Bob Seely
Main Page: Bob Seely (Conservative - Isle of Wight)Lawfare and UK Court System
Bob Seely Excerpts(2 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of lawfare and the UK court system.
I am grateful to Mr Speaker for his having issued a waiver for this debate. I of course recognise why it is important that Members of this House do not seek to influence the outcome of cases that are before the courts, and if these matters were before a jury, I would be wary of raising them, but they are matters of national importance and I am grateful for the opportunity to raise them.
We are rightly proud of our legal system in this country. Britain is home to some of the fairest and best courts in the world. Centuries of jurisprudence mean that London is among the most respected cities from a legal perspective. However, what is attractive to legitimate businessmen is also attractive to those with nefarious intentions: there are those with exceptionally deep pockets and exceptionally questionable ethics. These people use our justice system to threaten, intimidate and put the fear of God into British journalists, citizens, officials and media organisations. What results is injustice, intimidation, suppression of free speech, the crushing of a free press, bullying and bankruptcy. It results in protection from investigation and gives encouragement to fraudsters, crooks and money launderers. It has turned London into the global capital of dirty money. In extreme cases, it can undermine the security of the state by allowing people to act as extensions of foreign powers.
This is lawfare—lawfare against British freedom of speech, lawfare against the freedom of the press, and lawfare against justice for our citizens. Lawfare is the misuse of legal systems and principles by extraordinarily rich individuals and organisations to destroy their critics and opponents. In many cases, our reporters face reputational and financial ruin in defending themselves from these malevolent cases; even if they win, the expense and impact are huge. The chilling effect on a free press is extraordinary. Some newspapers hesitate to cover certain topics, such as the influence of Russian oligarchs, for fear of costly litigation. In at least one case I know, the publication avoids the subject outright.
These sorts of cases, designed to silence criticism, are so prolific that they now have an acronym: SLAPPs, which stands for strategic litigation against public participation. Such lawsuits are based on laws on defamation, privacy, data protection and—ironically—harassment. In the UK the cost of defending a case, no matter how well sourced and how great the public interest, can run into millions of pounds. These cases are so time-consuming and costly because a disclosure process before trial can be dragged out by deep-pocketed claimants for years to financially hobble the defendant, even before they get to the ruling.
The issue is not just the financial and reputational damage inflicted by these cases; lives are also being destroyed. Defendants are unable to work. Every waking moment is spent looking over their shoulders, wondering who or what is just around the corner. This is not about legitimate recourse against journalists making mistakes—because, as we know in this House, they can and they do; it is about shutting down scrutiny through fear.
Early in 2021, Russian Opposition leader Alexei Navalny published a video investigation into President Putin’s palace on the Black sea. In the video, he waved a copy of “Putin’s People” by Catherine Belton, a much respected Financial Times journalist at the time. Just two months later, Belton and her publisher were suddenly served with a series of lawsuits, filed over the course of six weeks by four Russian billionaires and the state-run company Rosneft—that, I think, gives away that the Russian state is involved.
Media lawyers with decades of experience in such cases said that they had never seen a legal onslaught of such scale and intensity. Those cases dragged on for over a year, and the cost of that year alone ran into the millions—£1.5 million for Catherine Belton alone. If the case had gone on, it would have cost millions more.
One of those suing Belton—the final one—was Roman Abramovich, the multi-billionaire owner of Chelsea football club. Abramovich claimed that Belton’s book alleged that he had a corrupt relationship with the Russian President and was making payments into Kremlin slush funds. An identical suit was also filed in an Australian court by Abramovich, to effectively double the cost of defending the case and to further intimidate HarperCollins.
It is worth reminding people of Mr Abramovich’s background and the character of the man. We are speaking here of the man who manages President Putin’s private economic affairs, according to the Spanish national intelligence committee. This is a man who was refused a Swiss residency permit, due to suspected involvement in money laundering and contacts with criminal organisations. Abramovich was also deemed a danger to public security and a reputational risk to Switzerland.
Abramovich initially came to the UK on an investor visa. In 2015, the Home Office tightened the rules around those visas, so that applicants could be required to prove the origins of their wealth. In 2018, when his visa was up for renewal, Abramovich withdrew the application. When he bought Chelsea FC, Abramovich was the governor of the Chukotka region of Russia. It was alleged by associates of his that the purchase was done at the behest of the Kremlin. As a result of the purchase, he now has enormous soft power and influence in the UK. I ask the House to come to its own conclusion about whether this man is acting at the behest of the Kremlin or Putin’s Government.
Belton’s case is now settled. Interestingly, there was a huge spin to suggest that Abramovich had won hands down, and he had not, but that is another matter. But for her colleague on the Financial Times, Tom Burgis, the author of “Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World”, his legal battles are just beginning. Burgis is being sued by the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation, a privately owned Kazakh multinational mining company. Since April 2013, ENRC has been under investigation by our Serious Fraud Office for fraud, bribery and corruption. The investigation is one of the longest-running and most complicated cases that the SFO has on its books. This case, and its reporting, has prompted a wave of legal proceedings by ENRC in the United States and the UK against journalists, lawyers and Serious Fraud Office investigators.
