Justice secretary Jack Straw yesterday announced that a bill reforming the law of libel will be introduced in the next parliament. The planned legislation, which arises from a report from the Ministry of Justice’s Libel Working Group, is designed to improve the rules covering defamation on the internet and offer greater protection for investigative journalism.

The current multiple publication rule will be replaced with a ‘single publication rule’. This will mean claimants will only be able to sue if they bring an action within one year of the original publication date, rather than on each occasion that an online story is viewed. The courts will have the power to extend this period where necessary to protect those being defamed.

To protect investigative journalism, consideration will be given to a statutory defence to protect publishers of items that are in the public interest.

The government will also move to prevent the growth of ‘libel tourism’ by tightening up the rules where the court’s permission is required to serve defamation cases outside England and Wales.

Straw said: ‘Our current libel laws need to achieve a fair balance between allowing people to protect their reputations from defamatory allegations, and ensuring that freedom of expression and the public’s right to know on matters of public interest are not unnecessarily impeded. At the moment, we believe that the balance is tilted too much in favour of the former.

‘Replacing the multiple publication rule will ensure that people cannot take court action every time the same article is downloaded, preventing costly and unnecessary legal actions and the uncertainty for publishers of open-ended liability.’

He added: ‘The government is considering whether a statutory public interest defence would help journalists and other groups who investigate matters of public importance, who are sometimes prevented from making their findings known because of the threat of legal action.’

Separate reforms are currently going through parliament to reduce the success fees that lawyers in defamation cases can charge from 100% to 10%.