Libel reform campaign

[Celestine]

Dear Libel Reform Supporter,

Join Dara Ó Briain, Professor Brian Cox and Dave Gorman in the final push for libel reform


It has been a long time since many of you backed me in my fight against the British Chiropractic Association. My nightmare and similar cases helped spark the Libel Reform Campaign. Now, thanks to your support, a Defamation Bill is making its way through Parliament. This is a staggering achievement in less than 3 years, so we can all pat ourselves and each other on the back … at least a bit.


The Bill addresses some important issues, such as reducing libel tourism and providing protection for academic publication, but I am sorry to say that the Bill falls short in some crucial areas. There is no worthwhile public interest defence and the Bill offers no restrictions on the ability of corporations to silence critics. Also, instead of bringing the law into the 21st century by protecting website operators, the current draft of the bill reduces their protection from being made liable for the words of others.


Unless these issues are addressed, libel threats and libel actions will still be used to bully newspaper journalists, scientists, bloggers, consumer groups, human rights activists and others.


On 27th June, I will be part of group who will present the petition you all have signed to No.10 Downing Street asking for a Bill that will make the laws fairer, more accessible and in the public interest. I will be joined by the three charities at the heart of the Libel Reform Campaign (Index on Censorship, English PEN and Sense About Science), and three supporters who have been part of the campaign since it started (Dara Ó Briain, Professor Brian Cox and Dave Gorman).


In this final push for a truly fair and effective Defamation Bill, I need your help in two ways. I hope that you will able to support one or both of these missions.


1. Please send an email to your MP. If every MP receives dozens of emails on this issue, it will raise awareness that the current Bill is inadequate. 2. Please join us all at the Houses of Parliament on 27th June at 10:30 immediately after the delivery of the petition to Downing Street. Dara Ó Briain, Professor Brian Cox, Dave Gorman and organisations backing libel reform will be speaking. A large show of support will impress upon MPs that many people are committed to winning the battle for a fairer defamation law. If you have not visited Parliament before, then please take this opportunity to be part of democracy in action. Better still ask your MP to come to the meeting at 10.30am and/or meet you after PMQs (which ends at 12.30pm) to discuss the issue. Full details of location and how to invite/meet your MP can be found at http://www.libelreform.org/news/528-...terest-defence.


Finally, before we deliver the petition, please encourage others to sign the libel reform statement so that we can add another 10,000 names. Please email your friends and tweet:

“Support #LibelReform by signing the petition http://bit.ly/8gJQ7w - if you’ve signed already, click http://bit.ly/LRKDCm to remind your MP”

Finally, finally, I would like to thank you for supporting libel reform over that last three years. If we can persuade the Ministry of Justice to make a couple of amendments to the current proposals, then together we will have made the biggest contribution to free speech in Britain for over a century.

Simon Singh
Defendant in British Chiropractic Association v Singh

[Guest]

Re: Libel reform campaign

I signed the petition, and FB'd it. I hope it helps.

[Magrew]

Re: Libel reform campaign

Oh, so it's about the right to free speech in these forums.
I say, right to free speech exists.
Defamation must be proven.
And unless the accuser is right,
They are themselves the defamer.

I fully understand what your saying and agree with you

[Guest]

Re: Libel reform campaign

I fully understand what your saying and agree with you

Hello magrew, thanks for your supporting comment. The reason I deleted the 5 lines of mine you posted was because I was reading on the law of defamation on Wiki, and if you accuser your accuser and fail in court, it makes your defamation worse. That's why I deleted, although the 5 lines stands to raise confidence in the forum, here - the spirit in which it was written. So thanks.

[Guest]

Re: Libel reform campaign

I think anyone could have a problem with being made guilty (defamed, etc) by another - since most of our actions arise from a cause.

For instance, if I tell you, my child, I miss you - when I don't - does that make me a fraud?
Should I be punished - automatically - for being in the 'wrong'?