In May 2015, two former employees of ENRC turned up dead on the same day in a Missouri hotel. They were due to be witnesses in the SFO case. The cause of their death was recorded as malaria, but the chances of two people dying from malaria on the same day and at the same time, broadly—within hours of each other—is vanishingly small. The next year, a geologist associated with the company was found dead in the back of a burned-out Audi in Johannesburg. Burgis outlined these facts in his book, but he is now facing the wrath of ENRC, which alleges that passages in the book are “untrue” and “highly damaging”—the reason? Because ENRC interpreted the reporting of the deaths as Burgis suggesting
“murder to protect its business interests, or alternatively, there are strong grounds to ‘suspect’”
that ENRC had them murdered.
Even given the waiver, I should not comment on the substance of the ongoing legal proceedings, but what I will say is that the FBI takes these allegations seriously enough that it is now investigating the Missouri deaths. Take from that what you will, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Amazingly, when the FT reported the FBI’s action, ENRC then took action against that paper. Are we now to understand that journalists are not allowed to publicly report the deaths of witnesses for fear that someone may deduce that they were murdered by a company like ENRC?
Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is making a fantastically important speech, and I look forward to joining him to talk about these many important subjects. What does he think about those London-based law firms that are so willing to sell intimidatory legal threats as part of their services?
Mr Davis
My hon. Friend alights upon a very important point. It is very clear that some London-based law firms have found an incredibly profitable niche that they are willing to pursue without too much concern about the outcome. I think the professional bodies for those law firms should be looking very hard at them, as should the Government. It is an important point, which I am sure others will develop.
Mr Davis
My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. The way that it happens is that there are legal firms that now specialise in making that sort of intimidating tactic work, and it is based on multiple different laws—as I said earlier, on everything from defamation to data protection and privacy. Therefore, we have to find a way to govern how the courts work to ensure that exactly what he says does not happen and that there are not multiple attempts. After all, someone can be charged only once for a crime, so why can someone be sued multiple times for another sort of misbehaviour?
It is not only Amersi who is engaged in bullying and egregious behaviour, and it is not just law. For instance, Mr Carl Hunter was in contact by phone with Ms Leslie to attempt to informally broker peace between her and Mr Amersi and to urge her to apologise. He told her:
“You need to consider your position—being able to walk the dog at night, being able to sleep well at night.”
He said that she was looking at a “world of pain” on it. Those are clear and unacceptable threats, of which recordings are available, made in an attempt to intimidate. Those recordings contain other rather sinister comments as well.
Bob Seely
To reinforce a point that other hon. Members will probably make, although the lawyers—the Carter-Rucks and the Mishcon de Reyas—will say, “Everything that we do is legal,” this is part of a really corrupt and intimidatory practice that veers well into the criminal. Even if the lawyers are obeying the law, other parts of these sorts of campaigns are, frankly, purely criminal.
Mr Davis
I take my hon. Friend’s point. He will understand that I am picking my way carefully through my speech, given Mr Speaker’s ruling, so as not to trip into pre-empting the case. I am trying to present facts to the House so it can make its own judgment.
Charlotte Leslie has tried to settle the issue. After that intimidatory approach, she agreed to apologise to Mr Amersi and he rejected it. He is used to getting his way. He justified the use of money to get access to members of the royal family as “access capitalism”—that is his phrase. He has taken the same approach in this case. He throws money at a problem in an attempt to make it go away.
While Ms Leslie has been subject to legal harassment for a year, Sir Nicholas Soames has avoided the brunt of Amersi’s attack. Why? This is not a comment against Sir Nicholas, who is a very good man, but in Amersi’s own words—his rather odd English—it is because of his “grandioseness”. Charlotte, on the other hand, is not seen as grand and is therefore fair game. There is a simple non-legal word for that, which is bullying. That is what we are seeing.
So what do we need to do about SLAPPs? Members of this House will have many more ideas than me, and many of them are much more skilled and knowledgeable than me in these areas, but the clear fact is that there needs to be balance. Dealing with SLAPPs is an issue of balance. It is not wrong to sue journalists—sometimes they make serious mistakes or behave maliciously—but billionaires and multimillionaires should not be able to use the law to shut down legitimate criticism. Even if someone defends their case successfully, in this day and age they face material costs so huge that they will further deter others from following a story, and they can even destroy lives. Just to go off on a tangent, Charlotte Leslie, if she has to meet the costs of all of this, will probably have to sell her home and lose all her savings, and that is what an ordinary person faces in this context.
