The House | What to do about SLAPPs? Why urgent reform is needed to protect all of us

5 min read28 min

As a freelancer, he is being threatened personally with legal action for a recent story with a major UK publication. He thinks the threats are aimed at getting the publication to “ditch him,” isolating him from legal support that would defend him and his story.

Since we set up the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition in January 2021, such messages for support have steadily grown in frequency. Now, a week rarely goes by without someone – a journalist, an academic, a campaigner or a member of the public – writing to us about a potential SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation). Such legal threats are aimed at suppressing the publication of public interest speech on a wide range of issues; from corruption and sexual assault, to housing, healthcare, and the environment.

SLAPPs work by weaponising the legal process to exert as much pressure as possible. Many cases never reach trial, but can still take months, if not years, to resolve. SLAPP targets can be made to feel they have no option but to settle, apologise and amend or remove the information they’ve published simply due to the financial, emotional and time costs of mounting a defence. If successful, SLAPPs can create a vacuum of information, not only about the original subject matter, but even that a legal challenge took place.

While 40 American states, as well as several provinces in Canada, have been adopting anti-SLAPP legislation since the 1990s, the issue only gained widespread recognition in Europe after the 2017 assassination of the Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. At the time of her death, Caruana Galizia, one of the few journalists writing about corruption in Malta, had 47 legal cases open against her.

In 2020, the Foreign Policy Centre surveyed 63 investigative journalists reporting on financial crime and corruption in 41 countries. The findings pinpointed the UK as the leading international source of such legal threats, almost as frequent as those from the EU and the US combined. The following year the high-profile legal actions in the UK against the journalists Catherine Belton, author of Putin’s People, and Tom Burgis, author of Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World, brought a new level of visibility.

By July 2022, in light of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and renewed concerns about the level of Russian dirty money and malign influence in our country, the then Conservative Government committed to “decisively… stamp out SLAPPs.” The adoption of anti-SLAPP provisions in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (ECCTA) 2023 was a welcome recognition of the problem, but was limited in scope and flawed in design. A subsequent universal anti-SLAPPs Bill, led by former Labour MP Wayne David, only fell away due to the 2024 General Election.

Almost two years later, despite significant cross-party support, and Keir Starmer referring to SLAPPs as “intolerable”, the current Government is yet to act. During a November 2024 Parliamentary debate, 16 MPs from 7 political parties spoke in favour of addressing SLAPPs and highlighted the impact they have, including delaying redress for wrongdoing – from the Post Office Horizon scandal to the allegations against Jimmy Savile and Mohammed Al Fayed. Last year, Index on Censorship published a report about how SLAPPs are silencing survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) when they try to speak out and warn others. The current provisions do nothing to protect them.

Since the start of 2026, more than 160 public figures, over 100 academics, and groups of Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem MPs have written to the Government calling for universal anti-SLAPP measures to be included in the next King’s Speech in May. However, recent press reports suggest that plans to legislate further may have been shelved.

Once leading the charge against SLAPPs in Europe, the UK has fallen behind. An EU Anti-SLAPP Directive (often called “Daphne’s Law”) adopted in 2024 is currently being transposed by 27 member states. The same year, the Council of Europe, of which the UK is still a member, also adopted a non-binding recommendation for its members to address SLAPPs.

So what is the risk of doing nothing? SLAPPs utilise various legal claims, but defending a defamation claim to trial in the UK costs at least £500,000, with many cases running into the millions. Preliminary hearings alone can easily run to £100,000. Even the first successful use of the ECCTA anti-SLAPP provisions by the tax campaigner Dan Neidle, cost him over £146k and almost a year to defend. Further legislation to create stronger protections against SLAPPs would cost nothing to enact.

It’s no surprise that many on the receiving end of a legal threat currently comply with demands to amend or remove information from the public sphere. As a result, wrongdoing is hidden and redress is either delayed or completely denied. And the impact? It’s not just on those targeted, it’s on all of us.

Susan Coughtrie is Executive Director of the Foreign Policy Centre, an international affairs think tank, and Jessica Ní Mhainín is Head of Policy and Campaigns at Index on Censorship, a free expression organisation.

The UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition is an informal working group established in January 2021, co-chaired by the Foreign Policy Centre, Index on Censorship and CliDef. For more information – antislapp.uk.