Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. SLAPPs – even those that do not make it beyond a threat – exert a significant impact on everyone’s fundamental freedoms and ability to participate in society around them. Under existing legislation,  journalists, campaigners, whistleblowers, sexual abuse survivors, online reviewers, Facebook group members (among others)  may have no choice but to give into a claimant’s demands to stop speaking out rather than fight a legal case. SLAPPs are not brought to vindicate a right in court – instead they focus on draining the finances, attention and emotional wellbeing of anyone speaking out in the public interest. 

The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (ECCTA) includes anti-SLAPP provisions, but they are flawed and limited only to reporting on economic crime. To protect everyone’s free speech, a universal anti-SLAPP law is vital. Legislation will not only aid the public who may be targeted by SLAPPs, it can also support others such as regulators by presenting a clear definition of SLAPPs that can be used when carrying out their regulatory function. Recent decisions made by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal demonstrate this clear need.

The UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition has highlighted a number of cases here. 

Yes. The Coalition has highlighted a number of cases here. However these are only a few of the cases we have examined that can be made public. The reality is that the majority of SLAPP go unreported and take place through pre-litigation tactics resulting in cases never making it to court. The scientific maxim coined by Carl Sagan that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” still holds. In fact, there are a number of reasons why SLAPPs may go unreported: SLAPP targets may fear that they will compound legal problems if they speak out or may worry that their work or reputation will be discredited if they make their legal problems public. It may also be that civil litigation is not considered newsworthy enough for media bodies to publish stories on them, or that aggressive SLAPP tactics are so normalised that people do not even consider it a problem. 

In the London Calling report, the Foreign Policy Centre (FPC) – a co-founder and co-chair of the Coalition – stated that “63 journalists working on financial crime and corruption in 41 countries identified the UK as the leading international jurisdiction for legal threats.” An earlier FPC study also found that “The UK was almost as frequently a source of these legal threats as the European Union (EU) countries and the United States combined.”  

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has also acknowledged there are grounds for it to react more robustly. It has published, and updated, a warning notice related to SLAPPs, undertaken two thematic reviews and have called for people to report allegations of SLAPP-enabling behaviour by regulated parties. As confirmed in a recent report on the state of the media by the House of Lords: “the SRA had received 71 cases, of which 48 were live (as of May 2024) and two of the most serious had been referred to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.”

Not really. When the outcome of the 2023 review was published in February 2023, the SRA stated that they “did not find evidence of SLAPPs in our file reviews.” However, the SRA only visited 25 firms and crucially the review did not include firms who were, at that stage, being investigated for potentially having had  a role in enabling SLAPPs. The SRA stated that “[g]iven the number of firms we saw and files we examined – alongside the fact we did not visit firms who are currently being investigated about this issue – our thematic review is a snapshot of the approach of a limited number of firms.” 

The 2024 review was carried out using the same methodology, meaning that again the firms who were being investigated for enabling SLAPPs were not included in the review. The flaws in the review’s methodology were highlighted  in the House of Lords’ 2024 report on the state of the media, which stated “we do not agree that [the SRA] should conduct thematic evaluations of SLAPPs that deliberately exclude the law firms accused of malpractice. Predictably and implausibly, these evaluations have found limited evidence of wrongdoing. This risks creating a flawed evidence base to inform public debate.” However, in contrast to what has been publicly asserted by opponents to anti-SLAPP measures and despite the SRA’s severely limited methodology, the SRA “saw indicators of a SLAPP on one of the 40 files” they reviewed in the 2024 review.

Absolutely not. Put simply, anti-SLAPP protections would not be able to be used to shield this sort of wrongdoing or prevent those seeking redress from accessing justice. This is a misrepresentation or misunderstanding of anti-SLAPP protections and it threatens to demonise the work of a wide range of public watchdogs, painting any steps to protect their rights as a threat to democracy. Without anti-SLAPP protections, wealthy and powerful entities are able to control what is published and what society can access. The Coalition has not seen any evidence of anti-SLAPP laws in other jurisdictions being used in this manner.

No. Anti-SLAPP laws work to promote access to justice by ensuring that SLAPP defendants are not squeezed out of the system by astronomical costs. This is why the Canadian legal scholar Hillary Young has pointed to anti-SLAPP laws as a means of improving access to justice in defamation cases, saying that the “enactment of anti-SLAPP laws has almost certainly improved access to justice for defamation defendants.”