In the United States, 31 states have passed anti-SLAPP laws offering varying degrees of protection—remember that the US already has the first amendment—and in some cases allowing journalists and media organisations to file motions to dismiss such suits at an early stage on the grounds that the case involves protected speech on a matter of public interest. Such a protection does not exist in the UK, enabling the process to be dragged out at great expense to both parties. That is fine for those with deep pockets, but for an ordinary person it is immensely damaging financially and emotionally. It destroys the entire concept of equality under the law.
Other countries are already addressing this issue, and as they do, the problem for London will only grow as more and more ultra-wealthy individuals come here to exercise lawfare. If London is to remain the envy of the legal world, then we need to get a grip on the problem and stop this rampant abuse of our system. If we do not, we will continue to face these kinds of attacks on the freedom of our press—the foundation of our state—and we will leave our people subject to grotesque injustice in the face of this outrageous lawfare.
Liam Byrne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I will come on that in a moment.
The truth is that the truth is under attack by oligarchs with Russian connections because they are seeking to disguise the origin of their fortunes, their methods of business and, of course, their networks of friends. The result is that the frontline of this hybrid war now stetches from the streets of Donbass and Crimea and the troll farms of St Petersburg to the law courts of Britain—our courts, in England, here in London.
It was the Intelligence and Security Committee—whose distinguished Chair, theright hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), is present—that made clear on, I believe, page 22 of its landmark report on Russia that the interests of Russian business are now so closely entwined with the interests of the Russian state that it is impossible to unravel them. It is these honourable folk who are now using English courts as their preferred location for the business of truth silencing. According to a survey of 63 journalistsin 41 countries, more cases were brought against journalists in the UK than in America and Europe combined.As theright hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden said, the United States and Europe are now moving to shut this down, but we are not. That is why we are now becoming the global capital of the lawfare industry.
There are now so many cases that today we can reveal—it was evident in the right hon. Gentleman’s speech—what might be described as the oligarch’s playbook. Step one is to target the individual, not the organisation, because the individual is most vulnerable, and take aim at the slightest error. Arron Banks did not go for The Guardian or The Observer; he went for Carole Cadwalladr, and took aim at a single sentence in her TED talk. As we have heard, ENRC went after Tom Burgis personally after he flagged up the information that witnesses to its crimes were being murdered. Paul Radu, who happens to be Romanian, is being pursued in English courts by corrupt Azerbaijani politicians. We have to ask: why are powerful interests from far away suing journalists who are not English and do not write for English titles? Why are they being sued in English courts? Surely that must tell us that something in our country is going badly wrong.
Step two is to maximise intimidation, using covert surveillance if necessary. As we have heard, investigators and journalists are now being inundated with data subject access requests so that people who are up to no good can smoke out what they are up to. ENRC agents surveilled Tom Burgis, who was in a meeting that had been arranged on an encrypting messaging app; how on earth did it know about that? The Financial Times journalist Dan McCrum, who helped to break the Wirecard story, was subject to online abuse, hacking, electronic eavesdropping and physical surveillance. These people know no boundaries. They are completely out of control.
At one stage, I have been told, Elizabeth Denham, who was the Information Commissioner at the height of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, was warned by counter-terrorism officers that MI5 had evidence that she was under active intrusive surveillance ordered by Mr Arron Banks, so her office had to be swept. Others have told us about the “hack and leak” technique whereby systems are hacked into, and information is then leaked to serve as a trigger for defamation proceedings.
Step three is then to file the most ludicrously exaggerated claims. Mr Abramovich’s attack on Catherine Belton took completely out of context what Ms Belton had actually written. We know that Tom Burgis has been attacked because he is alleged to have said that a corporate entity had ordered the murders. There are extraordinary exaggerations and twisting of what has actually been written.
Step four is to co-ordinate the claims with others to maximise intimidation and, indeed, legal costs. Catherine Belton was subject to an onslaught first from the Alpha group, then from Abramovich, then from Mikhail Fridman, then from Shalva Chigirinsky, then from Pyotr Aven, and then from Rosneft—and we are being invited to believe that somehow this was unco-ordinated. They must think we are complete idiots.
Step five, as we have heard, is to file claims in multiple jurisdictions—an example is Mr Abramovich’s suit against HarperCollins in Australia—to maximise the cost for journalists, writers and their publishers. The impact is the creation of legal bills that are so big that they chill and kill the truth. Catherine Belton’s case cost well over £1.5 million, and it would have cost millions more if it had gone any further. Carole Cadwalladr’s case is costing hundreds of thousands of pounds. Major Karpov’s case against Bill Browder left Mr Browder with a bill of £600,000, which the plaintiff has not paid because when he lost his case, lo and behold, he subsequently disappeared.
Democracy’s watchdogs are having their tongues cut out and our writers are having their writing fingers broken. The result is that suspicion multiplies and the risk of corruption grows. I am so glad that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden has put before the House details of Mr Mohamed Amersi, which is a case in point. On Monday I shared intelligence with the House from sources inside the Kremlin and the Russian Government, including information about one of Mr Amersi’s business partners, a man called Leonard Bogdan, who sources tell me has “a definite FSB background.” I now learn that Mr Bogdan’s daughter works for the Conservative party’s central office and—surprise, surprise—was briefly secretary of Conservative Friends of the Middle East and North Africa.
