An emergency law must be passed to stop Russian oligarchs using the notorious UK legal system to threaten and silence critics, Labour has told Boris Johnson.
Keir Starmer is stepping up pressure for the government to get tougher with Vladimir Putin’s “rich cronies” with a demand to stamp out so-called “strategic lawsuits against public participation”, or Slapps.
The high-cost legal claims are widely seen as a way for the powerful to use the law to intimidate journalists and activists, by burdening them with enormous legal costs.
Senior Tories have also called for action – but a crackdown on Slapps is not currently part of the anti-Putin Economic Crime Bill to be rushed through parliament on Monday.
Sir Keir called that an “abject failure” that would go down as a “missed opportunity that could cost lives”, arguing that Australia, Canada and 32 US states all have anti-Slapp laws.
“We are already behind the rest of the world in enforcing sanctions against oligarchs funding Putin’s murderous invasion of Ukraine,” he said.
“We can’t then also give room for them to sue their way out of sanctions, while gagging the UK’s media. ‘Lawfare’ is not the way we do things in this country.”
“The Russian leadership is fuelled by a thuggish brutality that we cannot allow to filtrate through his rich cronies to clog up our courts, muzzle our press, and avoid just, fair and effective sanctions,” he added
In recent days, there have been suggestions that both the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Justice are examining possible reforms.
Their concerns are believed to centre on fears that the lawsuits will be used to allow rich Russians with links to Putin or the Kremlin to evade threatened sanctions.
But Sir Keir added: “Ukraine does not have weeks to wait for the justice secretary to consult on his options, or the foreign secretary to hear back from her lawyers – with every passing day the threat to civilians grows from Putin’s barbaric shelling.”
In a recent Commons debate on the misuse of British courts, Tory MPs David Davis and Bob Seely were among those demanding action on Slapps.
Mr Davis warned that people with “exceptionally deep pockets” are able to “threaten, intimidate and put the fear of God into British journalists, citizens, officials and media organisations”.
Mr Seely said: “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.”
In response, James Cartlidge, justice minister, agreed that “Slapps represent an abuse of the legal system”, attacking “threatening tactics to silence free speech”.
But he told MPs: “We must be cautious to respond to Slapps in a proportionate way that continues our tradition of balancing individual rights with the public good.”
