The UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition welcomes the inclusion of strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) in the UK Government’s new anti-corruption strategy, which launched today, but repeats calls for a universal anti-SLAPP law.
Following the launch, the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition co-chairs said:
“This recognition of how SLAPPs can impact those uncovering financial crime and corruption, and therefore wider society, is a welcome and important step; however, existing anti-SLAPP provisions relating to economic crime fall short even for those they are intended to protect.
We urge the Government to take urgent steps to address the need for robust universal anti-SLAPP measures. Only then will there be an effective deterrent to those wishing to abuse the law to prevent people from speaking about corruption, as well as the many other public interest issues that impact the democratic health of our society,”
The cross-government strategy notes two priority commitments for the Ministry of Justice on SLAPPs:
a) Implement the economic crime-related SLAPPs measures in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA); and
b) Informed by wider evidence available on SLAPPs, consider the future approach for comprehensively tackling all SLAPPs.
As the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition has repeatedly pointed out, there are significant flaws within the ECCTA provisions, namely:
- It only protects reporting on ‘economic crime,’ and without providing universal protection from SLAPPs, it is easy for claimants to side-step the provisions by pursuing a claim on a different matter. For example, notable SLAPP cases against investigative journalists like Tom Burgis, Catherine Belton, and Eliot Higgins, were pursued on different grounds, so these measures would have done nothing to protect them.
- The ECCTA provisions include an excessively restrictive definition of a SLAPP. By requiring the court to identify the intent of the SLAPP filer, as well as the intention behind the ‘economic crime disclosure’ by the defendant, the ECCTA introduces an unnecessary element of uncertainty into the process; and will likely create significant satellite litigation, undermining the principle of an early dismissal mechanism.
This restrictive definition of a SLAPP was acknowledged, and amended, during the legislative passage of a universal anti-SLAPP Private Members’ Bill, that was passing through Parliament in 2024, led by then Labour MP Wayne David. It only fell away due to the General Election being called. Since then the Government has yet to bring in any new legislative measures.