seen the rise of strategic litigation against public participation, which has a chilling effect on freedom of expression and civic engagement, deterring individuals and organisations from exercising their right to free speech for fear of legal reprisal. We know that free speech is critical in the fight against corruption, for it enables truth telling where corrupt actors rely on precisely the opposite. The climate of fear and self-censorship that SLAPPs create leads to stifled public debate, undermining the robust exchange that we hold as essential.
Fortunately, we can point to progress in countering SLAPPs in this jurisdiction. We were the first jurisdiction to legislate at the national level to combat SLAPPs relating to economic crime in last year’s Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act. Work is also under way to ensure that new procedural rules are designed to give the legislation effect, such that SLAPPs defendants have a fair fight when confronted with abusive threats or proceedings.
Just last week, the Government were proud to announce their support for a private Member’s Bill on SLAPPs introduced by the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David), whom I congratulate on his commitment to challenging abusive litigation that undermines British justice. The Bill follows the approach set out in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, which as hon. Members know, introduces new defining characteristics in statute to empower judges tasked with identifying these cases, an early dismissal mechanism that cuts short cases with improper purposes at their heart, and a costs protection regime that will provide defendants with clarity around the costs risk they are exposed to when responding to SLAPP threats. The Bill passed its Second Reading, which is an essential step in legislating comprehensively against SLAPPs, no matter their subject matter or the cause of action in question.
I am pleased to note the support that we have received from stakeholders across media, law, civil society and both Houses of Parliament. It is a credit to our country that so many are prepared to come together to tackle this issue across the political spectrum. However, combating corruption and preserving access to justice requires more than just legislative solutions. It demands a cultural shift that places ethics and integrity at the forefront of our justice system.
We are fortunate in this country to have independent regulators that uphold the highest professional standards. The Solicitors Regulation Authority took swift action by launching a thematic review of SLAPP activity and published a warning notice early on when the issue came to light. That encouraged renewed engagement, with guidance on aggressive correspondence and the notorious letters often issued at the start of SLAPP claims: those marked “confidential” or “without prejudice”. Such labels are designed to intimidate people who may not have immediate access to legal advice, such that they withdraw from intended publications.
We are working together across Government to champion a co-ordinated approach to SLAPPs. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport leads the SLAPPs taskforce, which brings together actors in the media freedom space to propose non-legislative measures to stamp out SLAPPs. The taskforce is making progress across workstreams that seek to raise awareness and develop regulatory responses on the issue, benefiting from the depth of expertise among the media and law professionals taking part.
Aside from abusive lawsuits, let me address the Government efforts to combat corruption in the broadest sense. It is an undoubted benefit that the UK is an open economy with one of the world’s major financial centres in the City of London. That means that we need strong defences to prevent bribery and corruption here and abroad. The Government took decisive action on bribery by modernising UK criminal law through the Bribery Act reforms in 2010. That legislation set the international gold standard for anti-bribery and corruption laws, and was found to be an “exemplary piece of legislation” by the other place following post-legislative scrutiny.
In the past fortnight, the Serious Fraud Office has brought charges against two individuals for alleged bribery in the oil and gas sector in the middle east. The charges build on a number of critical enforcement milestones that have been met in recent years, including our largest ever financial penalties for bribery following the conviction of Glencore, which was ordered to pay £280 million in 2022.
I am proud of all that is being done to keep corruption at bay. Whether through action against illicit finance or legislation that protects public participation in the public interest, we must continue this work together to ensure that corruption finds no home in our jurisdiction.
Question put and agreed to.