Rebalancing Defamation Law – Libel Tourists Won’t Be Welcome in London
A year ago, when the Libel Reform Campaign was launched only the Liberal Democrats strongly endorsed the need for change.
Now the Rt. Hon. Nick Clegg, as Deputy Prime Minister will announce a major reform project on Friday, which we’ll link to as soon as it is released.
The Guardian says:
The reforms will include a statutory public interest defence. The Government will release a bill, in draft form in March then subject it to a six month consultation. likely to reach the statute book in 2013 following hard-fought lobbying. It will turn “English libel laws from an international laughing stock to an international blueprint”.
Mr Clegg will say: “We intend to provide a new statutory defence for those speaking out in the public interest. And to clarify the law around the existing defences of fair comment and justification.”
Britain will become the first country to ask parliament to set out its libel laws, and provide greater clarity, his officials said.
He also wants large corporations to show they have suffered substantial damage before they sue individuals and non-governmental organisations.
A new limited privilege will be given to newspapers when reporting the proceedings of foreign parliaments.
The draft bill will also try to restrict libel tourism. Mr Clegg will pledge that the Coalition’s measures will prevent foreign claimants bringing cases against foreign defendants in the English courts when their connection with England is “tenuous”.
“We believe claimants should not be able to threaten claims on what are essentially trivial grounds. We are going to tackle libel tourism. And we’re going to look at how the law can be updated to better reflect the realities of the internet,” Mr Clegg will say.
And for Bloggers, here is a short practical guide to libel law, released today – let’s hope that it
While the government’s website doesn’t yet have the text, here is the text from the New Statesman>.
The speech goes much further than I said last night, and is a major statement on civil liberties, also extending to counter-terrorism, freedom of information and privacy.
Following Nick Clegg’s announcement of a draft Defamation Bill to be published in the Spring, in response to unprecedented pressure from the media and following what has been one of the most successful US lobbying campaigns since that initiated by the tobacco industry some years ago, it will be interesting to see the reaction to what has been a totally unjustified clamour for reform.
I say this particularly bearing in mind the embarrassment caused to the American lobbyists and legislators as a result of the recently published statistics establishing beyond any doubt that, contrary to press speculation on both sides of the Atlantic, the number of international libel claims brought before the UK Courts has been miniscule, thereby further exposing the totally disproportionate response to what is, to all intents and purposes, a “non issue”.
Of even more significance will be the attitude of our Courts to future requests for enforcement of US judgments against UK citizens and companies in cases involving grossly excessive punitive damages and attorneys’ fees, the latter often amounting to almost fifty percent of the damages awarded. To reverse the argument put forward by the lobbyists in the US Libel Tourism debate, such judgments would never be countenanced by a UK Court and the scale of such awards are offensive to all basic principles of British law.
If we are to believe everything we read in the press and the extensive coverage of the so called libel tourism problem, then you would think that the UK Courts were being besieged by multiple claims from numerous international litigants seeking to obtain justice by the back door, which is of course nonsense as the facts and figures have now established. The truth of the matter is that the media have seized upon an opportunity to snuff out one of the last opportunities for the general public to seek redress from an increasingly reckless press, who already have the financial clout to see off any unfortunate individual having the temerity to take them on, unless that individual is a man of substantial means.
Unfortunately the powerful lobbying platform enjoyed by the press is not available to the supporters of our Defamation laws, in what has been, at best, a one sided debate in the media. Indeed, the so called “chilling effect” referred to by Mr Clegg is in reality inflicted on the man on the street, whose options for seeking vindication of his reputation and the truth are now more limited than ever.
The irony is that the UK broadsheets are generally regarded to be among the most credible and respected in the world, which is in no small measure due to our fair and balanced libel laws!
Paul Tweed
Senior Partner
Johnsons Solicitors
Belfast | Dublin | London