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29 November 2022
To the Rt. Hon. Dominic Raab MP
Deputy Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
Copies sent to:
Rt. Hon. Dominic Raab, Deputy Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
Rt. Hon. Rishi Sunak MP, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Rt. Hon. Michelle Donelan MP, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport
Rt. Hon. James Cleverly MP, Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
Mr. Steve Reed MP, Shadow Labour Secretary of State for Justice
Rt. Hon. Alistair Carmichael MP, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Home Affairs, Justice and Northern Ireland
Ms. Anne McLaughlin MP, Shadow SNP Spokesperson (Justice)
Mr. John Penrose MP, UK Government Anti Corruption Champion
Mr. Paul Philip, Chief Executive, Solicitors Regulation Authority
Mr. Mark Neale, Director-General, The Bar Standards Board
Ms. Dunja Mijatović, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights
Ms. Teresa Ribeiro, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Representative on Freedom of the Media
Ms. Irene Khan, United Nations Special Rapporteur on on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression
Re: Adoption of a UK Anti-SLAPP Law
As a group of leading editors, journalists, publishers, lawyers and other experts, we are writing to express our support for the Model UK Anti-SLAPP Law launched this November by the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition – and to urge you to move swiftly to enshrine these proposals in law.
Events over the past year have shone a light on the use of abusive lawsuits and legal threats to shut down public interest speech. This is a problem that has long been endemic in newsrooms, publishing houses, and civil society organisations. In an age of increasing financial vulnerability in the news industry, it is all too easy for such abusive legal tactics to shut down investigations and block accountability.
We welcome your commitment to bring in reforms to address Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), as you said on 20 July 2022, in order to “uphold freedom of speech, end the abuse of our justice system, and defend those who bravely shine a light on corruption.” High-profile cases – such as those targeting Catherine Belton, Tom Burgis, Elliot Higgins, and more recently openDemocracy and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism – are just the most visible manifestation of a much broader problem which has affected newspapers across Fleet Street and the wider UK media industry for many years.
The public interest reporting targeted by SLAPPs is vital for the health of democratic societies, including law enforcement’s ability to investigate wrongdoing promptly and effectively. This is of acute importance in the UK, which journalistic investigations have repeatedly shown to be a hub for illicit finance from kleptocratic elites. As of April 2022, the National Crime Agency (NCA) has estimated the scale of money laundering impacting the UK is in excess of £100bn a year.
Journalism has a huge role to play in tackling this problem. For example, investigations by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) into the ‘Azerbaijani Laundromat’ scandal supported the NCA in seizing millions in corrupt funds from a number of individuals, including £5.6 million from members of one Azerbaijani MP’s family. Prior to the NCA’s seizure, the same MP had spent two years pursuing Paul Radu, co-founder of OCCRP through London’s libel courts. The inequality of arms in such cases is clear. As Radu notes: “The people suing journalists in the UK rely on these huge legal bills being so intimidating that the journalists won’t even try to defend themselves.”
In March 2022, at the launch of the Government consultation on SLAPPs, you stressed that “The Government will not tolerate Russian oligarchs and other corrupt elites abusing British courts to muzzle those who shine a light on their wrongdoing.” The findings of the consultation, published in July, clearly stated that “the type of activity identified as SLAPPs and the aim of preventing exposure of matters that are in the public interest go beyond the parameters of ordinary litigation and pose a threat to freedom of speech and the freedom of the press.”
Fortunately, there is an oven-ready solution to this problem. The Model Anti-SLAPP Law, drafted by the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition in consultation with leading media lawyers and industry experts, would provide robust protection against SLAPPs, building on the framework proposed by the Ministry of Justice in July. Key features include:
The need could not be more urgent. Research by the Foreign Policy Centre and other members of the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition has found that SLAPPs are on the rise and that the UK is the number one originator of abusive legal actions. In fact, the UK has been identified as the leading source of SLAPPs, almost as frequent a source as all European Union countries and the United States combined.
