Lloyd Hatton MP’s speech at the Reshaping Legal Services Conference 2025

Lloyd Hatton, MP for South Dorset, chair of the APPG on Fair Banking and a member of the Anti-Corruption and Responsible Tax APPG, delivered the keynote speech at our Reshaping Legal Services Conference on 7 March 2025. The speech is below. Check against delivery.

Speech by Lloyd Hatton MP

Thank you and good afternoon – it is a pleasure to be in a room with so many lawyers, legal services professionals, regulators, and representatives from academia and the judiciary.

Now I am not a legal expert myself. But I do have long-standing experience working with journalists and civil society activists who uncover corruption, fraud and money laundering.

Far from being a white-collar issue that doesn’t affect our day-to-day lives, economic crime facilitates the drugs being sold to our children, violent crime on our streets, supports despots, oligarchs and kleptocrats who wish our country harm, and economic crime also leads to the impoverishment of many developing nations.

Often, these harmful financial flows – and the bad actors behind them – are uncovered by the hard work of investigators. And these journalists and civil society activists often rely on whistleblowers to shine a spotlight on wrongdoing.

Without these investigations, we would never have know about the money laundering, tax evasion and corruption that was exposed by the Panama Papers, Pandora Papers or Paradise Papers leaks.

Without these investigations, we would not have learnt how £4.5 billion of Malaysian state funds were siphoned off. Without these investigations, we would not have found out about the £3.5 billion moved into legitimate financial systems by Russian oligarchs through the ‘Troika Laundromat’. And without these investigations, we would never have understood the full extent of the Post Office Horizon scandal.

The list goes on and on. And yet, stories like these too often never reach publication, meaning they never see the light of day.

Time and again, wealthy individuals, white-collar criminals, oligarchs and kleptocrats use their financial might to muzzle free speech and – in turn – launder their own reputation.

The financial threat of prolonged litigation is often all it takes to silence accountability and scrutiny. Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation are just another name for lawfare, legal threats, intimidation or—simply put—bullying, and this form of bullying has gone on for many years.

And Britain is – shamefully – the destination of choice for these lawfare tactics.

Why are we allowing our legal system to be hijacked in this way? These legal threats effectively stifle debate around a wide range of pressing issues which are of significant public interest.

In doing so, I fear they shield misconduct and conceal wrongdoing in such a way that the powerful individuals behind these legal threats can get away scot-free.

While this foul play is unacceptable, it is also a tool that is only available to those that can afford the best lawyers. There is not a level playing field – legal intimidation of this sort is only available to those with deep pockets.

In Britain, we can be proud to have one of the most advanced legal services sectors in the world – much of it being in this room today. But we are also a more plaintiff-friendly jurisdiction, where mounting a defence is a particularly costly and lengthy process.

And we have – sadly in my view – become the libel capital of the world. The UK is, worryingly, by far the most frequent country of origin for cases of lawfare.

The justification for this abuse of the legal process often goes as follows: everyone has a right to representation, the law is a neutral profession, and the cab rank system means that lawyers have an obligation to offer their services to whoever needs them.

I disagree. In my view, when our courts are used to settle scores and quash scrutiny, lawyers are instead acting as hired guns. They are being used to advance certain ends. And lawyers and their regulators have an ethical responsibility to be more discerning.

In 2023, the Solicitor’s Regulation Authority noted that solicitors are not simply ‘hired guns’ in a warning notice about abusive litigation – which I welcome. Despite these remarks, the SRA failed to sanction a real instance of legal intimidation, in a case you are all probably very familiar with.

Also back in 2023, we learnt that the British government had foolishly aided the infamous – and now deceased – Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin to sue Eliot Higgins, an acclaimed British journalist.

Prigozhin had already been subject to UK sanctions for more than a year – for his role providing support to the mercenary Wagner Group in Libya. Despite this, the Government issued special licences to a British law firm, Discreet Law, to work for the Russian warlord.

The case was taken in claimant-friendly London, even though Prigozhin himself – under sanction – could not enter the country.

In court documents, Prigozhin claimed that Higgins had caused him “great distress” and his character and reputation had been “gravely damaged”.

As an aside, I think Prigozhin did a perfectly good job of reputation damage all by himself.

So, what did Higgins have the temerity to report? Something that was entirely true and already in the public domain: that Prizoghzin was the leader of the notorious mercenary Wagner Group.

The proceedings against Higgins were eventually struck out.

Discreet Law pulled out of the case a month into Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the law firm has since closed, though its partners lead other firms that continue to operate in London.

In response to this baseless lawsuit, Higgins filed a complaint against the firm with the SRA. Two years later, the regulator found that Discreet Law had “acted appropriately” in representing the sanctioned Wagner leader – and that the case was not a SLAPP.

Even more astounding – despite multiple international sanctions designations, the SRA found “no evidence” that Discreet Law was aware that Prigozhin ran the Wagner Group.

And so, the lawyers who engaged in this abusive litigation faced no consequences to acting as hired hands for an insidious individual such as Prigozhin.

Sarah Sackman KC, the new Minister of State in the Ministry of Justice, condemned this behaviour as “intolerable” in Parliament recently, and noted that “journalists are the lifeblood of our democracy”.

And indeed – If this isn’t a SLAPP, then what is exactly? It is hard to imagine a clearer case of an abuse of process. And the SRA’s inaction shows how inadequate our current regulatory framework is.

As it stands, law firms face no deterrent to using harmful lawfare tactics. The SRA has a fining power of just £25,000 for traditional law firms, which pales in comparison to those firms’ resources.

And the vast majority of cases reported to the SRA are closed with no further action. The few that make it to the Solicitor’s Disciplinary Tribunal, as we know, are rarely deemed to be SLAPPs.

We must be far more robust in our response to these abuses of process.

So where do we go from here?

There is a clear consensus in Parliament on three points.

Firstly, that lawyers and regulators must take their ethical responsibilities more seriously.

Secondly, that we must create a tougher regulatory environment, where the SRA feel empowered to be more bullish when cracking down on these suspected lawfare cases.

And finally, that we need anti-SLAPP legislation that go beyond cases involving economic crime.