Britain's Houses of Parliament were earlier this month the scene of a gathering by an array of campaigning and media organizations, who came together to press for reform of the libel laws of England and Wales. Amnesty International UK, Global Witness, Facebook, Mumsnet, the British Medical Journal and Nature were among those represented, urging a group of Members of Parliament (MPs) to support the introduction of new legislation.

The few dozen MPs at the meeting needed little persuading — but there are more than 600 others, and more proposed legislative issues than can be handled within the current Parliament, before the next general election. So the fight for the attention of MPs will be crucial in the coming months. It is a fair bet that few of them, if any, have ever heard from constituents on this issue. But they do pay attention to their mailboxes, and there is now both an opportunity and a need for anyone concerned about these issues to help to ensure that essential legislative reform is seen through.

The good news is that all three of Britain's main political parties support such reform. Over the years, it has become increasingly clear that the burden of libel litigation falls too heavily on those who write about misconduct and bad practice. And with the global nature of the Internet, anyone outside the United Kingdom can sue anyone else outside the country using this law, provided that the libel was accessible to readers in the United Kingdom. Journalism on scientific issues has been acutely affected, and the need for reform and examples of problems within science were highlighted in these pages last year (see Nature 464, 1104; 2010).

The attention of Members of Parliament needs to be sharpened now.

At Nature, we have too often been hindered in our core mission because of legal risks. On one occasion we were unable to link to a university's website to point our readers to the outcome of a misconduct investigation, associated with the retraction of a research paper, because of a threat from the person found guilty by the university. There has been journalism about misconduct — central not only to the interests of Nature's readers but also to public trust in science — that we have decided not to commission, because we decided that the risks of costly libel action outweighed the undoubted significance of the stories. We will always pursue the most significant cases of transgression — on one occasion at very considerable legal expense. But there is a layer of less egregious yet still significant misconduct that we are not covering because of the risks of such costs.

Britain's coalition government has now introduced draft legislative reform that would allow us to perform our core mission with fewer restrictions. Part of the problem with the existing libel laws is that they place a heavy burden of proof on the defendants and have little scope for a public-interest defence — areas that will be retuned under the proposed reform.

Ministers responsible for the proposed changes specifically mention the freedom of scientific debate as one focus of their concern. The changes and a consultation paper can be found at http://go.nature.com/o3vw5r.

We at Nature will respond to that consultation. And we urge readers to respond to the detailed questions if they are seriously interested in strengthening the ability of scientists, journalists and others to report and comment publicly on misconduct or to speak responsibly and freely about problematic products or actions of large institutions and companies. The Libel Reform Campaign — a coalition of interested organizations — has published an initial response to the draft bill making clear their view of what further changes should be sought (see http://go.nature.com/vdjvna).

The consultation process has a deadline of 10 June 2011. The bill will then be amended and formally introduced to Parliament for implementation in 2012. That will be another moment at which support for the bill will be crucial. But the attention of MPs needs to be sharpened now. To that end, readers in the United Kingdom should immediately contact their MPs to draw attention to the issue and to urge their support. The organization Sense About Science has published a template letter and MPs' contact details — see http://go.nature.com/xrdcfx and ask MPs to sign Early Day Motion 1636, tabled by Cambridge MP and scientist Julian Huppert and supported by cross-party colleagues.