Dale Vince OBE v Lord Bailey of Paddington

Hearing date: 8 November 2024

Further submissions: 20, 21 and 22 November 2024

Approved Judgment

This judgment was handed down remotely at 10.00 am on 11 February 2025 by circulation to the parties and by release to the National Archives.

Dale Vince OBE is a well-known and successful businessman. He is the founder and director of the energy company, Ecotricity Group Limited, an environmental campaigner and a major donor to the Labour Party. By this libel action, Mr Vince sues Lord (Shaun) Bailey of Paddington, a Conservative member of the Greater London Assembly, the former Conservative candidate for Mayor of London and, since 2023, a Conservative peer.

BACKGROUND

On 7 October 2023, Hamas terrorists entered Israel from Gaza. They committed murder, rape and kidnapping on a massive scale. Some 1,200 people were murdered and 240 others taken prisoner. Two days later, Mr Vince was interviewed by Stig Abell on Times Radio. During the interview, Mr Vince was asked about these events.

Mr Vince's interview attracted little media attention at the time. In March 2024, there was a furore about remarks made by the prominent Conservative donor, Frank Hester, about the Rt. Hon Diane Abbott MP. Responding to that story, on 13 and 14 March 2024, Guido Fawkes published two articles in respect of Mr Vince's views about Hamas. In the first article, Guido Fawkes published a 16-second extract from the longer Times Radio interview. Thereafter, a number of politicians and others commented on Mr Vince's interview.

On 14 March 2024, Lord Bailey appeared as a guest on the Patrick Christys Tonight programme on GB News. In the course of his appearance, there was discussion about Mr Hester's remarks. Lord Bailey responded by pivoting to discuss Mr Vince's views about Hamas.

Mr Vince threatened legal action in respect of statements made by Lord Bailey on the GB News programme. By a letter dated 16 May 2024, Lord Bailey's former solicitors responded in trenchant terms. The letter asserted that Lord Bailey intended to place the letter in the public domain. Further, by a post published at https://CrowdJustice.com on 2 September 2024, Lord Bailey sought crowd funding to help him to fight this case. The post again made statements about Mr Vince's views.

By this claim, Mr Vince seeks damages and other remedies for libel in respect of Lord Bailey's appearance on GB News and the crowd funding appeal. Further, he seeks an injunction to restrain the threatened publication of the 16 May letter. 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. Further, he argues that Lord Bailey's threatened publication asserted that he had committed a serious criminal offence contrary to the Terrorism Act 2000.

Lord Bailey takes issue with the pleaded meanings and asserts that the imputations actually made were substantially true, and that in any event the statements complained of contained honest statements of opinion.

By an application made on 30 September 2024, Lord Bailey seeks summary judgment in respect of the GB News and CrowdJustice publications.

Directions were given on 23 October 2024. Upon Lord Bailey's admission that, regardless of the determination of meaning, the words complained of were defamatory of Mr Vince at common law, Master Dagnall ordered the trial of the following preliminary issues:

9.1 The natural and ordinary meaning of the words complained of.

9.2 Whether the statements complained of were, or contained, expressions of opinion.

9.3 Insofar as the words complained of were, or contained, an expression of opinion, whether the basis of the opinion was indicated in general or specific terms.

Further, the master ordered that the preliminary issues be tried together with Lord Bailey's application for summary judgment.

The parties' agreement to the following facts was recorded in a recital to the master's order:

11.1 All or a substantial proportion of viewers of the GB News programme on 14 March 2024 would have known or believed that Hamas is a terrorist organisation which had carried out acts of terrorism, namely mass murder, kidnapping and rape on 7 October 2023.

11.2 All or a substantial proportion of readers of the CrowdJustice post on 2 September 2024 would have known that the abominable acts referred to by Lord Bailey were the mass murder, kidnapping and rape which took place on 7 October 2023 in Israel.

By an application made on 1 November 2024, Lord Bailey applies for a direction that I should also try further preliminary issues and strike-out the claim in respect of the threatened publication.

