Lawfare and UK Court System

Apsana Begum Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) for securing this important debate.

Litigations against public participation are abusive lawsuits that are pursued with the purpose of shutting down acts of public participation and, as the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, they can come in many guises, covering many different areas of the law.

The House will be aware that I was completely cleared and vindicated in Snaresbrook Crown Court last year after what I and many in my constituency and around the UK viewed to have been vexatious litigation pursued with the purpose of shutting down my public participation as a democratically elected socialist Member of Parliament and as a survivor of domestic abuse. To put it very simply, I do not believe that I would have had to endure such an ordeal if I had not stood up against domestic abuse, harassment and intimidation and if I had not had the audacity to put myself forward as a socialist to represent the area in which I have lived all my life.

The use of courts to try to pull down political opponents is fundamentally undemocratic and against the public good. First, my case raised questions about the independence of local bureaucrats and whether they can be trusted to deal with imprisonable offences, because, of course, the legal action pursued against me was not taken by the Crown Prosecution Service, but brought by my local council, spending more than £90,000 of public taxpayers’ money. Nobody, absolutely nobody, involved in pursuing this trial seems to have found it remotely odd that the complaint was made by my ex-husband’s brother-in-law, submitted after I was selected to be Labour’s parliamentary candidate and coincided with the day when the nomination papers had to be formally submitted; or that the people who were opposed to me being selected as the candidate, including my ex-husband, were in positions of political oversight. Surely, given such conflicts of interest, at the very least the case should have been referred to the CPS.

Secondly, my case demonstrated problems with the way the legal system deals with domestic abuse and, indeed, the increasing prevalence of cases such as mine where the legal action taken against me was an extension of this abuse and the ongoing intimidation and harassment subsequent to my escaping a very bad situation, which continues.

I found it bizarre that such a spurious case could be pursued against me when I had been told that too much time had passed regarding the abuse that I had suffered, despite the period in question being the same. Indeed, the local authority was made aware of the abuse from day one and that was never challenged by the prosecution during the trial. A list of agreed facts was read out at the trial, including medical records and police records. Perversely, the domestic abuse was so accepted that, in cross-examination, it was used against me in order to suggest a motive for the alleged crimes. My ex-husband, also a sitting councillor, was tellingly not called to give evidence by the prosecution. Throughout, the message that came across again and again was that my being a survivor of domestic abuse had no bearing on how this investigation was being conducted. But how can that be? How many other women is this happening to?

I had to be aggressively cross-examined and humiliated in front of the world, with political opponents and my ex-husband’s brother-in-law sitting in the public gallery, about issues of such personal pain and trauma. The case felt as though it was about destroying me, and at times it very nearly did. The complaint was leaked to the media even before I was made aware of it, and there appeared to be a regular source of information flowing to keep the media updated. To be clear, when I won my selection, I was a divorced 29-year-old of modest means. I did not own anything, not even a car, and had been struggling for years to rebuild my life. Suddenly, I had a target on my back for the far right to throw all their bile and hatred at. However, the media did not let truth and decency get in the way of a good story and the opportunity to bring down a socialist feminist Muslim woman who would go on to become the first hijab-wearing MP in this House. Why is it the case that almost anything is allowed to be written and said about me, fuelling Islamophobic abuse and death threats over social media and leading to the judge in my case to issue warnings for my protection?

I want to make an important point about the legal system and access to it. I grew up in the reality of the world out there. I did not know how, and did not have the means or connections, to pursue cases against various outlets. Defamation is an area of law that is rarely accessible to working-class people. It is important for the purposes of this debate for us to have that in mind. Equally, while I agree that media freedom is paramount, media accountability still needs to be addressed more fundamentally. I am not interested in defending elites from justified criticism or in preventing the public from scrutinising those who represent them, including myself. However, I am interested in defending the fundamental structures of political freedom and democracy. In that sense, the media are also in positions of power and leadership in public life, and as such should have regard to how their tone is likely to shape public debate.

However, in my case, so-called scrutiny was not even well researched, well written or accurate. It was derogatory and dehumanising. I always wonder whether the outlets publishing that stuff ever thought about what they were doing to my life, the risk that their actions were placing me under or what my case meant for survivors of domestic abuse and Muslims across the country. Do they ever consider what their intimidation—based on prejudice or hate, which disproportionately negatively impacts women, ethnic minorities, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and other candidates from minority groups—does to people’s mental health and wellbeing? Clearly, my ex-husband and my political opponents thought I would just submit and be intimidated into going away and hiding, but via the solidarity of local people and Labour party members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) in particular, I knew that I could not let that happen to me. I found the strength to survive, not least because I felt a duty to socialists and women everywhere to defend myself and pursue justice.

