The government has dropped Lord Leveson’s controversial proposal to make newspapers pay both sides’ legal costs for libel actions, whether they won or lost in court.
Culture Secretary Matt Hancock told MPs last week that the Leveson Inquiry has formally closed and the government will seek to repeal the s 40, Crime and Courts Act 2013 cost provision laws. Hancock said the ‘terms of reference’ for the second part of Leveson had ‘largely been met’ and the media landscape was ‘markedly different’ from that examined by Lord Leveson in 2011. Newspaper circulation has fallen by about 30% while about 200 local newspapers have been forced to close, he said, and publishers are finding it hard to generate revenue online. Meanwhile, unregulated social media has risen dramatically as an information source.
However, Steven Heffer, partner at Collyer Bristow, which acted for many of the celebrities affected by phone hacking, said: ‘It is astonishing that the government is abandoning it promises to victims of the phone-hacking scandal.’
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