No win, no fee, no story.

The commercial reality for regional newspapers and websites, is that even at the best of times, investigative journalism can be an expensive business.

Investigating ‘rotten boroughs’ and dodgy dealings is time-consuming and resource intensive, but add the spectre of high legal costs in privacy and defamation claims if things go wrong, and the chilling effect on legitimate public interest journalism is there for all to see.

It has been argued for many years that the fact that a publisher may not have the resources to defend a claim – even a claim with little merit – brought by a claimant whose lawyers are advising under a ‘no win no fee’ deal effectively curbs its ability even to embark on a story that would threaten its budget.

I know that some of my colleagues have been banging on about this iniquitous system for some time, but it still remains the case that under present arrangements, claimants are able to hold the publisher to ransom. It’s a case of heads they win, tails you lose.

Which is why it is all the more disappointing that in the recent appeal of Coventry v Lawrence, the Supreme Court decided by a 3:2 majority that the current no win no fee regime is not contrary to Article 6 of the Human Rights Convention which upholds a person’s right to access to justice.

This case was not about defamation or privacy, but it means that the Supreme Court has decided that no win no fee agreements, where the losing party pays the other side’s base costs plus an uplift of up to 100pc on those costs plus the premium of the claimant’s costs-insurance policy, are fair and lawful.

In most civil cases, claimants no longer have the right to claim enhanced legal costs. But the notable exception to this reform is defamation and privacy cases.

The Media Lawyers Association intervened in the appeal, and made compelling arguments to the Justices (at least to my eyes) that no win no fee agreements are stifling freedom of expression and should be reformed. Regrettably, the Supreme Court did not take this opportunity to reform the regulations, so unless Parliament changes the law, we have to live with the current, unjust, regime for the foreseeable future.

Paradoxically, a law which was put in place in order to provide access to justice for claimants who could otherwise not afford to go to court has ended up denying justice to defendants who cannot afford to defend legitimate investigations. And of course, this means that as often as not, they do not even embark on them in the first place.