Martin Howe

Martin Howe KC  (barrister)
Founder of	Lawyers for Britain

Martin Howe KC, a partner at Howe & Co, is a leading barrister in the fields of intellectual property and EU law. He was called to the bar in 1978 and became a QC in 1996.

Martin Howe has campaigned in favour of Brexit for many years, and is Chairman of Lawyers for Britain, which was founded to campaign for a 'Leave' vote in the EU Referendum.

Brexit campaigner

Martin Howe has worked "to deliver a clean Brexit, under which the whole United Kingdom regains full control of our laws, borders, money and international trade, and which fully delivers what 17.4 million people voted for in the EU Referendum. Lawyers for Britain provided much of the intellectual firepower leading to the rejection of Theresa May's deeply flawed deal, and its replacement by Boris Johnson's much improved arrangements."

From March 2017 ("The 'meaningful vote' amendment is an abuse of House of Lords powers – and legislative garbage to boot") to January 2020 ("After all the Remainer legal chicanery, I’ll be closely monitoring the next stage of talks with Brussels"), Martin Howe published 27 articles calling for the UK to leave the European Union.

UK Bill of Rights

Martin Howe supports the reform of human rights law through the scrapping of the Human Rights Act 1998, its replacement by a new Bill of Rights which will reaffirm our historic rights and liberties and incorporate the rights safeguarded by the European Convention of Human Rights into UK law, but will de-couple its interpretation from the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg.

Unfortunately in the 70 years since the Convention was drafted, the Strasbourg Court has gone far beyond its job of interpreting the Convention and has created new judge-made doctrines which do not exist in the actual wording of the Convention itself. He has long supported these reforms which will come again to the front of political debate once the immediate Brexit issues are behind us.

He worked on reform of human rights laws as member of the Coalition Government's Commission on a Bill of Rights for the UK, which reported with a majority favouring a UK Bill of Rights. He was previously a member of the Conservative Party's Commission to create a Bill of Rights (and Responsibilities) for the United Kingdom, which was established after David Cameron's speech of 26 June 2006, "Balancing freedom and security - A modern British Bill of Rights".

Jeremy Corbyn's legal bill

On 26 September 2022, Mr Justice Nicklin approved a consent order recording the settlement of the libel action brought by UKLFI's Richard Millett against Jeremy Corbyn MP arising out of statement made by Mr Corbyn during an interview on "The Andrew Marr Show" on 23 Sept 2018.

The claim has been discontinued with no order as to costs. The trial of the action had been due to begin on Monday 10 October 2022 before the same judge and was scheduled for 3 weeks.

Mark Henderson acted for Mr Corbyn, instructed by Martin Howe of Howe & Co, throughout the proceedings. The parties released the following statement:

“The libel claim brought by Richard Millett against the Rt Hon Jeremy Corbyn MP has been settled. Mr Corbyn has paid no damages, has made no apology and has given no undertakings concerning repetition of the words complained of.

"No costs have been paid by either party to the other as part of this settlement save in respect of an outstanding Order of the Court of Appeal from April 2021.

"Neither party will be making any other comment about the case.”

Lawfare

The dropping of the libel case left Jeremy Corbyn with Martin Howe's legal bill of £1,477,000. Many small donations to JBC Defence Ltd and subsequent negotiations helped pay a large part of this but, today, Corbyn is left with an outstanding bill of £400,000.

On the "Not the Andrew Marr Show" of 25 May 2023, Crispin Flintoff discussed Jeremy Corbyn's case with Yanis Varoufakis, legal adviser and former parliamentary candidate Pamela Fitzpatrick and human rights specialist Sir Geoffrey Bindman KC. The discussion revealed how lawfare continues to be used to silence radical voices.

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