In accordance with the guidance in Tinkler v. Ferguson [2019] EWCA Civ 819, I watched Lord Bailey's appearance on GB News and read the letter and crowd funding appeal before considering the parties' contentions and submissions in this case so as to capture my initial reactions to each of the actual and threatened publications.

LEGAL PRINCIPLES

THE NATURAL AND ORDINARY MEANING

In Koutsogiannis v. Random House Group Ltd [2019] EWHC 48 (QB), [2020] 4 W.L.R. 25, Nicklin J helpfully summarised the well-established principles applicable when determining the natural and ordinary meaning in a passage that was subsequently approved by the Court of Appeal in Millett v. Corbyn [2021] EWCA Civ 567, [2021] E.M.L.R. 19. Nicklin J observed, at [11]–[12]:

“11. The court's task is to determine the single natural and ordinary meaning of the words complained of, which is the meaning that the hypothetical reasonable reader would understand the words bear. It is well recognised that there is an artificiality in this process because individual readers may understand words in different ways: Slim v. Daily Telegraph Ltd [1968] 2 Q.B. 157.

12. The following key principles can be distilled from the authorities …

i) The governing principle is reasonableness.

ii) The intention of the publisher is irrelevant.

iii) The hypothetical reasonable reader is not naive but he is not unduly suspicious. He can read between the lines. He can read in an implication more readily than a lawyer and may indulge in a certain amount of loose thinking but he must be treated as being a man who is not avid for scandal and someone who does not, and should not, select one bad meaning where other non-defamatory meanings are available. A reader who always adopts a bad meaning where a less serious or non-defamatory meaning is available is not reasonable: s/he is avid for scandal. But always to adopt the less derogatory meaning would also be unreasonable: it would be naive.

iv) Over-elaborate analysis should be avoided and the court should certainly not take a too literal approach to the task.

v) Consequently, a judge providing written reasons for conclusions on meaning should not fall into the trap of conducting too detailed an analysis of the various passages relied on by the respective parties.

vi) Any meaning that emerges as the produce of some strained, or forced, or utterly unreasonable interpretation should be rejected.

vii) It follows that it is not enough to say that by some person or another the words might be understood in a defamatory sense.

viii) The publication must be read as a whole, and any ‘bane and antidote’ taken together. Sometimes, the context will clothe the words in a more serious defamatory meaning (for example the classic “rogues' gallery” case). In other cases, the context will weaken (even extinguish altogether) the defamatory meaning that the words would bear if they were read in isolation (e.g. bane and antidote cases).

ix) In order to determine the natural and ordinary meaning of the statement of which the claimant complains, it is necessary to take into account the context in which it appeared and the mode of publication.

x) No evidence, beyond the publication complained of, is admissible in determining the natural and ordinary meaning.

xi) The hypothetical reader is taken to be representative of those who would read the publication in question. The court can take judicial notice of facts which are common knowledge, but should beware of reliance on impressionistic assessments of the characteristics of a publication's readership.

xii) Judges should have regard to the impression the article has made upon them themselves in considering what impact it would have made on the hypothetical reasonable reader.

xiii) In determining the single meaning, the court is free to choose the correct meaning; it is not bound by the meanings advanced by the parties (save that it cannot find a meaning that is more injurious than the claimant's pleaded meaning).”

Bane & antidote

In finding the meaning, the whole of the publication must be considered. As Baron Alderson observed in Chalmers v. Payne (1835) 2 C.M. & R. 156, at 159, “the bane and the antidote must be taken together.” In Horan v. Express Newspapers [2015] EWHC 3550 (QB), Dingemans J, as he then was, explained, at [17]:

“This simply means that in reading the article as a whole if a ‘stain’ is removed in another part of the publication, the bane and antidote must be taken together when considering whether the article is defamatory, see Cruise v. Express Newspapers [1999] Q.B. 931 at 939. Whether the antidote has removed the...