Court told that Matt Hancock’s tweet did not name Andrew Bridgen in ongoing libel battle

Andrew Bridgen’s claim of libel from a tweet issued by Matt Hancock “fails to set out” any evidence that the tweet was about him, a court was told.

The expelled former Tory MP Andrew Bridgen launched legal action against the ex-health minister and current independent MP, Matt Hancock last year.

Bridgen had the whip removed from him at 11:16 am on 11 January 2023 after he sent a “disgraceful” tweet, which appeared to say the delay in releasing safety data on Covid-19 vaccines was the worst crime since the Holocaust.

Later that same day, Matt Hancock tweeted: “The disgusting and dangerous antisemitic, anti-vax, anti-scientific conspiracy theories spouted by a sitting MP this morning are unacceptable and have absolutely no place in our society.”

This comment was part of the comment he said at PMQs that afternoon, and his tweet included the clip of him speaking.

Bridgen went on to launch legal action against his former colleague, claiming Hancock had libelled him in that tweet. He asserted that, at the time, Hancock had over 439,000 followers on X (formally Twitter) and that, at the date of the claim, that tweet had received over 4.2m views.

The parties made their first appearance at court today in relation to this claim. Hancock’s lawyers, Alex Wilson partner at RPC and Aidan Eardley KC of 5RB, applied an application to strike out the lawsuit on the on the ground that the claim failed to set out any reasonable basis for contending that Hancock’s tweet referred to Bridgen.

This morning Mrs Justice Steyn heard arguments for this application, Eardley KC outlined that Bridgen’s legal side may be suggesting that – without knowledge of specific facts – a reasonable reader “acquainted” with Bridgen would understand Matt Hancock’s tweet to refer to him.

He stated in his written submission “that case is hopeless.”

He outlined that a reasonable reader ‘acquainted’ with the claimant may know his name and may know that he is an MP, but no such reasonable reader would have assumed, upon reading Hancock’s tweet, that it was referring to him as his “Tweet refers only to a ‘sitting MP’. Eardley KC highlighted that “there are some 650 of those ‘sitting MPs'”.

In Bridgen’s lawyer, Christopher Newman of The New Litigation, argument to the court, he pointed out that the submission that a “reasonable reader” would not connect a tweet about “a sitting MP” with Bridgen is weak and not a reason to strike out the claim.

Newman stated to the court that Bridgen lost the whip “about an hour before Hancock’s tweet”. He pointed out that someone losing the whip is “big news”.

He added that when Hancock asked his question to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, answered, knowing the question was referring to Bridgen.

That hearing concluded after half a day, Mrs Justice Steyn will reserve judgment.