UK: Newspapers step up campaign as consultation on libel costs to close

A UK government consultation on whether newspapers who are not signed up to a state-approved press regulator should pay costs in libel cases, even if they win, closes next Tuesday.

Culture Secretary Karen Bradley is considering different options on the implementation of section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, including its partial commencement or repeal.

Full commencement would mean a presumption that newspapers which are members of a recognised self-regulator would be exempt from paying their opponents’ legal costs, even if they lost a court case; and a presumption that newspapers outside a recognised self-regulator would pay their own and their opponents’ legal costs, even if they won.

IMPRESS became the first press regulator to be approved by the Press Recognition Panel (PRP) in October 2016.

However, most UK newspapers remain members of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), which has said it will not apply to the panel for official recognition. IPSO backs repeal of section 40.

A number of UK newspapers have stepped up their campaign against section 40 in the first few days of 2017.

In the first editorial published in its 17-year history, Metro said: “This year the culture secretary is weighing up whether to bring in a new law that will, for the first time in 300 years, shackle this country’s press and leave nobody open to expose scandals from the Rotherham sex grooming cover-up to MPs’ expenses.”

Meanwhile, The Sunday Times claimed that the law would have prevented it publishing doping allegations against cyclist Lance Armstrong in 2004.

It said: “Had Section 40 been in force at the time, the burden of paying Armstrong’s libel costs whether or not we won the case would have stopped us from publishing the story in the first place.”

The government is also consulting on whether to proceeding with part two of the Leveson Inquiry is “still appropriate, proportionate and in the public interest, and if so what it should cover and in what form”.

The consultation remains open until Tuesday 10 January 2017.