The landmark defamation judgment in Kamal v Tax Policy Associates & Mr Daniel Neidle [2026] EWHC 551 (KB) represents the first occasion on which a court has applied the statutory regime governing Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation, commonly referred to as "SLAPPs".
A SLAPP is the misuse of legal proceedings to intimidate, silence and financially exhaust those who speak out on matters of public interest. The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (the "Act") introduced a new power to permit the court to strike out a claimant's statement of case if it considers the claim is a SLAPP and where the claimant has failed to show that it is more likely than not that the claim would succeed at trial. The new SLAPP powers are however limited to matters "having to do with economic crime".
Background to the case
The first Defendant, Tax Policy Associates Ltd ("TPA"), is a not-for-profit organisation which comments, advises and campaigns on tax policy. It was set up by the second Defendant, journalist and tax expert Daniel Neidle.
On 26 February 2025, Mr Neidle published a substantial online article headlined "TikTok tax avoidance from Arka Wealth: why the Government and the Bar should act" (the "Article"). The Article was a piece of investigative journalism criticising a tax scheme promoted by a firm called Arka Wealth, which claimed to avoid all corporate tax, income tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax through the use of offshore Cypriot trusts. The Article named Mr Setu Kamal, a tax barrister, as Arka Wealth's "legal partner" and expressed strongly critical views of his professional record.
Mr Kamal brought a claim in libel against TPA and Mr Neidle seeking £8 million in damages, with an alternative claim in malicious falsehood. The Defendants responded with an application to strike out the malicious falsehood claim in its entirety for irremediably defective pleading; for summary judgment on the whole claim on the basis of the honest opinion defence; and, alternatively, for strike-out of the entire claim as a statutory SLAPP.
Taking Mr Kamal's pleaded meanings at their highest, the court found there was no realistic prospect of a court determining the defamatory meanings to be anything other than expressions of opinion. The Article clearly indicated the basis of those opinions, and there was no realistic prospect of the Defendants failing the "honest person" test, given the extensive factual basis drawn from court judgments, HMRC records and other public material, particularly as Mr Kamal advanced no evidence to challenge Mr Neidle's testimony that he genuinely held the opinions expressed.
Summary judgment was accordingly entered for the Defendants on the entire claim. Despite the fact that the court's rulings on strike-out and summary judgment had already disposed of the claim, the court proceeded to examine each element of the statutory SLAPP test in turn.
SLAPPs Legal Framework
The SLAPP provisions in the Act operate through two mechanisms. The first is a new power of strike-out which empowers the court to strike out a claimant's statement of case if (i) the claim is a SLAPP within the meaning of the Act, and (ii) the claimant has failed to show that it is more likely than not that the claim would succeed at trial. The second is a costs protection, which provides that in respect of a SLAPP claim, a court may not order a defendant to pay a claimant's costs except where misconduct by the defendant justifies such an order.
A claim is a SLAPP if it meets four cumulative conditions:
- the claimant's behaviour in relation to the matters complained of has, or is intended to have, the effect of restraining the defendant's exercise of the right to freedom of speech;
- any of the information that is or would be disclosed by that exercise has to do with economic crime;
- any part of that disclosure is or would be made for a purpose related to the public interest in combating economic crime; and
- any of the claimant's behaviour in relation to the matters complained of is intended to cause the defendant –
- harassment, alarm or distress,
- expense, or
- any other harm or inconvenience
beyond that ordinarily encountered in the course of properly conducted litigation.
Application of the SLAPP regime
Condition (a): restraining the right to freedom of speech
The first requirement is that the claimant's behaviour in relation to the matters complained of has, or is intended to have, the effect of restraining the defendant's exercise of the right to freedom of speech, as defined by reference to Article 10 ECHR. Crucially, for the purposes of this condition, "any limitation prescribed by law on the exercise of the right to freedom of speech (for example in relation to the making of defamatory statements) is to be ignored".
The court explained the purpose of this provision is to remove the circularity of a claimant arguing that their claim cannot restrain free speech because it targets only speech to which the defendant has no legal right. The consequence, the court observed, is that most if not all claims in defamation or the other communication torts will inevitably satisfy this first condition. Mr Kamal's claim in defamation and malicious falsehood, seeking to restrain the Defendants' publication, plainly met it.
Condition (b): information "to do with economic crime"
The second condition requires that the information being restrained "has to do with economic crime". The definition of this provides two alternative limbs. Under the first, the information must relate to behaviour or circumstances which the defendant reasonably believed to be evidence of the commission of an economic crime. Under the second, the defendant must have had reason to suspect that an economic crime may have occurred and believed that disclosure of the information would facilitate an investigation into whether such a crime had occurred. Both limbs contain subjective and objective components. Neither requires any economic crime to have been demonstrably committed.