The EU has already taken steps, with a proposed Anti-SLAPP Directive announced in April. In the US, 34 US states already have anti-SLAPPs laws in place, and this year Congress has introduced the first federal SLAPP Protection Act. Moreover, the US has also launched the Defamation Defense Fund, recognising the impact SLAPP actions have on journalists, as they “are designed to deter them from doing their work.”
You have made clear your commitment to strengthening legal protections against these legal tactics. It is crucial momentum is not lost. We encourage you to put forward, in the earliest possible time frame, legislation in line with the model UK Anti-SLAPP Law, to ensure that the UK can keep pace and contribute to this global movement to protect against SLAPPs.
Yours,
John Witherow, Chairman, Times Media
Emma Tucker, Editor, The Sunday Times
Tony Gallagher, Editor, The Times
Victoria Newton, Editor-in-Chief, The Sun
Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief, DMG media
Ted Verity, Editor, The Daily Mail
Katharine Viner, Editor-in-Chief, The Guardian
Paul Webster, Editor, The Observer
Alison Phillips, Editor, The Mirror
Oliver Duff, Editor-in-Chief, i
Roula Khalaf, Editor, The Financial Times
Chris Evans, Editor, The Telegraph
Alan Rusbridger, Editor, Prospect Magazine
Ian Hislop, Editor, Private Eye
Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief, The Economist
Alessandra Galloni, Editor-in-Chief, Reuters News Agency
John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief, Bloomberg
Drew Sullivan, Co-founder and Publisher, Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)
Paul Radu, Co-founder and Chief of Innovation, OCCRP
Rozina Breen, CEO, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ)
Peter Geoghegan, Editor-in-Chief and CEO, openDemocracy
Nick Mathiason, Co-founder and Co-director, Finance Uncovered
Gerard Ryle, Director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)
David Kaplan, Executive Director, Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN)
Michelle Stanistreet, General Secretary, National Union of Journalists (NUJ)
Dawn Alford, Executive Director, Society of Editors
Sayra Tekin, Director of Legal, News Media Association (NMA)
Sarah Baxter, Director, Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting
Paul Murphy, Head of Investigations, Financial Times
Rachel Oldroyd, Deputy Investigations Editor, The Guardian
Carole Cadwalladr, journalist, The Observer
Catherine Belton, journalist and author of the book, Putin’s People: How the KGB took back Russia and then took on the west
Tom Burgis, reporter and author of the book, Kleptopia: How dirty money is conquering the world
Oliver Bullough, Journalist and author
Clare Rewcastle Brown, investigative journalist and founder of The Sarawak Report
Richard Brooks, journalist, Private Eye
Matthew Caruana Galizia, Director of The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation
Mark Stephens CBE, Partner at Howard Kennedy LLP
Caroline Kean, Consultant Partner, Wiggin
Matthew Jury, Managing Partner, McCue Jury and Partners
David Price KC
Rupert Cowper-Coles, Partner at RPC
Conor McCarthy, Barrister, Monckton Chambers
Pia Sarma, Editorial Legal Director, Times Newspapers Ltd
Gill Phillips, Director of Editorial Legal Services, Guardian News & Media
Lisa Webb, Senior Lawyer, Which?
Juliette Garside, Deputy Business Editor, The Guardian and The Observer
Alexander Papachristou, Executive Director of the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice
José Borghino, Secretary General, International Publishers Association
Dan Conway, CEO, Publishers Association
Arabella Pike, Publishing Director, HarperCollins Publishers
Joanna Prior, CEO of Macmillan Publishers International Limited
Meirion Jones, Editor, TBIJ
Emily Wilson, Bureau Local Editor, TBIJ
James Ball, Global Editor, TBIJ
Franz Wild, Enablers Editor, TBIJ
James Lee, Chair of the Board, TBIJ
Stewart Kirkpatrick, Head of Impact, openDemocracy
Moira Sleight, Editor, the Methodist Recorder
Paul Caruana Galizia, reporter, Tortoise
Tom Bergin, journalist and author
James Nixey, Director, Russia and Eurasia Programme, Chatham House
Edward Lucas, Author, European and transatlantic security consultant and fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)
Sean O’Neill, Senior Writer, The Times
Dr Peter Coe, Associate Professor in Law, Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham
Alex Wilson, Partner at RPC
George Greenwood, Investigations Reporter, The Times
Simon Bowers, Investigations Editor, Finance Uncovered
John Heathershaw, Professor of International Relations, University of Exeter
Tena Prelec, Research Fellow, DPIR, University of Oxford
Thomas Mayne, Research Fellow, DPIR, University of Oxford
Jodie Ginsberg, President, Committee to Protect Journalists
Dr Julie Macfarlane, Co-Founder, Can’t Buy My Silence campaign to ban the misuse of NDAs
Zelda Perkins, Co-Founder, Can’t Buy My Silence campaign to ban the misuse of NDAs
Daphne Caruana Galizia
Five years ago today, investigative reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia was brutally assassinated in a car bomb attack in Malta. Our thoughts are with her family, friends and colleagues. Together with them, we continue to fight for justice.
