"Defamation Bill agreed by Parliament" Hip, Hip Hooray!

Great news! I received this email this evening. Well done to everyone involved in getting rid (mostly) of this nasty, vindictive, unjust, unfair and horrible stain on the whole British judicial process. 

I hope they are celebrating:)

(for details of picture see here)

"Dear Friends

We have some great news to share. The Defamation Bill has been agreed by Parliament and is now just waiting for Royal Assent, which will probably happen today, before becoming an Act of Parliament. This is undoubtedly down to all of your hard work with us over the last few years and you all deserve a huge thank you!

Below are some of the reactions from some of the Libel Reform Campaign supporters. You can read more here: http://www.libelreform.org/news

Tracey Brown, Director, Sense About Science said: “A campaign of small organisations, thousands of individuals and good parliamentarians has achieved changes that were denied to citizens for a century. We can now decide to publish based on ‘is it true’, not ‘will they sue’.”

Kirsty Hughes, Chief Executive, Index on Censorship said: “We now have a Defamation Bill that will strengthen freedom of expression, end the global chill from libel tourism and restrict corporations from suing citizen critics.”

Jo Glanville, Director, English PEN said: “This has been a remarkable campaign that has united politicians and campaigners to reform a law that had become an international embarrassment. The chill has had an impact on anyone speaking out in the public interest - from scientists to bloggers - so this is good news for freedom of speech in the UK.”

Dr Evan Harris, Libel Reform Campaign parliamentary adviser said: “As someone involved the campaign from the start, and from inside and outside Parliament, I can see what an achievement it is to achieve this reform.”

Simon Singh, science writer and defendant in BCA v Singh said: “This is an extraordinary story of cross party collaboration, fired up by a grass roots campaign, backed by everyone from nerds to Mumsnet, which includes mums who are also nerds.”

Justine Roberts, CEO and co-founder of parenting forum Mumsnet said:“It's not perfect, and of course we don't yet have the full detail on how the regulations will deal with publication on the internet. But we applaud the hard work of everyone involved, and are very happy to have been a part of this much-needed reform.”

Charmian Gooch, Director, Global Witness said: “The passage of the Defamation Bill is a long overdue victory in the campaign to reform the UK’s outdated and repressive libel laws.”

You can also read our initial analysis of the Bill (PDF)

We're going to arrange a bit of a gathering to get supporters and champions of the campaign together to celebrate this wonderful accomplishment and let you know what needs to happen next. We all still need to keep the pressure on to make sure the new law is enacted as soon as possible, clear and robust regulations are published, new Civil Procedure Rules are issued and most importantly we need to tell those who try and silence free speech through that libel they can't get away with it any more.

We'll be in touch with more details soon!

Síle & Mike

Information: www.libelreform.org"

Libel reform campaign petition: Don't kill the Bill

I've signed this petition from the Libel reform campaign to my MP asking her to save the current Bill which has nearly passed through Parliament. However it has been hijacked by "unhelpful" amendments in the House of Lords.

While I would personally support these amendments, they are not relevant to libel law and appear likely to scupper the entire Bill.

By coincidence last Saturday was the 2nd anniversary of the throwing out by the Royal Court of Justice of a certain stupid, wasteful and completely pointless Libel case. If the new Bill was passed into law it would help prevent similar nonsense in the future. 

Hacked off at West Ham? (Labour Party GC & Leveson)

Twitter picture from last week's West Ham Labour Party GC when we had Julianne Marriot from Hacked Off as our guest speaker.

Hacked Off is about "campaigning with victims of press abuse to ensure that the Leveson Inquiry leads to a free & fair press, promoting world-class public interest journalism".

Julianne explained they are not just about phone hacking but about press abuse.  She gave a number of examples of the sorry state that is the modern day UK press. For example some of them will still ring the actor Hugh Grant's  90 year old Dad in middle of night, to try and startle him into saying something and they will pretend to be his son (his Dad also has heart condition).

Major newspapers such as the Sunday Express are not even members of the current voluntary Press Complaints Commission. You need to have an independent regulator underpinned by law. The Government want a "Royal Charter" while the victims of dreadful abuse want statutory regulation of press.

One good thing so far about the debate and controversy about the press is that it has so far stopped further media consolidation.  Final criticism of the Tory Government "Royal Charter" is that it would result in a "modest fee" for arbitration when Leveson made it clear that arbitration should be free.

Julianne gave a thought provoking and persuasive presentation.

She is actually a member of West Ham Labour Party and West Ham ward and we had a "discussion" yesterday evening about "Hacked off" and the Libel Reform Bill where I expressed my "concerns" over recent developments. Nuff said.