A task force of legal professional bodies and media representatives will meet for the first time today as part of the government’s promise to reduce the threat of so-called strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs). The Law Society and Solicitors Regulation Authority are among those taking part.
Announcing the initiative, culture secretary Lucy Frazer KC MP said UK legal systems are ’increasingly being weaponised by wealthy criminals - including Russian oligarchs - to oppress those who seek to hold them to account’.
Such lawsuits ’risk corroding our institutions by keeping the public in the dark about matters of national importance, and create an environment where journalists fear bankruptcy in return for performing a vital public service’, Frazer said.
Today’s move follows the announcement in June of anti-SLAPP measures including a power for judges to strike out actions designed purely to stifle freedom of speech. Critics at the time pointed out that the measures related only to abuses concerning economic crime.
According to today’s announcement, the taskforce will have a broader focus. It will ’drive forward measures to protect public interest journalism from SLAPPs, including those linked to non-economic crime’. The taskforce is expected to commission research to investigate the prevalence of SLAPPs against journalists. It will also explore how legal services regulation could be used to prevent or mitigate SLAPPs, draw up plans for new specialist training for judges and law professionals to help them identify and throw out SLAPPs more easily, and develop guidance to support journalists, publications or law professionals, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said.
The announcement reiterated the government’s promise to legislate to tackle SLAPPs outside of economic crime as soon as parliamentary time allows.
Apart from the Law Society and SRA, the taskforce’s members will include representatives from the Bar Council and Bar Standards Board; National Union of Journalists; Index on Censorship; The Society of Editors; Reporters Without Borders; the News Media Association; Media Lawyers Association; Foreign Policy Centre; English PEN and Publishers Association.
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