The Defendants relied on two listed offences: cheating the public revenue (a common law offence) and failure to prevent the facilitation of UK tax evasion offences contrary to section 45 of the Criminal Finances Act 2017. Mr Neidle attested that he had reasonable grounds to suspect that cheating the revenue may have occurred, and that he believed publishing the Article would facilitate an investigation into whether it had. The court accepted this evidence, which was unchallenged by Mr Kamal, and was satisfied that the condition was met.
Condition (c): purpose related to the public interest
The third condition requires that any part of the publication "is or would be made for a purpose related to the public interest in combating economic crime". The court emphasised that this is not a straightforward "public interest" test applied to the publication. Rather, "the public interest in combating economic crime" is suggested as a general public good, and the purpose of the publication need only be related to it – it need not be the only or principal purpose.
The court found this condition clearly satisfied. The Article called on its face for HMRC to investigate and close down the Arka Wealth scheme and others like it and called for law reform including new deterrent offences and increased penalties. Mr Neidle confirmed in his unchallenged evidence that this was indeed a purpose of the Article.
Condition (d): claimant's intention
The fourth and final condition requires that any of the claimant's behaviour in relation to the matters complained of is intended to cause the defendant harassment, alarm or distress, expense, or any other harm or inconvenience beyond that ordinarily encountered in the course of properly conducted litigation.
The Act provides guidance on factors a court may take into account, including: (a) whether the claimant's behaviour is a disproportionate reaction to the matters complained of; (b) whether the defendant has fewer resources than another person against whom the claimant could have brought proceedings; and (c) any relevant failure by the claimant to comply with pre-action protocols, rules of court, practice directions, or professional regulatory rules.
The court offered further important guidance that the intentionality "occupies a space between negligence or incompetence on the one hand and calculated (or 'strategic') dishonesty on the other: the former is insufficient, and the latter unnecessary".
The court acknowledged that Mr Kamal had not chosen to give evidence about his intentions, so the Defendants were left to discharge their evidential burden by inviting the court to infer Mr Kamal's intentions from his conduct. The court reviewed the litigation history in detail, including: the failure to comply with pre-action protocols, despite prompting from the Defendants; the failed attempts to issue an urgent injunction application which was ultimately dismissed by Steyn J for a catalogue of procedural and substantive failings; the failure to put the Defendants on notice of the injunction application; the irremediably defective pleadings; the imposition of arbitrary and oppressive deadlines for responses after long periods of delay; the use of AI-generated hallucinatory case citations in correspondence; the demands for compelled speech including an apology and a declaration that Mr Kamal was the country's leading tax barrister; the attempts to access the Defendants' subscriber base and journalistic sources; and the deployment of a spectacularly inflated £8 million claim valuation based on a contract that did not remotely support such a figure, with the underlying company having been wound up.
The court was careful, however, to recognise that not all poor litigation conduct amounts to a SLAPP. It expressly stated that "mere faults, even serial faults, whether of poor practice, carelessness, negligence, ignorance, incompetence, hubris, self-deception or faults of tone powered by a vehement sense of grievance, do not by themselves necessarily render a litigation exercise a SLAPP".
Nonetheless, the court made findings of intentionality in three specific respects. First, the court was not prepared to accept that making a supposedly on-notice application for an interim injunction without putting the Defendants on notice was merely unintentional unmindfulness. Second, the court found that the deployment of the inflated £8 million claim valuation was intended to have a chilling effect on the Defendants' journalism, and that Mr Neidle's unchallenged evidence confirmed it did. Third, the court found that Mr Kamal intended to interfere with the Defendants' journalism by seeking access to their subscriber base and using formal litigation procedures to try to compel access to their journalistic sources.
Consequently, the court was able to conclude that Mr Kamal's behaviour was undertaken with the intention of subjecting the Defendants to (at least) inconvenience beyond that ordinarily encountered in the course of properly conducted litigation.
The decision
Having found all four conditions of the statutory test satisfied, the court declared that Mr Kamal's claim was a statutory SLAPP, in addition to granting the Defendants' applications for partial strike-out and summary judgment.
Key takeaways
This judgment provides useful first judicial guidance on SLAPPs, in particular:
- The sliding scale of intentionality, which drew a distinction between simple incompetence or even serial litigation failures with conduct that demonstrates a deliberate or reckless intention to cause harm beyond ordinary incidents of litigation.
- When information 'has to do with an economic crime' and the layered elements of subjective belief and objective reasonableness.
- The court's willingness to protect freedom of speech.
The judgment also comes just a month after Ireland enacted the Defamation (Amendment) Act 2026 which introduces Ireland's own anti-SLAPP regime, implementing the EU Anti-SLAPP Directive. As my colleague Olivia covered here, Ireland's regime exceeds the protection offered by the regime of England & Wales as it covers all matters of public participation rather than being confined to purely matters of economic crimes.