People might think that being vindicated is the end of it, but the smears continue and my reputation has been damaged. More importantly, claims of defamation and libel were being fired at me and people supporting me. I could not believe it at first—it seemed so ludicrous. I remember how heartbroken I was, when I was finally able to tell my story after the trial, that the media felt it necessary to uncritically print a disclaimer from my ex-husband. I felt that they were highlighting it as his warning to me.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech. I was not aware of all the details of what she has been through. Obviously, I do not share her politics, but I commend her for speaking about domestic abuse in the House, as my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Kate Griffiths), my personal friend, did recently. The more women who do that and share their stories in this place, the better it is for women across the country.

[Apsana Begum]

I thank the hon. Member for his strong point. I followed very closely the case he mentions of his colleague, the hon. Member for Burton (Kate Griffiths). She is incredibly brave to come forward.

This experience is not unique to me. We know that powerful men use their power and the law to silence women. Southall Black Sisters says it almost had to withdraw from a 2017 documentary on domestic violence because of the insistence that the husbands of the unnamed women alleging abuse and abandonment be given the right to reply in ways that negated the women’s accounts of abuse and exposed them to risk of reprisals, and we know of a series of libel cases where wealthy men have sought to protect their reputations from women who accused them of abuse. Under the Defamation Act 2013 the defendant in libel cases can argue a public interest defence, but this is not available to survivors. I never wanted any of this; I was forced into a situation where I had to speak out and now I feel an obligation to continue to do so because this must never happen again. What does what happened to me say to survivors of domestic abuse when we know how difficult it is to come forward?

I believe in democracy, which means that people from all walks of life and backgrounds can put themselves forward to be considered in democratic processes. This is a question of public good. The increasing prevalence of intimidation of parliamentary candidates and others in public life should concern everyone who cares about our democracy. This is a question of public good. It is important to be clear: lobbying, campaigning, disagreeing and opposing representatives is not what I am talking about. Actually, I am talking about the opposite: intimidation is about seeking to use undemocratic and underhand means, often deploying establishment power, to destroy someone’s life. Finally, I believe no one should suffer domestic abuse and anyone in such a situation should be supported in speaking out. This is a question of public good.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) for his speech; I agree with many of his points. Normally, when people agree on stuff across the House, a bit of virtue signalling may be going on—but in this case, agreement shows serious concern about a really serious issue. I thank both the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) for securing this debate; for many of us, it will be one of the most important that we have spoken in.

The abuse of UK courts by organised crime, oligarchs and authoritarian states and their wretched proxies is, I believe, a significant threat when it comes to the corruption of the UK legal system, to freedom of speech and, as the hon. Member for Eltham was saying, to the conduct of due diligence against potentially corrupt actors who would threaten the health of our institutions.

I agree wholeheartedly with what my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) was saying—that nobody here is questioning the independence of UK courts and nobody is saying that we do not want that independence to continue. It is also true that London is a very important financial and legal centre, and long may that continue—it brings a great deal of money, wealth and employment into London and the UK—but I hope the Minister will understand that bad money drives out good and bad law will do the same. If we allow the cancer of the selling of intimidation services by high-end legal firms, it will not do us any good in the long run, just as in the long run letting mafias launder money would also be bad for us.

Let me be clear. Although these tactics are sold by law firms to many different actors, including organised crime and corrupt corporations, I think they are very much part, as some Members have said, of the Russian state playbook and Russian hybrid war tactics: the tools of non-military conflict in the west against the west. I will argue for significant reform of this corrupting cottage industry, which enriches the few at the expense of the whole. We need to bring in anti-SLAPP legislation, and we need to go after those lawyers—dare I call them slappers—who use such tactics. We need anti-slapper legislation. We also need a much more robust public Act of defence. The United States has one and we have to bring one in here as well.

Finally, I will make the case that we need a foreign lobbying law—or foreign agent registration Act, as some call it. In that way, the law firms that sell services such as reputation management, and related industries such as commercial spying and dirt digging on people, have to be clear about their business models. When they sell those services to overseas entities such as the major and questionable corporations that are Mr Putin’s proxies, they need to give us that information and put it in the public domain, so that the foreign lobbying law can help us identify who works for foreign actors and what they are doing.

We have discussed the various definitions of lawfare so I will not go into that, but there appear to be two important elements that I would like to address specifically. The first is when the law is used to intimidate, wear down and financially destroy journalists and campaigners, and the second, as the hon. Member for Eltham said, is when the law is used to intimidate organisations into failing to conduct due diligence. There is a massive potential issue if we allow bad actors into our energy, food or telecommunications markets.