Abusive lawsuits have no place in a democratic judicial system. There is no right to file an abusive lawsuit. As a result, there is nothing inconsistent with the right to a fair trial for such lawsuits to be disposed of early. Indeed, mechanisms generally already exist to filter abusive cases out of court – they’re just inadequate to deal with the particular problem of SLAPPs. Further to this, the case of Steel and Morris v UK (better known as McLibel, which is widely recognised as a SLAPP) made it clear how much of a threat SLAPPs can be to access to justice. The European Court of Human Rights  held that unavailability of legal aid violated applicants’ rights under Article 6 and noted that the lengthy proceedings and their outcome infringed rights under Article 10.

Not fully, although it was a promising start. The Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation Bill, or the SLAPP Bill, was announced by Wayne David MP after he was selected for a Private Members’ Bill in 2024. It secured support from the previous government and reached the Bill Committee Stage before it fell victim to the announcement of the General Election in July. The Bill was universal in nature, allowing all public participation to be covered by the Bill. This was a vast improvement to the anti-SLAPP provisions in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (ECCTA), which only covered reporting on economic crime. 

However, earlier drafts of the Bill included the same flawed test to identify SLAPPs as the ECCTA, which would mean needing to provide the intent of a SLAPP flier. This is a difficult and costly task which requires the court to infer the state of mind of the filer. This would have hindered the ability of public watchdogs to trust the law as a meaningful protection against SLAPPs. However and due in part to the work of the Coalition, amendments to the Bill were accepted that replaced this with an objective test. However there were still pending issues that required action before the Bill could have reached the standard necessary to protect free expression. These were not able to be made prior to the Bill being withdrawn from Parliament.

Definitely not. In November 2024, Heidi Alexander MP, the former Minister of State for the Ministry of Justice, stated in the House of Commons that “[o]ur future approach to SLAPPs reform will be informed by monitoring the operation of the new procedural rules when they come in.” No information was provided as to the timeframe of the Government’s proposed monitoring operation and what amount of evidence would satisfy them. 

Crucially, this approach is fundamentally flawed as it would only capture cases that fall within the narrow scope of the ECCTA and those that make it to court in the first place. This means that SLAPPs issued through pre-trial threats and legal letters would find no place in the government’s consideration. The evidence provided so far by the coalition, SLAPP targets, lawyers, journalists and other public watchdogs to the press, the SRA, policy makers and international bodies such as Council of Europe is, in the Coalition’s opinion, sufficient to justify action. The Coalition fears this approach is intended to “kick the can down the road” and delay any potential progress to establish universal protections against SLAPPs.

No. Defamation actions are not necessarily SLAPPs and SLAPPs are not necessarily defamation actions.

Defamation law is a vital part of the legal environment and speaks to the balancing of rights between the right to free expression and the right to privacy and a family life. SLAPPs are not one cause of action, they are the abuse through the litigation process, with claimants using whatever law they can to silence their critics. Examples of SLAPPs from the UK and Europe show a myriad of laws, such as defamation, privacy, data protection and GDPR, harassment, copyright and trespass as potential vehicles of SLAPPs. The objective of SLAPPs is not the vindication of rights but the withdrawal of public interest speech. 

Intent is important but so is the impact of their actions. That is why it is vital that a judge can make a reasonable inference of a claimant’s intent based on their actions, rather than having to make an inquiry into their precise state of mind. Proving intent is a difficult and costly task which – in the likely absence of any explicit statement of intent – requires the court to infer the state of mind of the filer. Anti-SLAPP measures should not add to the time, cost or complexity of any court proceedings.

Yes. The current system bakes in the inequality of arms where wealthy claimants are able to threaten costly court action knowing the target may not be able to afford to mount a defence. If defendants that act in a proper way are not protected from paying the costs of SLAPP claimants, they will be extremely reluctant to ever go to trial and defend themselves due to the threat of financial hardship. This includes those who have a viable defence for their actions, because those defences cannot be tested if the defendant cannot afford to make it to court in the first place.

In the current system, individuals defending themselves have been threatened by bankruptcy and even losing their home due to the costs of putting forward a defence in court. This will defeat the object of any anti-SLAPP law, by leaving those targeted by SLAPPs with little choice but to give into a claimant’s demands before a case ever gets to court. The financial uncertainty creates too much of a deterrent. International human rights standards, which the UK has signed up to, stipulate that everyone has the right to a fair trial and this includes defendants in SLAPP actions. Protections that discard abusive cases while also capping costs allowing defendants to mount a defence in court are important provisions that move the UK closer to realising these human rights obligations.

