A day for celebration, but more must be done to protect free speech

It’s not often that three relatively small NGOs can change politics. So today’s parliamentary debate on the Defamation Bill is cause for considerable pride, among my former colleagues at Index on Censorship and their partners at English PEN and Sense about Science. In November 2009, we began a campaign to reform England’s unfair libel laws. The claimant cabal, those law firms who encourage the rich and famous, particularly those from abroad, to use London’s indulgent courts, assumed that the campaign would fizzle out. It didn’t, picking up steam as it went along.

So today’s events should be a cause for celebration. They are, but only in part. The legislative process has been a long and tortuous one. A report by a joint Lords and Commons committee earlier this year, chaired by Lord Mawhinney, recommended a number of changes to the original draft. The Ministry of Justice has taken few of these proposals on board; indeed there are fears that some elements of the bill have been hardened away from free speech.