Andrew Bridgen’s Libel Case Against Matt Hancock Can Proceed to Trial, Judge Rules

Judgment finds in favour of vaccine critic Bridgen that Hancock’s post accusing him of ‘anti-Semitic’ actions could cause serious reputational damage.

Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen arrives ahead of the launch of the Boris Johnson's Conservative Party leadership campaign at the Academy of Engineering in London on June 12, 2019. Leon Neal/Getty Images

Ex-MP Andrew Bridgen’s libel claim against former Health Secretary Matt Hancock can proceed to a full trial, a High Court judge ruled on Monday, after she refused Hancock’s second bid to have the claim struck out.

The high court battle originates from a January 2023 post made by Hancock on social media platform X, then Twitter, in which he accused COVID-19 vaccine critic Bridgen as having promulgated “disgusting and dangerous antisemitic, anti-vax, anti-scientific conspiracy theories.”

Hancock’s post came after Bridgen shared a link to an article concerning data about deaths and other adverse reactions linked to the COVID-19 vaccines, stating, “As one consultant cardiologist said to me, this is the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust.”

Hours later, Hancock posted a video on X of him asking a question in the House of Commons, where MPs’ remarks are protected by parliamentary privilege, captioned, “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.”

Hancock unsuccessfully asked a judge to throw out the case last year, and at a hearing in March asked the court in London to rule in his favour before a trial, with Bridgen’s lawyer calling this a “desperate last throw of the dice.”

No ‘Obvious Quality of Unreality’

In a judgment on Monday, Mrs. Justice Collins Rice threw out Hancock’s bid, saying that there should not be a “mini-trial in advance of the evidential situation even being known.”

She found: “My task on this application is not to consider who has the better case at this stage, much less who is more likely to win. My task is to consider whether Mr. Bridgen’s case is unreal.”

Collins Rice added, “Mr. Bridgen’s case as pleaded and evidenced so far does not have an obvious quality of unreality.”

She added: “I am not in a position to conclude at this stage that Mr. Bridgen’s prospects of success on either matter are such as to be determinable now to be ‘unreal,’ and in any event there are, in my view, compelling reasons for further investigation at trial and a fully considered judgment thereafter.”

The judge said the case was “therefore set to proceed to the full evidential stages and on to trial.”

But she cautioned that Bridgen’s “pleading of the counter-defence is, however, defective,“ adding that he had a ”limited opportunity” to amend this.

Bridgen, who led a number of debates in Parliament highlighting vaccine adverse reactions and the suspected link to excess deaths, was suspended by the Conservatives hours after his post referencing the Holocaust, and expelled from the party in April 2023.

He then sat as a Reclaim Party MP and then became an independent MP until he lost his seat in the 2024 election in the constituency where he had served for 14 years, finishing in second-to-last place and losing his deposit.

Bridgen said previously he intends to “clear his name” through the libel action over Hancock’s post, which he has said was “activated by malice,” claiming that the former health secretary has “a motive to discredit me.”

Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock outside his home in northwest London on June 17, 2021. Aaron Chown/PA

Hancock resigned as health secretary after footage emerged of him kissing an aide with whom he was having an extra-marital affair, in breach of social distancing rules in force at the time. He also lost the Conservative Party whip temporarily because of his appearance on the reality show “I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here,” and stepped down as an MP for West Suffolk ahead of the 2024 election.

Hancock has branded the case “absurd” and labelled Bridgen’s claims about the vaccines “ridiculous.”

In a ruling last year,  Collins Rice dismissed Hancock’s argument that the ordinary reader would not have understood that the post referred to Bridgen, who he did not directly name.

‘Vituperative Make Believe’

In the latest judgment, she dismissed Hancock’s application for a termination ruling, finding that the words used in his post reached the threshold for “serious reputational damage.”

She ruled that the honest opinion defence does not cover “vituperative make believe” and made note of a letter from a group of world-renowned Jewish doctors to former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak which said that Bridgen’s post was not anti-Semitic and “criticised Mr. Hancock for weaponizing the language of antisemitism to suppress vaccine criticism.”

Collins Rice referred to Holocaust survivor Vera Sharav, who gave interviews “drawing parallels between the extreme and discriminatory public health measures during the pandemic and the Holocaust.”

The judgment found that while Hancock’s defence pointed to commentators labelling Bridgen’s post as anti-Semitic, “other commentators of comparable stature did not do, and were perhaps careful not to ... condemn Mr. Bridgen in precisely the way Mr. Hancock did.”

No Defence of Truth

The former health secretary did not use a defence of truth, but instead argued that the post would not have caused Bridgen any serious reputational harm.

However, the judge found that the words Hancock used, including the accusation of anti-Semitic behaviour, could amount to a “relatively grave libel.”

The judgment found that this might be a “mass publication case,” meaning that it could have been very widely viewed and had a serious impact.

Under UK libel law, the onus is on the defendant to prove that what they said was true or that it was an honestly held opinion based on true facts. There is no longer a defence of “fair comment” available since passing of the Defamation Act 2013.

Collins Rice referenced Hancock’s refusal to take the post down, noting “the persistence of its publication to the present day.”

‘Corrosive Type of Gall’

Bridgen welcomed the judgment, saying in a statement that the court had recognised his case that “antisemitic in character” is “a distinctively toxic and corrosive type of gall in a political context, an epithet understood to be so solemn, momentous and ultimately politically fatal as to be capable of being found at trial to be insufficiently pertinent” to what he had posted.

“As to Mr. Hancock’s honest opinion defence, the Judge noted that Mr. Hancock was asking the court to terminate my claim but: ‘without his having either pleaded to or explained in evidence the genuine nature of his own belief.’

“The Court noted that Mr. Hancock had not put before the Court evidence that “other respected commentators did consider it antisemitic in character, or that similar utterances have been so regarded on other occasions” noting that ‘That is evidence not at present before the court’.”

The former MP continued, “Mr. Hancock’s previous comments about ‘an absurd libel case he [Bridgen] will undoubtedly lose’ now look like the expensively created bluster that they always were.”

Bridgen added that his legal team disagreed with one comment in the judgment about the consequences of Hancock not pleading the defence of “truth,” and is considering whether to take that point to the Court of Appeal.

Hancock, who has not commented on the latest judgment, has been ordered to pay £18,000 in legal costs within 14 days, with no date yet set for the full trial.