Liberal Democrats seek to strengthen new anti-SLAPPs legislation
EMBARGO: Immediate Release
The Liberal Democrats are proposing to strengthen a government backed Private Members Bill.
Lib Dem MP Richard Foord, made interventions in the debate to make the point that the new legislation could be ineffective. He claimed that the Bill introduces a subjective test that will require the court to infer the state of mind of the complainant, which would increase complexity and cause delay, defeating the point of the Bill.
The Lib Dems are pushing for an amendment which would replace this subjective test with an objective one, based on observable features of abuse to ensure the Bill could fulfil its intention - to prevent litigation being misused and suppressing free speech.
Liberal Democrat MP for Tiverton and Honiton, Richard Foord MP said:
"We must stop people being able to use SLAPPs as a way of stifling investigative journalism, suppressing freedom of speech and silencing critics.
"New legislation debated in the House of Commons today to tackle this issue is welcome. But to be truly effective new laws must have objective rather than subjective tests so that cases are not mired in complexity, cost and delays.
"People using SLAPPs frequently use every opportunity to drag out proceedings and increase the costs and this must be stopped."
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
Richard Foord's intervention can be found here.
Transcript of interventions:
The hon. Member mentions the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe. I wonder whether he agrees with the Anti-SLAPP Coalition that the proposed Bill, as drafted, would introduce a subjective test, requiring a court to infer the state of mind and purpose of the filer. Does he agree with me that that would create complexity, costs and delay, which would potentially make the Bill ineffective?
Does the hon. Member think that a minor amendment could be introduced to add an objective test based on observable features of abuse, to help prevent litigation from being misused to suppress freedom of speech?