We then learned, as the right hon. Gentleman said, that Mr Amersi’s associate, friend, colleague and lunching partner, Carl Hunter, threatened a former Member of Parliament, Charlotte Leslie, that without an apology to Mr Amersi the case had “all possibility of going further to a really gruesome stage.” What on earth is going on in this country when people like this are able to issue threats to anyone, never mind former Members of this House? And still Mr Amersi thinks he can go to a four-day trial and take Ms Leslie to court.
We still do not know the origin of Mr Banks’s donations to Leave.EU. When the Electoral Commission warned about the poor National Crime Agency investigation, Mr Banks sued the Electoral Commission and forced it to take down a statement about his lies. We have heard from regulators who fear judicial review because a subject access request might come in from representatives of organised crime groups that are seeking banking licences. This is complete madness. Perhaps there are perfectly innocent explanations for all this, and maybe I have too suspicious a mind, but I would like to know the truth. I want newspapers and investigators to be able to hunt down the truth and, where necessary, publish it.
That is why we need action and we need it now. We are still governed by the great European Magna Carta that we wrote in the 1950s, the European convention on human rights. It establishes a positive obligation to safeguard the freedom of a pluralist media and to create a favourable environment for participation in public debate. We are failing to uphold that duty.
It is not simply libel law being abused, as Bill Browder was attacked using cross-border insolvency legislation. We have heard how GDPR is now being misused by oligarchs. I was the shadow Minister on the Public Bill Committee on the Data Protection Act 2018, and I can expressly tell the House that it was not the intention of the previous Parliament for the Act to be used in this malicious way.
The new anti-corruption strategy and the economic crime plan that the Government have to refresh need to include five quick provisions. First, we need what are known as SLAPP-back laws so that a judge can rapidly dismiss a case if it is designated as strategic legal action against public participants. Secondly, we need a public figure defence, as America has, so a person who sues a public figure has a much higher bar to clear and needs to be able to prove actual malice. Thirdly, we need a sanctions regime against vexatious litigants, which could include paying 100% of costs or even punitive costs, to deter the misuse of our courts that we are now seeing. Fourthly, we need a defamation defence fund on the lines proposed by President Biden, and I humbly suggest that it should be funded by a windfall tax on the law firms making millions from the misuse of our courts.
Time and again, we have heard in our research about the behaviour of Hugh Tomlinson, Geraldine Proudler, Carter-Ruck, Mishcon de Reya, Schillings, CMS and Olswang, and it is now time for the regulatory body to pass new rules to ensure these firms follow a good model of litigation principles that ensures rules of good conduct and even liability for clients who refuse to pay their bills when they lose their case, like Major Karpov.
Bob Seely
This is yet another great speech. Does the right hon. Gentleman think that these solicitors’ bodies and barristers’ bodies should be more concerned about the very questionable ethics and behaviour of individual lawyers and individual law firms? They seem to be able to get away with whatever they want and offer whatever service, however questionable.
Liam Byrne
The hon. Gentleman is right on that. When we welcomed the integrated review and the rhetoric of “global Britain”, what none of us intended was that “global Britain” meant London becoming the capital of the global lawfare industry, yet we know about the profits that are being made by some of these firms, which, as the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden eloquently said, are now carving out a big fat niche for themselves.
In conclusion, once upon a time Mr Churchill warned about an “iron curtain” descending across our continent, from Stettin in the north to Trieste in the south. The challenge for our generation is very different. A kleptosphere is taking shape, stretching from Kaliningrad in the west to Kamchatka in the east. Every day, urgently, incessantly, patiently, friends of Mr Putin are trying to push the frontiers of that kleptosphere into Ukraine, the Balkans, Cyprus, Malta and the Baltics, and, yes, into Britain. It is pushed forward by attacking the weakest brick in our defences, and we in this House must ensure that our courts never become vectors for our country’s opposition. For nearly 1,000 years, our courts have been sanctuaries of justice, but now they are becoming arenas of silence, places in which the truth is killed. It was Václav Havel who said that the greatest defence against totalitarians is to live “in truth”. That is also the greatest defence against kleptocrats. I want to live in truth, which is why I say to the Minister: it is now time for the Government to act.
Sir Robert Neill
Let us be very clear: there are very significant regulations relating to the conduct of law firms in the United Kingdom. There are two separate regulatory regimes. Very properly, there are much greater checks in place on money laundering and source of funds for the solicitors profession, which handles client money, than for the Bar, which does not; it acts on the instructions that come via its professional client, the solicitors. That distinction is important, and I will digress briefly to deal with it.