It is deeply saddening that we have issued a similar statement every year since Caruana Galizia’s murder. Today should be a day to remember and celebrate her fearless journalism, the far-reaching impact of her incisive writing on financial crime, abuses of power and deep-seated corruption, and her unwavering commitment to uncovering the truth and serving the public’s right to information.
Instead, we must yet again note that progress in criminal investigations and prosecutions has been minimal and intolerably slow. Impunity serves to embolden those who use violence to silence critical journalism and it ends only when all those responsible for the heinous murder have been prosecuted to the full extent of the law: the assassins, intermediaries and the mastermind must be brought to justice without further delay.
Similarly, we must point out the unacceptable lack of implementation of the recommendations made by the landmark Public Inquiry into Caruana Galizia’s assassination and the exclusion of structured public consultation, including with our organisations, on proposed legal amendments relating to the safety of journalists and SLAPPs, which in the latter case fail to meet international standards. The process provides a historic opportunity for the Government of Malta to implement its obligations under international and European legal and policy frameworks to create an enabling environment for journalism and to protect journalists.
The lack of political will to initiate the effective and systemic reform that is needed casts doubt on whether Malta’s political class has drawn any lessons from Caruana Galizia’s assassination. Where is the sense of urgency to fix the rotten power structures and dangerous conditions for journalists who report on them, violently exposed by the blast five years ago?
Signed by:
It shouldn’t have taken a murder. Surely it didn’t need a car bomb in a quiet Maltese town. Daphne Caruana Galizia did not need to die for Europe and the rest of the world to take notice of media freedom’s precarious foundations. But to our shame, it did.
Five years ago today, Daphne was murdered by a car bomb that exploded when she was moments from her front door. But the car bomb was only the mechanism by which she was silenced. Daphne was murdered by the opaque but powerful forces that first encourage, before demanding and eventually forcing silence. But she was never rendered mute, even now.
In the years that have followed, Europe has wrestled both with her legacy – what her investigations revealed – as well as the legacy of her killing – what her murder revealed. In the aftermath of similar killings in Northern Ireland (Lyra McKee), Slovakia (Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová), Greece (Giorgos Karaivaz) and the Netherlands (Peter R. de Vries), as well as increased attention on the use of strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs), Europe has been forced to address an uncomfortable reality: journalists are at risk all across the continent. And so, by extension, is European democracy.
This is the dark light that bathes Europe, a light emanating from the brutal collapse of the rule of law but also a light that can illuminate what is broken. In the five years that have passed since her death, Daphne’s family have had to fight for every inch to demand both justice for Daphne and accountability for Malta. Whether this was to demand a public inquiry, pressing for progress in the criminal investigation, and putting SLAPPs on the European agenda, the rage, sadness and fury has fuelled a reckoning that has helped bring forward a proposed European Commission directive on SLAPPs, a Europe-wide coalition of organisations fighting to upend this form of lawfare, as well as similar movements at a national level.
In the UK, spurred on by Russia’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine, the UK Government announced in July 2022 an anti-SLAPP mechanism that could limit how UK courts are abused to silence critical speech. As we wait to see what happens – especially after the change in Prime Minister and her cabinet – we hope we are at the threshold of something significant. It is important to remember that a number of the libel threats against Daphne were deployed with the aid of London-based legal expertise – SLAPPs cannot be confined within national borders.
