Defamation Act 2013

Defamation Act 2013^[1]

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Long title	An Act to amend the law of defamation.
Citation	2013 c 26
Introduced by	Kenneth Clarke Lord McNally
Territorial extent	England and Wales only, except that sections 6 and 7(9) and 15 and 17 and, in so far as it relates to sections 6 and 7(9), section 16(5), also extend to Scotland[2]
Dates
Royal assent	25 April 2013
Commencement	1 January 2014[3]
Status: Current legislation
History of passage through Parliament
Text of statute as originally enacted
Revised text of statute as amended

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The Defamation Act 2013 (c 26) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which changed English defamation law on issues of the right to freedom of expression and the protection of reputation. It also comprised a response to perceptions that the law as it stood was giving rise to libel tourism and other inappropriate claims.

The Act changed existing criteria for a successful claim, by requiring claimants to show actual or probable serious harm (which, in the case of for-profit bodies, is restricted to serious financial loss), before suing for defamation in England or Wales, setting limits on geographical relevance, removing the previous presumption in favour of a trial by jury, and curtailing sharply the scope for claims of continuing defamation (in which republication or continued visibility constitutes ongoing renewed defamation). It also enhanced existing defences, by introducing a defence for website operators hosting user-generated content (provided they comply with a procedure to enable the complainant to resolve disputes directly with the author of the material concerned or otherwise remove it), and introducing new statutory defences of truth, honest opinion, and "publication on a matter of public interest" or privileged publications (including peer reviewed scientific journals), to replace the common law defences of justification, fair comment, and the Reynolds defence respectively. However, it did not quite codify defamation law into a single statute.^[4][5]

The Defamation Act 2013 applies to causes of action occurring after its commencement on 1 January 2014;^[6] old libel law therefore still applied to many 2014–15 defamation cases where the events complained of took place before commencement.