The actor and comedian Rowan Atkinson and writer Andrew O’Hagan are heading a coalition of entertainers, writers, lawyers and journalists in a move today for the scrapping of an archaic law that allows people to be jailed for speaking out.

MPs will debate an amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill that would repeal the offences of seditious libel and criminal defamation, offences that date from the 17th-century.

The repeal of the laws, which is being urged by groups including Index on Censorship, Liberty and English PEN, would protect the rights not only of British citizens but of people across the world where states commonly use charges of sedition and criminal libel to silence their critics.

Human rights groups campaigning for the release of individuals imprisoned abroad for their views are hampered in their campaigns by the existence of similar laws in Britain.

The move for reform is being led by Dr Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP, who has tabled the amendment.

He said: “Seditious libel and criminal defamation laws are a stain on our legal system and a terrible example to set in a world where free expression is so often restricted and oppressed. Parliament should sieze this chance to get rid of them.”

Rowan Atkinson added: “An opportunity to rid ourselves of censorious legislation shoudl always be grasped with both hands; any law which has fallen out of use here and yet is providing inspiration for such misuse abroad must be a prime candidate for the chop.”

Abolition of the law, which is supported by leading media and human rights lawyers such as Geoffrey Robertson, QC, and Lord Lester of Herne Hill, QC, has aleady been urged by the Government’s law reform body, the Law Commission.

The Cabinet minister Peter Hain narrowly escaped a prosecution for criminal libel 30 years ago when an anti-apartheid campaigner. He has used a magazine to name the late Tory environment secretary, Geoffrey Rippon, as the third minnister in the Norma Levy call girl scandal whose revelations prompted the resignations of the then defence minister, Lord Lambton, and the then Lord Privy Seal, Lord Jellicoe.

The existence on the statute book continues to legitimise its use by foreign rulers. In The Gambia, Abdul Hamid Adiamoh, editor of the independent Today newspaper, is standing trial for “publishing with seditions intention” a report on poverty in that country; and in Turkey, defamation laws were used in an attempt to silence the writer and Nobel prizewinner Orhan Pamuk.

Uses of the law in Britain include the proceedings against John Wilkes, MP, who fought an extended battle with the Commons and its pro-royalist faction in the mid 18th century which resulted in the banning of the right to publish verbatim records of Parliamentary proceedings.

The widely-drawn definition of seditious intent involves bringing into hatred or contempt or disaffection the monarch, family or successors; the Government, its laws; Parliament; the administration of justice or to raise discontent or disaffection among the public.

Geoffrey Robertson, QC, said: "These laws have an inglorious history. They were deployed by the King’s lick-spittle judges in the Star Chamber to torture puritans, and later used against John Wilkes and Tom Paine’s publishers.

"Their continuing existence serves only to provide an excuse for modern despots when they jail their critics – they always claim that they are merely using laws that are also on the UK statute book. It is time to expunge them.”

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