Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 makes newspapers liable not only for their own costs in libel cases, but for those of the other party as well. This is without precedent in legal history. Although it is on the statute book, this extraordinary measure has not yet been implemented. The government will shortly complete a consultation exercise about whether or not it should be brought into effect. Alistair Lexden made clear his total opposition to Section 40 in a debate in the Lords on December 20 last year(see below). He restated his position in a letter in the London Evening Standard on January 5.The full letter follows; it was published in abbreviated form.
Melanie McDonagh is right to castigate the enemies of press freedom in the House of Lords (“Karen Bradley needs to stand up to the threat to the press”, Comment, January 3). Our great newspapers must not be put under pressure to join a state-approved regulatory body which the overwhelming majority of them oppose. The alternative to it, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), chaired without fear or favour by the former appeal court judge Sir Alan Moses, deserves our full confidence. A recent independent review by Sir Joseph Pilling found that it is working effectively .When we debated press regulation recently a number of speakers—of whom I was one—condemned the proposals designed to subvert IPSO by forcing nearly all our papers which have signed up with it to pay the costs of the losing side in a libel action. Do not think just of national titles, I said, but of regional and local newspapers which would suffer severely at a time when many are already struggling financially to survive. In Northern Ireland things would be different. What is now being proposed would not apply there. One country, two different laws for the press: how could that be right?
Alistair Lexden
House of Lords