From 1990 to 1994, I lived in the Soviet Union and in post-Soviet states, and in my academic work have studied as hard as I can types of Russian hybrid war. Let me give a little bit of background. In Russia, the ultimate outcome for a journalist who crosses the rich and powerful and cannot be silenced is death. They are murdered—and nearly two dozen have been murdered under Mr Putin’s leadership of the country. In this country, the murder of UK officials and journalists is not yet part of the oligarch organised crime playbook, although it is in some EU countries, so it is a danger. Instead, other methods are used, two of which are, as we have heard today, the use of libel law and the use of data protection law to intimidate and destroy financially. Reporters, campaigners and activists in our state are threatened not with physical destruction but with financial destruction.

The kompromat corruption industry has sadly been exported to our country from Moscow and St Petersburg. As well as journalists, publishers are intimidated into silence. I congratulate massively HarperCollins for fighting its cases. If HarperCollins has to pay out £5 million or £2 million in court costs every time, the message is clear: do not write about Russia, about those close to the Russian leader or about those state oligarchs who hide their dodgy dealings in plain sight. For the UK and the wider world, the result is that, as many of us have said, freedom of speech has been stifled and journalistic investigations remain unlaunched.

[Apsana Begum]

Does the hon. Member agree that if the Government are to tackle the type of Russian interference that he has been giving examples of, we must contend equally with the actions and activities of the US Government? Does he appreciate that the case of Julian Assange is relevant? It has been reported that the US had plans to assassinate him on British soil, and at this moment he languishes in prison.

[Bob Seely]

I am not quite sure of the case that the hon. Lady talks about but the principle is clear: SLAPP legislation applies not just to one country, one industry or one person; it is there to prevent the use of lawsuits against public participation and is in favour of good journalism, good campaigning and good activism. As the hon. Member for Eltham said, SLAPP legislation would not support rich companies that hide their hacking activities—that would not be purposeful—and would prevent bad actors from trying to prevent important information from coming out.

In recent years, several high-profile examples have exposed slightly different tactics in each case, including those of Catherine Belton and HarperCollins, Tom Burgis, Chris Steele, Bill Browder and former Member of Parliament Charlotte Leslie. I thank them all for fighting their battles. Allegedly, the firms that offer and sell—dare I say it?—legal intimidation services to the corrupt, to organised crime or to the Russian state or its proxies include, so we are told, some of the many names that have been mentioned thus far: CMS, Mishcon de Reya, Skadden, Carter-Ruck, Schillings and Harbottle & Lewis, which services Mr Abramovich’s needs.

What do the tactics look like? The Carter-Ruck strategy against Charlotte Leslie appears to be to ratchet up exorbitant costs in the hope of achieving a technical victory on data law and then inflicting the costs on Charlotte and her team in the hope of bankrupting her and her organisation. Last summer, in one week alone, she received 12 letters. Carter-Ruck then threatened other of her directors, despite the fact that they have not taken part in any way in any of the relevant activity.

As we have heard, Catherine Belton and HarperCollins were hit by multiple suits from oligarchs close to President Putin.

In Bill Browder’s well-known case, as the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill said, a relatively lowly official in the Russian Interior Ministry, who was allegedly part of a campaign to steal tens of millions of dollars and linked to the murder of Sergei Magnitsky, hired Olswang, which is now part of CMS, to go after Bill Browder via a bogus bankruptcy claim. If the internet is correct, the lawyer in question, Geraldine Proudler, used to serve on the Scott Trust, which oversees The Guardian, and apparently now serves on the Guardian Foundation board. I will come back to that, because I have questions for the editor of The Guardian, but I do not support any side that takes questionable funding, whether they are political parties—mine or others—or lawyers. This is not about score settling; I am glad when The Guardian has pointed out where we are not living up to those standards, if indeed that is the case.

With Tom Burgis, we have heard about the Kazakh mining company ENRC issuing 18 legal proceedings in the UK and US against lawyers, investigators and—seriously—the Serious Fraud Office. When the journalist Dan McCrum was being investigated and chased, all those people came out of London. Potentially the most important case in some ways is Daphne Galizia, the murdered Maltese journalist, who was facing 47 lawsuits at the time of her murder. According to her sons, Mishcon de Reya

“sought to cripple her financially with libel action in the UK courts”.

They also said:

“The campaign for justice in our mother’s case cannot be disentangled from the abuse that she suffered at the hands of Mishcon de Reya’s lawyers. The firm sought to cripple her financially with libel action in UK courts, on the instruction of...Henley & Partners. Had our mother not been murdered, they would have succeeded.”

They added that the firm

“has consistently threatened and harassed not just our mother, but countless other journalists worldwide”.

Effectively she was about to be financially destroyed before she was, by others, physically destroyed, but the principle was the same: she was to be silenced at all costs.