We have to bear in mind that one of the key strengths of the independent Bar in England and Wales, in Scotland and in Northern Ireland is that barristers operate on the cab rank rule: if they hold themselves out as having expertise in a particular field of law and are available to take on a case when a proper fee is offered, they are professionally obliged to do so, regardless of their opinion of the client. That is utterly fundamental. Barristers do not and should not have the luxury of making moral choices about the people for whom they act; that is the essence of independence and objectivity at the Bar.
Bob Seely
Is my hon. Friend saying—he may well be right; I make no assertions—that it is a complete coincidence that Hugh Tomlinson keeps taking these cases?
Sir Robert Neill
If Mr Tomlinson practises in that field, it is open to him to take those cases—I have to say that bluntly to my hon. Friend. It would be a very dangerous thing if Parliament ever sought to interfere with the rights of any lawyer in respect of which clients they do or not take on. That would be a very dangerous and slippery slope; actually, it would go in the direction of the jurisdictions that we are rightly criticising in this debate.
Sir Robert Neill
Obviously, I am not in a position to consider the facts in that case. If people have suggestions, or examples that suggest a failure in the regulatory environment, of course they should bring them to the attention of the regulatory authorities; my experience has been that they take their job very seriously, and I know that the Ministry of Justice is very aware of this matter. Of course, one should never be afraid to look at specific examples to see if anything could be improved; I am very open to that. I would not, however, want to throw out the baby with the bath water in our approach to this issue, and that is why I argue for a balanced approach.
Sir Robert Neill
I will give way to my hon. Friend, and then I will try to make a bit of progress, because I have given way quite a number of times.
Bob Seely
My hon. Friend is making fantastically important points, and we are testing our arguments on him out of respect for his background and experience. Much as we like or dislike individual cases or lawyers, we all agree that lawyers should be independent, but we are talking about systemic failure that allows this corrupting industry to grow. On the point made by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), Bill Browder has directly alleged that CMS took instruction from Russian organised crime via middlemen, but nothing much seems to have been done about it, and there does not seem to be huge interest in where the money came from.
Sir Robert Neill
We must always make sure that the regulatory regime is kept up to date and fit for purpose. That applies to a number of the tools we have for dealing with this type of corruption. It also applies to resourcing of the Serious Fraud Office, which has been mentioned. We should make sure that it has the technology and manpower to deal with complex investigations, and that the courts and certain regulatory bodies have the technology to deal with complicated matters; there is no problem with that at all. The key thing that we must do, however, is preserve the independence of the regulatory bodies, and that is best done by our setting a proper legal framework—that is our responsibility—and giving them the tools to do their daily job in an independent fashion. As far as I can see, there is no dispute about that in the Chamber.
It is important, too, that we look at practical measures. I hope that the Ministry of Justice will consider consulting on anti-SLAPP laws that broadly follow the form of those in the United States. That is something that distinguished jurists such as Lord Neuberger think is well worth considering. It would be a sensible and constructive step forward. The High-level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom also suggested that reform of the civil procedure rules could be fairly regularly undertaken. That is something we could ask the judiciary themselves to look at, because they must be master of their own rules, rather than us dictating them.
It has been suggested, for example, that civil procedure rule 24.4 on summary judgment could be adjusted to make it easier to deal with such unmeritorious claims where they are being pursued for abusive reasons, such as deliberately stretching out proceedings to run up the costs. Perhaps greater use of security for costs could also be undertaken. Those are practical things that I have no doubt that the courts would be willing to do and we could ask them to consider. The broader legislative framework of the anti-SLAPP law, as I said before, is down to this House. I, for one, would be open to looking constructively at that. That is the balance that I wanted to get into the equation. How do we ensure the reputation that we have in this country as a jurisdiction of choice for litigation—that exceptional benefit?
Only yesterday, Justice Committee members and I met the Justices of the Supreme Court, across Parliament Square, because we thought it would be useful to start more of a dialogue between the legislature and the Supreme Court on matters of importance. We have there men and women of the highest integrity and intellectual ability. They reminded us of the very high percentage of cases that they deal with, even at the final appellant level, that involve international parties. Of itself, that is not a bad thing and we should not ever allow anyone to think that is ever a bad thing. Generally bona fide commercial organisations or individuals choose to litigate under English law precisely because it is trusted more than that anywhere else, because of the independence and because of the rigour. How do we preserve that and at the same time update, where necessary, the tools to prevent abuse of the system? That is the trick that we have to pull off. I am sure, with good will, that that can be done.
The final thing I was going to say in this context was referred to by other speakers in the debate: the importance of our continued engagement in the international sphere on this. I, for one, in particular stress the absolute importance of our continuing within our obligations to the Council of Europe and the convention on human rights. I regard that as an absolute red letter in our constitutional and legal position and a massive benefit to the UK.
