Ex-MP Andrew Bridgen has “no real prospect of succeeding” in a libel claim against former health minister Matt Hancock, the High Court has heard.
Mr Hancock, who was health secretary from 2018 to 2021, is being sued by the former North West Leicestershire MP over a post on X, formerly Twitter, in January 2023.
The post came after Mr Bridgen shared a link to an article “concerning data about deaths and other adverse reactions linked to Covid vaccines”, stating: “As one consultant cardiologist said to me, this is the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust.”
Hours later, Mr Hancock shared a video of him asking a question in the House of Commons, 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.”
Mr Hancock unsuccessfully asked a judge to throw out the case last year, and at a hearing on Wednesday asked the court to rule in his favour before a trial.
Mr Bridgen opposes the application, with his barristers calling it a “desperate last throw of the dice”, and has also asked the court to rule in his favour before a trial.
Aidan Eardley KC, for Mr Hancock, said: “What we seek is summary judgment on the whole claim because the claimant has no real prospect of succeeding on the case of serious harm.”
He continued: “Mr Hancock stands by that tweet. His evidence that is put before the court is that this is his honestly held opinion. It was then, and it is now.”
He added: “The defence of honest opinion must succeed and there is no need to go to trial.”
Mr Eardley told the court that Mr Bridgen, who attended the hearing, is only challenging the “characterisation of his tweet as antisemitic”, rather than other parts of Mr Hancock’s post.
Former health secretary Matt Hancock stepped down from his seat last year (James Manning/PA)
But he continued in written submissions that Mr Bridgen “does not identify any adverse consequences flowing from the publication” of the post.
He added that the post “does not allege that Mr Bridgen is antisemitic”, but “alleges that he had said something that morning which was antisemitic in character”.
Mr Bridgen was suspended by the Conservatives after his post and expelled from the party in April 2023.
He then sat as a Reclaim Party and then independent MP until he was defeated at the last general election.
He previously said he wished to “clear his name” through the libel action over Mr Hancock’s “malicious” post.
Mr Hancock resigned as health secretary after footage emerged of him kissing an aide in breach of Covid social distancing rules, and stepped down as MP for West Suffolk last year.
He has previously called the case “absurd” and labelled Mr Bridgen’s claims “ridiculous”.
Christopher Newman, for Mr Bridgen, said in written submissions that Mr Hancock’s bid is “hopeless”, and that his client has “a self-evidently strong case” as to harm caused by the post.
He said: “The court will be invited to dismiss the application, and certify it as totally without merit.
“It can only have been made tactically to put costs pressure on Mr Bridgen, in the hope that Mr Bridgen can be bullied by the risk of a contested hearing into withdrawing his claim before Mr Hancock has to admit liability.
“In summary, the application can be seen to be a desperate last throw of the dice by a defendant with no good defence.”
In a ruling in June, Mrs Justice Collins Rice found Mr Hancock’s post was not “definitively condemning the MP as an individual” and that the majority of the publication was an “expression of opinion”.
She added that she was “satisfied the ordinary reasonable reader would not have understood this tweet in the terms Mr Bridgen most fears”.
She said: “They were being told Mr Hancock’s strong opinions about the character, or mode of expression, of what had been said, rather than any facts, or even opinions, about the convictions, beliefs or intentions of the unnamed MP in this respect.”
The hearing before the same judge is expected to conclude later on Wednesday.