No. At the time of writing, the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act’s (ECCTA) anti-SLAPP provisions have not been implemented. The Civil Procedure Rule Committee (CPRC) have recently made two amendments to the Civil Procedure Rules in regards to the ECCTA, which will come into effect on 6 April 2025. 

However, any universal anti-SLAPP law should repeal the limited ECCTA’s anti-SLAPP provisions in their entirety, meaning there is no danger of inconsistency between two competing anti-SLAPP frameworks. Therefore, there is no sound reason for the government to refuse to bring forward an anti-SLAPP law on the basis that this will mean deviation from the ECCTA. You cannot deviate from legal standards that no longer exist. A universal Anti-SLAPP law, while protecting those already protected in the ECCTA, would be a fairer law that protects everyone who speaks out.

Due to the uncertainty of the subjective test to define a SLAPP and the narrow definitional criteria in the ECCTA, of the SLAPP cases known to the public and parliament, the Coalition does not believe any could have been adequately disposed of at an early enough stage, were the ECCTA to have been in effect.

Absolutely not. The UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition has long backed robust and universal protections against SLAPPs to ensure British courts cannot be abused by those trying to stifle protected speech. Currently courts and judges do not have the necessary tools to protect the British legal system. A universal anti-SLAPP Law addresses this and will aid judges and courts when approaching this issue in a consistent and transparent manner.  

SLAPPs have done significant damage to the international standing of British courts. In 2010, the US passed the SPEECH Act, which made foreign libel judgments unenforceable in US courts, unless either the relevant foreign legislation offers at least as much protection as the First Amendment or the defendant would have been found liable under US law. During the bill’s passage, cases brought in the UK, such as the action against Dr Rachel Ehrenfeld by Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz in 2008, were prominently discussed in the US Congress. Congressman Steve Cohen said: “England has become the favourite destination of libel tourists from around the world, especially wealthy tourists from countries whose own laws are downright hostile to free speech”.

No. SLAPPs can be used to target anyone irrespective of their political opinions or alliances to any specific party. Broadly speaking, the UK is late to the party when it comes to addressing SLAPPs. It took the unlawful full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia and a public consultation for the previous Government to acknowledge what civil society, journalists and the legal profession have been saying for years – that the UK has a problem with SLAPPs that only legislation can fix. When the SLAPP Bill brought by the former Labour MP, Wayne David, was being scrutinised in Parliament, it enjoyed cross-party support. The last parliamentary debate on SLAPPs was sponsored by a Labour MP and MPs from six parties spoke out in support of meaningful legislative action. The only political point is this: Everyone deserves the right to be able to access their fundamental rights, namely the right to free expression, free assembly and a fair trial.

The UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition is not against the Law Commission scrutinising potential avenues towards addressing SLAPPs. We would welcome the commission’s expertise if it could strengthen the UK’s work to stamp out SLAPPs. However, considering the progress made, first through the public consultation and the myriad of opportunities to analyse and scrutinise the issue in both houses of parliament, through the work of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, parliamentary committees and civil society, this should not be used to delay or discard the work already underway. We are worried that this request could be an attempt to use the Commission as a tactic to derail or delay progress on this issue. 

No. Any anti-SLAPP law passed by the UK Parliament, if enacted, would only protect people in England and Wales, not those in Scotland or Northern Ireland. Authorities in Northern Ireland and Scotland would have to either agree to a Legislative Consent Motion from the UK Parliament to enable a Bill to be enacted in each jurisdiction or pass their own SLAPP Bills. 

Neither Scotland nor Northern Ireland has existing anti-SLAPP protections. In Scotland, the former SNP MP, Roger Mullin presented a petition to the Scottish Parliament calling for a Scottish anti-SLAPP law. It has been scrutinised by the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee at Scottish Parliament. On 24 April 2024, in an evidence session regarding the petition, the Minister for Victims and Community Safety confirmed that the Scottish Government would bring forward a consultation on SLAPPs, which was published in February 2025. The Northern Irish Assembly has reviewed the 2022 Defamation (Northern Ireland) Act. As part of the public consultation, the Department of Finance asked a number of questions regarding possible anti-SLAPP protections. In June 2024, the Department published the consultation report, in which it acknowledged “that legislation on SLAPPs may require closer inspection.”