I had the honour to serve in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for a number of years, before I became Chairman of the Justice Committee, and in that role I represented the Parliamentary Assembly on GRECO, the Group of States against Corruption, on which the Ministry of Justice has officials sitting on a permanent basis. Admirable work is done there, including, interestingly, by some of the emerging democracies in eastern and central Europe, which recognise the need to clean up their own systems and reputations. That is important.
Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
I thank the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) for his speech; I agree with many of his points. Normally, when people agree on stuff across the House, a bit of virtue signalling may be going on—but in this case, agreement shows serious concern about a really serious issue. I thank both the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) for securing this debate; for many of us, it will be one of the most important that we have spoken in.
The abuse of UK courts by organised crime, oligarchs and authoritarian states and their wretched proxies is, I believe, a significant threat when it comes to the corruption of the UK legal system, to freedom of speech and, as the hon. Member for Eltham was saying, to the conduct of due diligence against potentially corrupt actors who would threaten the health of our institutions.
I agree wholeheartedly with what my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) was saying—that nobody here is questioning the independence of UK courts and nobody is saying that we do not want that independence to continue. It is also true that London is a very important financial and legal centre, and long may that continue—it brings a great deal of money, wealth and employment into London and the UK—but I hope the Minister will understand that bad money drives out good and bad law will do the same. If we allow the cancer of the selling of intimidation services by high-end legal firms, it will not do us any good in the long run, just as in the long run letting mafias launder money would also be bad for us.
Let me be clear. Although these tactics are sold by law firms to many different actors, including organised crime and corrupt corporations, I think they are very much part, as some Members have said, of the Russian state playbook and Russian hybrid war tactics: the tools of non-military conflict in the west against the west. I will argue for significant reform of this corrupting cottage industry, which enriches the few at the expense of the whole. We need to bring in anti-SLAPP legislation, and we need to go after those lawyers—dare I call them slappers—who use such tactics. We need anti-slapper legislation. We also need a much more robust public Act of defence. The United States has one and we have to bring one in here as well.
Finally, I will make the case that we need a foreign lobbying law—or foreign agent registration Act, as some call it. In that way, the law firms that sell services such as reputation management, and related industries such as commercial spying and dirt digging on people, have to be clear about their business models. When they sell those services to overseas entities such as the major and questionable corporations that are Mr Putin’s proxies, they need to give us that information and put it in the public domain, so that the foreign lobbying law can help us identify who works for foreign actors and what they are doing.
We have discussed the various definitions of lawfare so I will not go into that, but there appear to be two important elements that I would like to address specifically. The first is when the law is used to intimidate, wear down and financially destroy journalists and campaigners, and the second, as the hon. Member for Eltham said, is when the law is used to intimidate organisations into failing to conduct due diligence. There is a massive potential issue if we allow bad actors into our energy, food or telecommunications markets.
From 1990 to 1994, I lived in the Soviet Union and in post-Soviet states, and in my academic work have studied as hard as I can types of Russian hybrid war. Let me give a little bit of background. In Russia, the ultimate outcome for a journalist who crosses the rich and powerful and cannot be silenced is death. They are murdered—and nearly two dozen have been murdered under Mr Putin’s leadership of the country. In this country, the murder of UK officials and journalists is not yet part of the oligarch organised crime playbook, although it is in some EU countries, so it is a danger. Instead, other methods are used, two of which are, as we have heard today, the use of libel law and the use of data protection law to intimidate and destroy financially. Reporters, campaigners and activists in our state are threatened not with physical destruction but with financial destruction.
The kompromat corruption industry has sadly been exported to our country from Moscow and St Petersburg. As well as journalists, publishers are intimidated into silence. I congratulate massively HarperCollins for fighting its cases. If HarperCollins has to pay out £5 million or £2 million in court costs every time, the message is clear: do not write about Russia, about those close to the Russian leader or about those state oligarchs who hide their dodgy dealings in plain sight. For the UK and the wider world, the result is that, as many of us have said, freedom of speech has been stifled and journalistic investigations remain unlaunched.
Apsana Begum
Does the hon. Member agree that if the Government are to tackle the type of Russian interference that he has been giving examples of, we must contend equally with the actions and activities of the US Government? Does he appreciate that the case of Julian Assange is relevant? It has been reported that the US had plans to assassinate him on British soil, and at this moment he languishes in prison.
Bob Seely
I am not quite sure of the case that the hon. Lady talks about but the principle is clear: SLAPP legislation applies not just to one country, one industry or one person; it is there to prevent the use of lawsuits against public participation and is in favour of good journalism, good campaigning and good activism. As the hon. Member for Eltham said, SLAPP legislation would not support rich companies that hide their hacking activities—that would not be purposeful—and would prevent bad actors from trying to prevent important information from coming out.
In recent years, several high-profile examples have exposed slightly different tactics in each case, including those of Catherine Belton and HarperCollins, Tom Burgis, Chris Steele, Bill Browder and former Member of Parliament Charlotte Leslie. I thank them all for fighting their battles. Allegedly, the firms that offer and sell—dare I say it?—legal intimidation services to the corrupt, to organised crime or to the Russian state or its proxies include, so we are told, some of the many names that have been mentioned thus far: CMS, Mishcon de Reya, Skadden, Carter-Ruck, Schillings and Harbottle & Lewis, which services Mr Abramovich’s needs.
