Privacy Injunctions

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, as I have already made clear, it is almost self-evident that the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840 were promulgated in times very different from today. Notwithstanding that, there are clearly some important principles enshrined in them. Indeed, on numerous occasions, even in recent times, we in this House have sought to emphasise their importance and how much we cherish them. In terms of the Joint Committee and in the opportunity to look much more broadly at parliamentary privilege, that will be an opportunity to consider in detail some of these issues. The Master of the Rolls’ report published last week has a chapter devoted to parliamentary privilege and identifies some of the tensions that are there. All of those elected to the other House and Members of this House take parliamentary privilege very seriously, and if we wish to say anything on matters that are sub judice it should be done only with the greatest of forethought.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the establishment of the Joint Committee. What I really want to ask is whether the new media will be part of the remit, and whether there are ways in which one can restrain publication there. I have a great reluctance in saying that I do not think it is possible; I think we have crossed a Rubicon, and that new technology now means that it is now very hard to restrain publication of matters that invade privacy. Although our courts seek to influence courts in California to have disclosure of names by twitter, the culture in the United States is very different and it is very unlikely that there will be disclosure by courts there. In my experience, even getting them to disclose matters relating to national security issues is difficult enough. The American courts are very protective of freedom of the press. Will the remit of the Joint Committee look at the new media—twitter and the like?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, the noble Baroness raises an obvious but very important issue on the new media, whose relevance has been very obvious to these events. I have to confess that I do not tweet. I may have been one of the last people in the kingdom to find out the subject matter of some of the tweets over the weekend. It would be an issue that the Joint Committee would want to look at, because it is very pertinent to the kind of issues that we are talking about. But just because it makes it far more difficult to police and enforce, that does not make it right to breech an express order of the court. Obviously, if there are means to identify those who did it, the appropriate procedures should be followed.