Let’s be controversial about this and say: it depends.

Science Minister Michelle Donelan has been in the headlines because the public purse has paid her libel costs. She had falsely accused Professor Kate Sang of sharing “extremist views” and expressing sympathy for Hamas after the October 7, 2023, attacks against Israel.

She made these accusations in a letter to UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), a government organisation that directs research and innovation funding, funded through the science budget of Donelan’s department.

Donelan referred to a social media post in which Prof Sang responded to a Guardian article about a government crackdown on support for Hamas in the UK by saying “this is disturbing”.

She later accepted that she had “misunderstood” the post, that was about the article as a whole, not just the headline, and she fully accepted that Prof Sang was not an extremist, or a supporter of any proscribed organisations including Hamas.

Prof Sang had started a libel case against Donelan, and won £15,000 in damages. A further £19,000 has been paid in extra costs.

Who should pay?

So: should Michelle Donelan pay her own libel costs?

The government has said it is right that public money should be used to pay the bill because Donelan’s comments were made “in the course of her ministerial duties” – and This Writer has a certain amount of sympathy for that.

Consider the many occasions in which a certain Jewish Chronicle reporter has been successfully sued for libel. If he had been forced to pay the costs and damages himself, he would probably be bankrupt by now – but the falsehoods were written by him as part of his job, and published by that newsrag, meaning it should also take responsibility.

I can’t think of any news-media libel case in which the employer did not pay up, rather than the employee, in the event of a loss.

Donelan’s words were written in a letter to an organisation that is funded by her department, expressing concern that it may be passing funds to someone who supports a proscribed organisation. It seems likely, therefore, that concerns had been raised with her as Science Minister and, having seen the evidence, she was passing them on as part of her job.

So it seems to me that the government’s claim – that public money should fund the costs and damages because she made her claims in the course of her ministerial duties – is reasonable.

It follows that the comments of Labour’s Peter Kyle and the Liberal Democrats’ Daisy Cooper are unreasonable.

How would they feel if they were in government and, after acting on information handed to them as part of their job and that they believed was accurate, found themselves hit with tens of thousands of pounds in legal fees?

There is far too much of this kind of muck-spreading going around Westminster.

It achieves nothing and – worse – it hides the real scandals. Tory government ministers are responsible for far worse than this.

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