What do the tactics look like? The Carter-Ruck strategy against Charlotte Leslie appears to be to ratchet up exorbitant costs in the hope of achieving a technical victory on data law and then inflicting the costs on Charlotte and her team in the hope of bankrupting her and her organisation. Last summer, in one week alone, she received 12 letters. Carter-Ruck then threatened other of her directors, despite the fact that they have not taken part in any way in any of the relevant activity.
As we have heard, Catherine Belton and HarperCollins were hit by multiple suits from oligarchs close to President Putin.
In Bill Browder’s well-known case, as the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill said, a relatively lowly official in the Russian Interior Ministry, who was allegedly part of a campaign to steal tens of millions of dollars and linked to the murder of Sergei Magnitsky, hired Olswang, which is now part of CMS, to go after Bill Browder via a bogus bankruptcy claim. If the internet is correct, the lawyer in question, Geraldine Proudler, used to serve on the Scott Trust, which oversees The Guardian, and apparently now serves on the Guardian Foundation board. I will come back to that, because I have questions for the editor of The Guardian, but I do not support any side that takes questionable funding, whether they are political parties—mine or others—or lawyers. This is not about score settling; I am glad when The Guardian has pointed out where we are not living up to those standards, if indeed that is the case.
With Tom Burgis, we have heard about the Kazakh mining company ENRC issuing 18 legal proceedings in the UK and US against lawyers, investigators and—seriously—the Serious Fraud Office. When the journalist Dan McCrum was being investigated and chased, all those people came out of London. Potentially the most important case in some ways is Daphne Galizia, the murdered Maltese journalist, who was facing 47 lawsuits at the time of her murder. According to her sons, Mishcon de Reya
“sought to cripple her financially with libel action in the UK courts”.
They also said:
“The campaign for justice in our mother’s case cannot be disentangled from the abuse that she suffered at the hands of Mishcon de Reya’s lawyers. The firm sought to cripple her financially with libel action in UK courts, on the instruction of...Henley & Partners. Had our mother not been murdered, they would have succeeded.”
They added that the firm
“has consistently threatened and harassed not just our mother, but countless other journalists worldwide”.
Effectively she was about to be financially destroyed before she was, by others, physically destroyed, but the principle was the same: she was to be silenced at all costs.
We look at the websites of all these big fancy posh firms that apparently charge double or triple rates for doing this sort of work, and one would think butter would not melt in their mouths. I am sure they do pro bono work. This sort of work, offering these sorts of services to some of the most unsavoury human beings and organisations on the planet, is deeply immoral and is deeply corrupting to those otherwise upstanding firms, which should be doing more to protect and not corrupt our legal system. What is being offered is a cottage industry of lawfare—legalised intimidation by some of the most deeply unpleasant individuals and organisations on the planet. These companies are going out trawling for business because it is so well paid. The lawyers who do this sort of work should, to put it bluntly, be deeply ashamed of what they do, because they destroy the integrity of the UK legal system, not uphold it. They charge double or triple, but it is a moral abuse of the law, and they know it.
I want to make one specific point about Geraldine Proudler. I look at her reputation and her lovely website and all that. Bill Browder told me that CMS takes effective instruction via middlemen from Russian organisations and from individuals who have since been sanctioned under Magnitsky. My question to Katharine Viner, who is the editor of The Guardian, is: what on earth is Geraldine Proudler doing on the Guardian Foundation, if she is still a member? What on earth was somebody who was engaged in a case defending a person sanctioned under Magnitsky doing on the Scott Trust? What on earth has the Labour party said about that? Again, I do not defend one side or the other, but there are folks on the Opposition Benches who should be saying to The Guardian, “What on earth are you doing?” I am sure there are other examples that can be thrown our way, and I will not defend anybody.
The board of English PEN, which campaigns to defend writers and freedom of speech, decided in 2018 to retain the libel lawyer Anthony Julius as a trustee. Mr Julius is, I am sure, a fine and upstanding man, but he was also a senior at Mishcon de Reya, the firm that hounded Daphne Galizia to her financial destruction, prior to her physical destruction. I find it unspeakable that these people have got away with this behaviour with absolutely no reputational damage to them at all, yet they are doing things that are actively bad for freedom of speech, any concept of truth and the UK legal system.
I will not go on for too much longer, but I will raise just a couple of other points, if I may. There is a second element here that is critical, which is the intimidation, using data protection laws, of people who are doing due diligence work on our behalf as civil servants. We have seen that ENRC, as part of its wave of lawsuits, has started proceedings against the Serious Fraud Office, or was threatening to do so. I understand that threats of judicial review have also been made in relation to decisions made by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. We are getting into very serious territory when the functioning of Government, as well as the exposing of truth—and, dare I say, concepts such as justice—is being severely hammered and severely damaged.
