Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Ministry of Justice working group on libel

Over the Christmas break I was invited to join the working group being set up by the Ministry of Justice to look at the law of libel.

It is an area of law that's creating a lot of 'heat' at the moment - issues such as 'libel tourism', conditional fee agreements and the burden on a defendant have all attracted a great deal of attention from the traditional media as well as bloggers and the Twitter community too.

The working group is to meet four times in January, February and March before reporting to Jack Straw with its recommendations.

As yet I don't know who the others members of the working group are, although when announced it was said to be made up of editors, lawyers and academics.

Incidentally I've also advised the MoJ on opening up the family courts and the plans to allow further media access.

I'll blog whatever I can, whenever I can. although I suspect the discussion may be confidential until the report to the Minister is made public. So watch this space.