Proposals in the Queen’s speech to implement the draft Defamation Bill in the next parliamentary session attracted a mixed response. A bill ‘to protect freedom of speech and reform the law of defamation’ is expected to restrict the use of ‘forum shopping’ by overseas litigants and to introduce a new test of ‘serious harm’ for actionable cases. The bill would also remove the presumption in favour of a jury trial for defamation cases and create statutory defences of truth and honest opinion to replace the common law defences of justification and fair comment.

The Libel Reform Campaign hailed the announcement as ‘the first wholesale attempt at reform since 1843’. It pledged to ‘carry on fighting to make sure that the detail in the final bill will truly deliver reform.’

However Paul Tweed, head of media and dispute resolution at Belfast, Dublin and London firm Johnsons, described the proposed legislation as ‘a sop to the press’.

He said that the new test would move access to justice ‘even further away from the man on the street’. He dismissed concerns about ‘libel tourism’ saying that only a handful of overseas claimants had reached the courts - and that in any case many overseas claimants had dual nationality.

The Law Society welcomed the announcement of legislation, saying ‘we expect the vast majority of its provisions to lead to a clearer, more proportionate defamation law regime’.

However the Society expressed ‘deep reservations’ about proposals to introduce a ‘serious harm’ requirement for statements to be actionable. ‘We agree that a mechanism is needed to discourage trivial claims, but this proposal is likely to inhibit many people trying to validly protect their reputation from doing so.’

It warned that such a measure would ‘create an unreasonably high threshold to overcome at a very early stage, necessitating extensive and costly pre-action work’.

In combination with changes to no-win, no-fee agreements, ‘ordinary people, small businesses and charities may simply not be able to afford to protect their reputation if this provision becomes law’, the Society said.