Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Contempt of court reform in England and Wales: Law Commission liability proposals: single framework, new tests on orders, publication and disruption, 'active' from charge, and implications for corporate crime

Published on: 08 December 2025

Published by a LexisNexis Corporate Crime expert

Legal News

Article summary

Why is a reform of the law of contempt needed?

Contempt of court in England and Wales has evolved to safeguard the public interest in the proper administration of justice and the right to a fair trial. The penalties are weighty, ranging from financial sanctions to custodial terms of up to two years. Although comprehensive figures are scarce, the Law Commission considers it plausible that each year more than 100 individuals receive either immediate or suspended prison sentences for contempt offending. Developed incrementally over centuries through the common law, augmented by piecemeal statutes, the current framework is widely acknowledged to be challenging to navigate, leaving a patchwork that is increasingly hard to chart. In particular, the rift between civil and criminal contempt has widened, generating uncertainty for practitioners and parties alike. Crucially, that classification does not turn on whether proceedings occur in the civil or criminal courts, but on the character of the conduct, a basis that has produced a series of inconsistent attempts to categorise different manifestations of contempt. In addition, recent years have brought renewed scrutiny of whether rules conceived for the print press can still cope with the most recent technological changes...

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