Labour has delayed proposals to tackle spurious lawsuits brought by oligarchs and others aimed at intimidating journalists, academics and campaigners.
Frederick Ponsonby, a Labour justice minister in the House of Lords, said he could not commit to bringing forward standalone legislation on strategic lawsuits against public participation, known as Slapps, or set out a timetable for tackling the issue.
He said the government would be conducting a review and while it did want to outlaw Slapps that are abusive, there was also a “need to protect access to justice for legitimate claims”.
Rishi Sunak had previously backed a Labour MP’s backbench attempt to ban Slapps but the legislation did not get through parliament before the election.
Before the election David Lammy, now the foreign secretary, had said he wanted to ban Slapps, as scrutiny of Russian oligarchs by journalists and campaigners has been frustrated by threats of lawsuits.
At the time, Lammy said: “We’ve really got to stop this happening. These are stifling effectively not just the rule of law and freedom of speech, but particularly going to journalists doing their job to throw a spotlight and transparency on the most egregious behaviour of oligarchy, plutocracy, and very corrupt individuals doing bad things.”
In the House of Lords on Wednesday, Tina Stowell, a Conservative peer, said the previous government had been “very close to outlawing Slapps in their entirety” and called for legislation in the first session of parliament.
However, Ponsonby said there were still outstanding questions about how to ban Slapps that were not addressed in the previous legislation.
“I am not in a position to make the commitment which she has asked for as to when any legislation might come forward but I do want to reassure her that we are taking this matter very seriously,” he said.
“We support the principle behind that bill but we do believe there are outstanding questions which need to be properly balanced to prevent the abuse of the process of Slapps but also we need to protect access for justice for legitimate claims.”
The minister said discussions with the Law Society would continue and pointed to wider efforts across the Council of Europe to come to a collective position on Slapps.
He agreed there was an “urgent need” for action to tackle Slapps in law but said he could not promise that there would be separate legislation.
No legislation relating to Slapps was brought forward in last week’s king’s speech and there was no promise to ban Slapps in Labour’s manifesto.
In the House of Commons in May, David Davis, a Conservative MP and civil liberties advocate, criticised lobbying against the legislation by defamation lawyers, saying: “It has to be said that the Ministry [of Justice] will be being lobbied – with how much effect I cannot say – by the Society of Media Lawyers, including such leading lights as Carter-Ruck, Mishcon de Reya and Schillings, the very people who have created the problem that we are now trying to resolve.
“People have created a multimillion-pound industry out of oppressing the right to freedom of speech and making London the global capital of that. I could pick a ruder word for it, but I will just say that it is the global capital of Slapps.”
