Solicitor Ashley Hurst was instructed by Zahawi with regard to allegations made by journalist and former tax lawyer Dan Neidle about the ex-Chancellor’s tax affairs. Hurst first messaged with Neidle, then sent him an email headed ‘Confidential & Without Prejudice’, seeking retraction and stating he was not entitled to publish or refer to the email other than for the purposes of seeking legal advice.
Neidle considered the email an improper attempt to stifle his journalism. He contacted the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to draw their attention to the practice of attaching labels such as ‘without prejudice’ and ‘confidential’ to letters, and inviting them to update their guidance on strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs).
The SRA charged Hurst with professional misconduct and, in December 2024, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal fined Hurst for professional misconduct and awarded £260,000 costs against him.
Hurst successfully appealed. Ruling in Ashley Hurst v Solicitors Regulation Authority [2026] EWHC 85 (Admin), Mrs Justice Collins Rice held there was no misconduct and no SLAPP.
Collins Rice J said: ‘This idea of a preoccupation with secrecy and stifling a right to publish—proposed by the SRA and adopted by the Tribunal—was, in my judgment, insufficiently examined, accounted for, or evidentially supported in the Tribunal’s analysis, and as such was replete with risk of unfairness to Mr Hurst and to the reaching of an unfair decision.’
She said: ‘The other troubling feature of the Tribunal’s conclusion is the vehemence and disparagement with which it was expressed.’ She concluded: ‘The decision challenged in this appeal was insufficiently analysed and reasoned, vitiated by misdirection and error of law, and unfair.’
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