But we must return to Malta to remind ourselves of the pitfalls. Recently announced reforms aimed at protecting journalism, including much-vaunted anti-SLAPP protections, have had to be hurriedly frozen by the Prime Minister after being widely derided as inadequate, both in terms of content, falling far short of the proposed EC Directive, and process. The Institute of Maltese Journalists (IGM) had threatened to step away from the Committee of Experts unless “meaningful” consultation takes place. This was echoed by both the International and European Federations of Journalists (IFJ and EFJ) who have joined the call for the legislation to be withdrawn, as reported in Maltese outlet, NewsBook: “no proposal on media legislative reform should be submitted to the parliament without a transparent public consultation. This is all the more crucial in a country where a state holds some form of responsibility for the killing of a journalist.” While appearing to be fuelled by a desire to be the first EU nation to bring forward national legislation responding to SLAPPs, a grimy sense of competitive haste has seemingly triumphed over a commitment to genuine and meaningful protections.
Today, vigils remembering Daphne’s legacy – her life, her writing, and her commitment to the public’s right to know – are taking place across Europe, in London, Valletta, Brussels and Edinburgh to name a few. But wherever we are, we must ensure that by remembering Daphne’s life, we are reminded of our commitment to protect journalists against vexatious legal threats, physical attacks and every act that isolates, demonises or targets them.
Progress is slow and halting and will not proceed from one point to the next without obstruction – Malta’s current reform process is testament to that – however, the greatest way we can honour Daphne is by moving with purpose to ensure what happened to her cannot happen to another journalist. The dark light has illuminated what needs to change and the urgency with which it must change. It should not have taken the murder of a journalist for this to happen and we must not forget the darkness that sparked this push for greater protections, a darkness that robbed a family of the private space in which to mourn, but we must follow where the light leads. For in Daphne’s words, “There are crooks everywhere you look. The situation is desperate.
The urgent need to introduce anti-SLAPP measures, proposed by the UK government in July, has been underscored by the recent announcement that a UK registered company and a Kazakhstan endowment fund have issued legal proceedings against a number of UK media outlets.
In January and February 2022, openDemocracy and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), amongst other outlets, published separate reports on the Nazarbayev Fund and Jusan Technologies Ltd. The Nazarbayev Fund is a Kazakhstan university and schools endowment fund, associated with the former president, Nursultan Nazarbayev and Jusan Technologies Ltd is a UK registered company that controlled over $7.8bn in gross asset value. This included an online marketplace, a mobile phone operator, financial services and shopping centres. According to the reports, the Nazarbayev Fund owned a controlling stake in the company via an intermediary until late 2021, raising questions as to why a UK company held some of Kazakhstan’s wealth.
As a result of their public interest reporting, TBIJ and openDemocracy are among the media outlets who have been threatened with legal action by lawyers instructed by both the Nazarbayev Fund and Jusan Technologies Ltd. There should be no question that investigating and reporting on the financial interests of authoritarian leaders, both during their time in office and afterwards, and entities connected with them, is clearly in the public interest. For this to be met with threats of costly and time-consuming legal action constitutes a significant and severe threat to media freedom and the public’s right to know.
The undersigned organisations call for the legal action against openDemocracy and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism to be dropped and stand in solidarity with all outlets facing SLAPPs for their reporting. We also reiterate our calls to the UK Government to be both bold and swift with their proposals to bring forward anti-SLAPP legislation to ensure all public interest reporting is robustly protected against abusive lawsuits.
Index on Censorship
European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)
Blueprint for Free Speech
Tax Policy Associates Ltd
ARTICLE 19
Spotlight on Corruption
Justice for Journalists Foundation
Whistleblowing International Network
Public Interest News Foundation
Rory Peck Trust
The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation
National Union of Journalists
English PEN
Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID)
The Campaign for Freedom of Information in Scotland
Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
Transparency International UK
PEN International
Global Witness
Society of Authors
Protect