DUP now in a key position to help bring about libel reform

Across the Irish Sea, it is necessary for a claimant in a libel case to show that they have suffered serious harm to their reputation in order to be successful.

This requirement strikes a sensible compromise between the essential right of individuals and organisations to be able to protect their reputations, if that reputation is worthy of protection, and the right of everyone else to free commentary and free expression and free inquiry.

Tensions between these two competing rights have evolved over centuries, particularly since newspapers became a major source of information in the 1700s (anyone who is following our serialisation of 1739 News Letters will see how one party to a dispute might be reported as saying one thing, and another party says something different in a later edition).

The requirement that a litigant show that they have suffered serious harm was introduced in the rest of the UK when there was broad political agreement that the balance had moved too far in favour of complainants.

This meant that scientists, for example, were sometimes being silenced in their essential work by big businesses.

This essential libel reform was not extended to Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, financial pressures on small media outlets across Britain and Ireland have increased, making them particularly vulnerable to bullying or vexatious litigants.

This week there will be attempts to extend overdue reform to Northern Ireland. The DUP will be aware that supporters of terrorism, among others, can take advantage of that vulnerability. Papers would not have dared to report the widely known violent records of some of the republican leaders who have recently died when they were still alive.

The DUP is now in a position of considerable influence over the UK government, which we sincerely hope will result in defamation law reform, perhaps this very week.