The New Statesman@NewStatesman
THE SLAPP TRAP by @PeterKGeoghegan and @JennaCorderoy
Boris Johnson announced a clampdown on “the oligarchs and super-rich” who use the threat of legal action as “a new kind of lawfare”. The Conservative prime minister said his government would introduce legislation that would stop “strategic lawsuits against public participation” – commonly known as “Slapp” litigation. These are generally defined as cases designed to intimidate, harass and financially exhaust critics and to silence free speech. Slapps don’t have to involve libel action, but in the UK they usually do.
Four years later, however, comprehensive anti-Slapp legislation is yet to materialise. Increasingly, the blame for inaction is being laid at Labour’s door, even by some of the party’s own MPs. A few months after winning the 2024 general election, Keir Starmer pledged to stop “powerful people using… Slapps to intimidate journalists away from their pursuit of the public interest”. But in February this year, anti-Slapp measures were shelved from a civil justice and courts bill, reportedly following interventions from Downing Street.
The government’s change of tack was preceded by a discreet but highly effective lobbying blitz – spearheaded by a group of leading London libel lawyers whose members have in the past represented Russian oligarchs, the disgraced Tory peer Michelle Mone, and even Jeffrey Epstein.
The Society of Media Lawyers (SML) has little public presence, but over the course of almost three years it has secured meetings with key officials and aggressively pushed back on anti-Slapp legislation, according to hundreds of pages of documents, released following a number of freedom-of-information (FOI) requests. The SML has a clear message: that anti-Slapp legislation is unnecessary, and could even embolden the media’s worst excesses. In this telling, concerns about the use of Slapps to muzzle investigative journalists, and even victims of sexual abuse, are all part, according to the SML, of “a misleading narrative presented by the media”. The society’s lobbying appears to have borne fruit. It is seen by many as an important factor in the government’s apparent decision not to act.
Illustration by Jonathan McHugh
