Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation Bill

Debate between Apsana Begum and Adam Afriyie

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th May 2024 Public Bill Committees

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

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly for bringing this important Bill to the House and getting it to this stage. Like many colleagues, I was at the first debate on lawfare in January 2022 and I am now most grateful to serve on this Committee. I also thank campaigners for what they are doing to prevent the misuse of litigation to suppress freedom of speech, including the campaign groups and campaigners working against the use of the law to silence survivors of domestic abuse and violence.

Democratic and press freedoms are fundamental to our rights and to challenging corruption and the abuse of power. That is why I remain concerned that the Bill has been drafted with too much focus on attempting to balance competing interests within the legal profession, instead of protecting public participation and the fundamental rights of free expression and access to a fair trial. Indeed, we know that the Government have been heavily lobbied by—and, as has been mentioned, have had substantial input from—the very lawyers who bring SLAPP claims.

In particular, colleagues will be aware that the Anti-SLAPP Coalition takes issue with the wording of clause 2(1)(c) because it argues that the wording assumes that there is an acceptable level of “harassment, alarm or distress”, and harm, that a claimant can intentionally inflict on a defendant. It also has a narrow scope, focusing only on conduct directly related to litigation, which leaves claimants free to continue with much of the pre-litigation conduct, and abusive behaviour conducted in tandem with litigation, that make SLAPPs so egregious and hard to monitor.

I am minded to agree with campaigners that it must be clear that claimant behaviour that is intended to harass, alarm and distress, and that harms, is combined with other factors in clause (2)(1)(c) indicative of a SLAPP claim, and that there should be no threshold below which this behaviour is acceptable. Likewise, abusive claimant behaviour prior to and alongside the claim itself should be in scope.

I place on the record my support for amendments 2 and 5, which stand in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly, which seek to ensure that a court can reach a conclusion about a claimant’s intent based on a reasonable and more objective interpretation of their behaviour, rather than rather than an overly subjective inquiry into their state of mind. That would retain the test of a claimant’s intention while mitigating the threat of complex, costly and lengthy satellite litigation, which has already been discussed. I am concerned that campaigners and experts are warning that without these amendments, there is a risk that this Bill’s early dismissal mechanism could render the legislation redundant.

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on domestic violence and abuse, and having had first-hand experience of how SLAPPs can be used to silence women, I want to ensure that we consider the ability of abusers to weaponise litigation. Back in 2021, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, Irene Khan, warned about gendered censorship taking place around the world. I have also spoken extensively about this issue, and she rightly pointed out that there is currently an imbalance in the system between “his” right to reputation and, usually, “her” right to free speech.

Having spoken extensively about defamation and public interest defences in this regard, I think that we should aim to have a future free from perpetrators being able to abuse the courts and pursue litigation in this way. I therefore support my hon. Friend’s amendment 10 on the definition of “public interest”. It seeks to ensure that the Bill does not privilege certain types of public interest speech and create an unnecessary and problematic hierarchy that could, as I understand it, cut across principles in the Defamation Act 2013 and data protection law, making it harder for defendants to use the full scope of available defences.

[Adam Afriyie]

I will not keep the Committee too long. I just want to say that I have sat on many Committees in my 19 years here, and I think that this Committee is a testament to the strength of Parliament in scrutinising legislation that clearly we all want to see. It highlights the nuances of differing views on constitution versus freedom of speech versus public interest, so I very much understand the reason for each one of these amendments.

There is a lot of debate around each amendment, but I suspect that actually the Government and pretty much every MP would agree with the intention of all of them. The question is about the precision of how they are delivered. I rise, to be honest, to speak in support of all the amendments in this grouping—not necessarily the precision of them, but the intention behind each and every one. In particular, I speak in favour of amendments 11 and 12, which stand in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden.

It does seem to me that as MPs, we see all sides of this issue. We see attacks on ourselves from people trying to suppress what we are about to say on the Floor of the House or elsewhere, but we also observe in our local media that the two little journalists stuck in a local regional newspaper are suddenly facing a massive court case if they write something that, to be honest, is in the public interest and fairly innocuous. We can see things from both sides, which is why, particularly in the debate about these amendments, we are all being very gentle in how we approach things: because we know that there are subtleties that we need to address.

However, I am very keen to see that those who have disproportionate power—whether that is financial power, or in business structures, or in access to lawyers—are kept in check when it comes to behaviours that are clearly designed to harass, intimidate, frustrate and frighten people on the receiving end, whether they are local journalists or media, or even, to be honest, mainstream newspapers that may have financial challenges as well, or individuals such as our former colleague Charlotte Leslie, whose life was made an absolute misery. Nobody in any party would want to see or witness that kind of behaviour, no matter which former MP was experiencing it.

This issue needs to be dealt with and I thank the Government for dealing with it. I also thank all hon. Members on this Committee for examining what needs to change. I am very keen on this group of amendments, because they aim to clarify and define more closely what it is we are trying to deal with. The worst kind of legislation is the kind that we have not scrutinised carefully to ensure that when a judge approaches a matter, they have clear directions and a clear understanding of the intention of this House in forming that legislation.

I hope that in Committee and on Report, we will finally get to a resolution on each of the issues that have been raised here, because it is really important that this piece of legislation gets on to the statute books. However, it is equally important that freedom of speech is defended and that the little guy or the little girl in our society—the small media outlets—are protected from deeply wealthy and deeply aggressive litigants.