Carole Cadwalladr ordered to pay £1.2m costs in Arron Banks libel trial

Journalist Carole Cadwalladr has been ordered to pay legal costs of around £1.2 million to Arron Banks after he partially won an appeal in a long-running libel dispute.

Brexit campaigner Mr Banks originally lost his case against Ms Cadwalladr for her remarks in a speech and a tweet.

In February he succeeded in partially reversing that at the Court of Appeal.

Ms Cadwalladr said it was a "dark day for press freedom". Banks called it "vindication".

The case centred on comments Ms Cadwalladr made in a Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) talk broadcast online in April 2019, in which she accused Mr Banks of lying about "his covert relationship with the Russian government", as well as a tweet linking to the speech.

Mr Banks argued her remarks were "false and defamatory" and sought damages and an injunction to restrain the continued publication of the remarks.

In June 2022, Mrs Justice Steyn ruled in favour of Ms Cadwalladr, concluding she held a "reasonable belief" that her comments were in the public interest until April 2020, when the Electoral Commission announced that a National Crime Agency investigation concluded there was no evidence to support the allegations against Mr Banks or his companies.

Mr Banks then went to the Court of Appeal, which partially ruled in his favour, concluding that it had in fact been defamatory for the allegations to still be published after it had become clear that they were unsubstantiated.

However it upheld other rulings made by Justice Steyn, including that Mr Banks had not proved that what Ms Cadwalladr tweeted had caused or was likely to cause "serious harm to his reputation".

Subsequently, court documents dated 17 May said Mr Banks "was the successful party on the appeal and overall", and that Ms Cadwalladr must pay 60% of the businessman's original costs - listing an interim figure of £400,000.

She must also repay almost £800,000 in costs that Mr Banks paid her after he initially lost the case.

In addition, she was ordered to pay a third of his costs at the Court of Appeal - £52,000.

Ms Cadwalladr said her legal team expects the final figure to be significantly lower.

She said she was "hugely disappointed" by the Court of Appeal's decision and by UK libel laws generally.

"This decision has huge ramifications for any news organisation or journalist who believes that the overwhelming public interest of a story will enable them to speak truth to power," she said, adding that "many abuses of power" in the UK go untold because "our defamation laws are among the most repressive in the world".

The ruling said she must also issue an apology and delete some tweets.

"It held me liable … even though it acknowledged I was not the publisher and do not control TED's website," she said.

Mr Banks said in a tweet the costs would exceed £1m. He said he had repeatedly tried to settle the case, and called the ruling "vindication".

The court ruling said it had "considered" Ms Cadwalladr's comments on the "free speech considerations" of the case, saying that "in our view, our allocation of costs fairly reflects [Ms Cadwalladr's] partial success in defending" publication of the talk and tweet.

Ms Cadwalladr - an investigative reporter who writes for The Guardian and who played an important role in unveiling the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal - has set up a crowdfunding website to pay her legal fees.

Mr Banks is a prominent Brexit campaigner, and founded the campaign group Leave.EU.