Vince: Dispute with Tory peer
Green industrialist Dale Vince is seeking an injunction to stop a Conservative peer he is suing for libel from publishing his lawyer’s response to the letter before action on the grounds that it too is defamatory, it emerged yesterday.
Mr Justice Pepperall refused to consider Lord Shaun Bailey’s bid to strike out the application because it was made too late, while also hinting that the judge hearing such an application should reject it.
Mr Vince is suing Lord Bailey for comments made on GB News and in his appeal on the CrowdJustice website for backing to defend Mr Vince’s claim.
The judge recounted: “He argues that the publications asserted that he supported or had endorsed the terrorist acts of Hamas, or that he was an apologist for Hamas and was himself an antisemite who had publicly defended Hamas as freedom fighters just two days after the October atrocity.”
Yesterday’s ruling, following a preliminary issues hearing in November, dealt among other things with the meaning of the statements complained of and rejected Lord Bailey’s application for summary judgment.
Pepperall J was also asked to determine the meaning of statements complained of in the letter from Lord Bailey’s then solicitors, Coad Law, to Brett Wilson, Mr Vince’s solicitors, on 16 May 2024, that the peer threatened to publish.
The 16-page letter cited various comments about Hamas and its actions on 7 October 2023 that Brett Wilson had made.
It continued: “We therefore take from your correspondence that it is common ground between both our clients and respective firms that Hamas is a terrorist organisation and that any individual who acts as an apologist for it should be excoriated accordingly…
“It therefore appears that by virtue of his remarks supporting Hamas and its violent methodology during the Interview your client has ‘express[ed] an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation and in so doing [was] reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression was directed will be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation’, and has thereby committed the offence created by s.12(1A)(a) and (b) of the Terrorism Act 2000.”
The letter also said Hamas was “genocidal and so is closely aligned in its core aims with those of the Nazism of the Third Reich which was responsible for the extermination of 6 million Jews”.
The letter conceded that Mr Vince qualified his support for Hamas by saying that he did not support what it had done on 7 October.
It concluded with a threat of publication the following week: “Please note therefore that it is our client’s intention to place this correspondence in the public domain to enable your client’s conduct and that of your firm to be the subject of public scrutiny…
“Please also note that our client intends to ensure that that it is raised in both Houses of Parliament and will be sending a copy of the letter to senior members of his party.”
The letter was not in fact published and Lord Bailey’s advocate told the court that he did not intend to do so. Mr Vince nonetheless sought the injunction.
Pepperall J held there was “no purpose to be served in embarking on a meaning determination of an unpublished letter”.
An injunction would only be granted if there were reasonable grounds to infer that Lord Bailey threatened or intended to publish the letter, and that would have to be judged as and when the court had to consider Mr Vince’s claim.
Lord Bailey had applied to strike out the claim only a week before the hearing and the judge held “it would not be just” to hear the unlisted application when Mr Vince’s counsel complained that they were not ready for it.
If Lord Bailey wanted to pursue the application, it would have to be listed for hearing and Pepperall J made two observations that the judge hearing it “might… want to take into account”.
First was that the letter “was not limited to calling Mr Vince an apologist for Hamas… but also alleged the commission of a serious criminal offence under the Terrorism Act 2000. Further, the threatened publication contained the extreme defamatory allegation that Mr Vince was an apologist for a group that was then compared to Hitler’s Third Reich”.
Second, he quoted the then Master of the Rolls Lord Phillips in the landmark 2005 case of Jameel, when he said that “where a defamatory statement has received insignificant publication in this jurisdiction, but there is a threat or a real risk of wider publication, there may well be justification for pursuing proceedings in order to obtain an injunction against republication of the libel”.
Pepperall J explained: “The letter of 16 May 2024 contained a very specific threat to publish its contents. Such threat has not been acted upon but whether it has been withdrawn or remains real and credible would no doubt be important issues.
“An obvious way in which Lord Bailey could seek to address that issue would be by formally undertaking not to publish the letter.”
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