However, we then move on to another aspect, which is not only the financial destruction, but the reputational destruction facing journalists. I understand that in the Carter-Ruck and Charlotte Leslie case, PR agencies were working hand in glove with the law firms Phil Hall Associates and Kroll, as well as K2 Integrity, a company that helps with “litigation support” and “reputational defence”—also known as digging dirt on other people. I think we are importing too much of the Russian tradition, and it is a specific Russian tradition, of kompromat—the collection of compromising material—which started under the Soviets and is now a huge industry there. Komprometiruyushchiy material, as it is called, is material that is found and then used to blackmail or destroy individuals. In this country, it happens at the same time as racking up extraordinarily large legal bills.
I believe this cottage industry of corrupt activities is actually pretty vile. I think it undermines rather than supports the legal system in this country, and it undermines rather than supports freedom of speech, so what needs to be done? The Government apparently want to restart or to reboot, and I congratulate them on that. I think they need to do so. May I humbly suggest that one of ways that we could be supporting higher standards in public life is by gripping this issue?
The first point is that libel tourism should effectively be outlawed. Secondly, let us look at bringing in a robust public actor defence that raises the bar for the rich and powerful taking on campaigners and journalists. Thirdly, let us have statutory regulation of private investigators and firms that take on the collection of kompromat. Fourthly, let us bring in SLAPP legislation. Fifthly, I again say that we need a foreign lobbying Act as part of the updating of our lobbying laws in this country, which are not fit for purpose. That explains why the UK remains an influence pedlar’s paradise. I have been urging this for four years, and I produced a study of options for the Government about 18 months ago. Corruption scandals, sleaze scandals and lobbying scandals will continue ad infinitum in this country until we grip this issue and do something about it.
I do not want to get in the way of client confidentiality, but I want to know what these firms are doing working for these oligarchs. I want to know how many hours they are billing—I would not mind knowing at what rate as well, to be honest—and what they are doing, as well as which bits of those companies are doing what and why. We need this in the public domain for the good of all of us. We need this cottage industry if not shut down, then severely limited. I will continue to fight for this, as I know others will, because it is very important to the law and to the legal system in this country. Although it is a highly paid industry, it is a corrupting one. It seeks not to strengthen freedom, but to destroy it. It seeks not to defend justice, but to undermine it. It is a growth industry, but in the same way that cancer can be inside a body politic, and it needs to be cut out. I believe that those who work on behalf of foreign states, proxies and organisations betray our values, and the values of our legal system and our nation.
Aaron Bell
I thank my hon. Friend, who speaks with experience as a former Chair of a Select Committee. The Procedure Committee, on which I serve, has been looking at what is covered by parliamentary privilege, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) will hear what he has said today and make sure he examines whether that is something we could look at.
Bob Seely
On privilege, occasionally we get the use of it wrong and everyone talks about abusing it, but actually it is fundamentally so important. We need to update it. We need absolute clarity on Committees, on broadcast, and on the relationship between talking about things here and being able to discuss them outside. That urgently needs to be looked at, and if we need new primary legislation, let us get it. If my hon. Friend would keep on looking at this, we would all be very grateful.
James Cartlidge
Let me be clear to my right hon. Friend. I was simply referring to the debate as a whole. I recognise that he referred to all parties; I was just putting in some balance because we had only heard about one party. On his point, I am more than happy to meet him and look at the detail of what he proposes, because I do not think it is directly relevant to the matters that we have been debating.
It is important to consider lawfare threats in the broader context of Government action to curb abusive foreign influence. Last year, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy brought in the National Security and Investment Act 2021 precisely to target foreign state interference in our economy.
Bob Seely
I am grateful to the Minister for listening to the debate. He says that the intervention of my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) was not directly relevant but, with great respect, it was, because we need to protect people such as Charlotte Leslie, who are trying to do due diligence; we need to protect officials at the SFO to ensure that they are not hounded individually; and we need to protect journalists and people here. We need to protect quite a lot of people in this debate. He says that the Government will do everything in their power, which is great, but we need to get on and act because there is a real specific problem at the moment.
James Cartlidge
I recognise that there is a lot of concern about sources of money. The hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) and a number of other colleagues have talked about the source of funding. I do recognise its importance, but stress that the legal profession has a robust due diligence mechanism in place to prevent dirty money corrupting our courts. Anti-money laundering regulations exist to combat illicit financing. The suspicious activity reporting regime requires legal professions to report to the UK financial intelligence unit within the National Crime Agency where terrorist activity or money laundering is suspected. Law enforcement officials must act safe in the knowledge that the Government defend their investigative remit as we all collectively rely on their industry. There has been a lot of talk about following the money. I just make the point that we do have robust regulations in place, as my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Justice Committee said earlier.