News and Comment
Mass lobby for libel reform
18 June 2012
Join high profile supporters of the Libel Reform Campaign in Parliament on Wednesday 27th June to tell Parliamentarians and policy makers that we need a new public interest defence to libel.The Defamation Bill, which received its second reading debate in the House of Commons on 12th June, contains measures to reduce libel tourism and end the multiple publication rule. However, it has failed to put forward a useable public interest defence and offers no restrictions on the ability of corporations to silence critics.
Unless these issues are addressed, libel threats and libel actions will still be used to bully newspaper journalists, scientists, bloggers, consumer groups, human rights activists and others.
On Wednesday 27th June Dara Ó Briain, Professor Brian Cox and Dave Gorman, organisations backing libel reform, the three charities at the heart of the Libel Reform Campaign (Index on Censorship, English PEN and Sense About Science), victims of the libel laws including Simon Singh, Ben Goldacre and Peter Wilmshurst and hundreds of our supporters will tell Parliament that we need a new public interest defence.
In this final push for a truly fair and effective Defamation Bill, we need your help:
Please write to your MP. You can find a template email and full instructions about contacting your MP on the Libel Reform Campaign pages.
Join us in Parliament. Please come along to Committee Room 11 at 10.30am on 27th June. More details and directions can be found on the Mass Lobby event page. **Please note change of room to Committee Room 11**
And ask your MP to be there. Tell your MP you would like them to attend the meeting too. And you can arrange to raise your concerns about libel reform directly with your own MP after the meeting. Details of how to arrange this are also on the Mass Lobby event page.
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