[Celestine]

Re: Libel reform campaign

Dear Friends
The Defamation Bill is back in the House of Commons today. We didn’t expect it to be debated again until October so this has come as a surprise! This is the Report and Third Reading stage of the Bill and the final chance for MPs to debate its contents. You can watch the debate from around 2.30pm at:http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Pl...eetingId=11369.
The Government has published the version of the Bill that will be debated today. However, it has changed very little from the Bill as published in March and the Government does not seem to have taken on board any of our suggestions to make it stronger. It is disappointing that there is no new public interest defence especially after Nature, Mumsnet,Which?, scientists, consumer groups, and Dara Ó Briain, Dave Gorman and Brian Cox told the Minister that this is the most urgent reform needed at the rally in Parliament. More here: http://www.senseaboutscience.org/pag...t-defence.html.
After today's debate the Bill will move to the House of Lords where we think most of the changes to it will happen. The first debate in the Lords will take place sometime after Peers get back from summer recess in October.
Read this Telegraph piece by Jo Glanville, the new Director of English PEN, which summarises what is still missing from the Bill: http://bit.ly/S6zihF.
Best regards
Síle and Mike
The Libel Reform Campaign

[bluebottle]

Re: Libel reform campaign

It sounds like the Tories have been doing their "We are not worthy" chant before the big corporations that fund them.

[Celestine]

Re: Libel reform campaign

Good Progress!!

Dear Friends
The Defamation Bill is getting better – but there is still a lot to fight for
The Bill is now at committee stage in the House of Lords. The first six clauses will be debated on Monday and Wednesday.
Many of you have worked with us to press for a new effective public interest defence. After promising this, the public interest clause published by the Government earlier this year turned out to be a very poor copy of the existing Reynolds defence. We already know this is very expensive to run and has been of little use to scientists, NGOs, doctors, consumer groups or bloggers – the very people who have supported the Libel Reform Campaign. To highlight this, we held a parliamentary rally; Dara O’Briain, Dave Gorman and Brian Cox took a petition of all your signatures to Downing Street, and we put together a briefing for Parliament on 10 cases http://bit.ly/Rt1f9X
We’ve had some positive news. Yesterday the Government responded and put down their own amendment to strengthen the Clause 4 Public Interest Defence in advance of the Lords discussing this at committee stage. This is entirely down to the efforts of all the individuals and community groups who have continued to fight alongside us for a fairer law.
The Government’s proposal is an improvement on what has been proposed in the Bill. We are still holding out for a stronger defence – one that protects defendants if they promptly and prominently correct or clarify. We are encouraging members of the House of Lords to debate the Government’s new clause and our clause.

The House of Lords will also be tabling amendments for which we argued, for calling for early strike out of weak or vexatious cases, measures to protect Internet service providers better and to restrict the use of libel laws by bullying corporations. If these are accepted by the Government it’ll be a huge victory for the campaign.
We’ll be at the committee debates in Parliament on Monday and will let you know what happens.
Best wishes

Mike and Síle

[Celestine]

Re: Libel reform campaign

http://www.senseaboutscience.org/dat...st_Defence.pdf

CITIZENS ADVICE’S STORY

Citizens Advice is a charity that aims to provide advice for the public and improve the policies andpractices that affect people’s lives. In 2009 and 2010, Citizens Advice were subjected to repeated threats of libel action when it sought to cast a light on a secretive, exploitative and quite possiblyillegal practice called ‘civil recovery’. This practice involves agents of household-name retailerssuch as Asda, Boots, Tesco and TK Maxx bombarding those who have been accused of shopliftingwith legalistic letters demanding money as ‘compensation’ for the cost of dealing with theincident, and threatening civil court action if the demands are not paid promptly.
One in four of those receiving these threats are children as young as 11, and others have serious mental health problems. There is no obvious legal basis for such demands – which probably explains why the threatened court action never follows. Most worryingly of all – many of therecipients are guilty of nothing more than an innocent mistake when doing their shopping.
For this practice to remain profitable, its victims have to be ignorant of the relevant law, and ofthe hollow nature of the threats of court action. Citizens Advice shone a light into this shadyworld and when they told the civil recovery firms that it was going to publish a report, Citizens Advice was threatened with libel action. Citizens Advice used its entire year’s research andcampaign contingency budget on legal advice to publish the report in 2009. The report they didpublish was self-censored and not as hard-hitting as it could and should have been.
Citizens Advice is not commenting publically on this subject now. Kate Briscoe of the community legal advice forum www.legalbeagles.info that publicised the threats to Citizens Advice said “We want to expose the intimidation and threats for what they are. In doing so we hope to inspire and encourage other consumer groups to stand up. We need a public interest defence.”