We look at the websites of all these big fancy posh firms that apparently charge double or triple rates for doing this sort of work, and one would think butter would not melt in their mouths. I am sure they do pro bono work. This sort of work, offering these sorts of services to some of the most unsavoury human beings and organisations on the planet, is deeply immoral and is deeply corrupting to those otherwise upstanding firms, which should be doing more to protect and not corrupt our legal system. What is being offered is a cottage industry of lawfare—legalised intimidation by some of the most deeply unpleasant individuals and organisations on the planet. These companies are going out trawling for business because it is so well paid. The lawyers who do this sort of work should, to put it bluntly, be deeply ashamed of what they do, because they destroy the integrity of the UK legal system, not uphold it. They charge double or triple, but it is a moral abuse of the law, and they know it.

I want to make one specific point about Geraldine Proudler. I look at her reputation and her lovely website and all that. Bill Browder told me that CMS takes effective instruction via middlemen from Russian organisations and from individuals who have since been sanctioned under Magnitsky. My question to Katharine Viner, who is the editor of The Guardian, is: what on earth is Geraldine Proudler doing on the Guardian Foundation, if she is still a member? What on earth was somebody who was engaged in a case defending a person sanctioned under Magnitsky doing on the Scott Trust? What on earth has the Labour party said about that? Again, I do not defend one side or the other, but there are folks on the Opposition Benches who should be saying to The Guardian, “What on earth are you doing?” I am sure there are other examples that can be thrown our way, and I will not defend anybody.

The board of English PEN, which campaigns to defend writers and freedom of speech, decided in 2018 to retain the libel lawyer Anthony Julius as a trustee. Mr Julius is, I am sure, a fine and upstanding man, but he was also a senior at Mishcon de Reya, the firm that hounded Daphne Galizia to her financial destruction, prior to her physical destruction. I find it unspeakable that these people have got away with this behaviour with absolutely no reputational damage to them at all, yet they are doing things that are actively bad for freedom of speech, any concept of truth and the UK legal system.

I will not go on for too much longer, but I will raise just a couple of other points, if I may. There is a second element here that is critical, which is the intimidation, using data protection laws, of people who are doing due diligence work on our behalf as civil servants. We have seen that ENRC, as part of its wave of lawsuits, has started proceedings against the Serious Fraud Office, or was threatening to do so. I understand that threats of judicial review have also been made in relation to decisions made by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. We are getting into very serious territory when the functioning of Government, as well as the exposing of truth—and, dare I say, concepts such as justice—is being severely hammered and severely damaged.

However, we then move on to another aspect, which is not only the financial destruction, but the reputational destruction facing journalists. I understand that in the Carter-Ruck and Charlotte Leslie case, PR agencies were working hand in glove with the law firms Phil Hall Associates and Kroll, as well as K2 Integrity, a company that helps with “litigation support” and “reputational defence”—also known as digging dirt on other people. I think we are importing too much of the Russian tradition, and it is a specific Russian tradition, of kompromat—the collection of compromising material—which started under the Soviets and is now a huge industry there. Komprometiruyushchiy material, as it is called, is material that is found and then used to blackmail or destroy individuals. In this country, it happens at the same time as racking up extraordinarily large legal bills.

I believe this cottage industry of corrupt activities is actually pretty vile. I think it undermines rather than supports the legal system in this country, and it undermines rather than supports freedom of speech, so what needs to be done? The Government apparently want to restart or to reboot, and I congratulate them on that. I think they need to do so. May I humbly suggest that one of ways that we could be supporting higher standards in public life is by gripping this issue?

The first point is that libel tourism should effectively be outlawed. Secondly, let us look at bringing in a robust public actor defence that raises the bar for the rich and powerful taking on campaigners and journalists. Thirdly, let us have statutory regulation of private investigators and firms that take on the collection of kompromat. Fourthly, let us bring in SLAPP legislation. Fifthly, I again say that we need a foreign lobbying Act as part of the updating of our lobbying laws in this country, which are not fit for purpose. That explains why the UK remains an influence pedlar’s paradise. I have been urging this for four years, and I produced a study of options for the Government about 18 months ago. Corruption scandals, sleaze scandals and lobbying scandals will continue ad infinitum in this country until we grip this issue and do something about it.

I do not want to get in the way of client confidentiality, but I want to know what these firms are doing working for these oligarchs. I want to know how many hours they are billing—I would not mind knowing at what rate as well, to be honest—and what they are doing, as well as which bits of those companies are doing what and why. We need this in the public domain for the good of all of us. We need this cottage industry if not shut down, then severely limited. I will continue to fight for this, as I know others will, because it is very important to the law and to the legal system in this country. Although it is a highly paid industry, it is a corrupting one. It seeks not to strengthen freedom, but to destroy it. It seeks not to defend justice, but to undermine it. It is a growth industry, but in the same way that cancer can be inside a body politic, and it needs to be cut out. I believe that those who work on behalf of foreign states, proxies and organisations betray our values, and the values of our legal system and our nation.