Injunctions
Eric Joyce Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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The Attorney-General
May I say to my hon. Friend that our laws already provide very substantial protection for the freedom of the press? The question arises as to how a balance should be struck. Even before the operation of the Human Rights Act, the power of the courts to protect the vulnerable and children, for example, was well established in our law. In that sense it is not a novelty. That balance is always going to be a subject of legitimate debate and I hope that, as a result of the steps that the Government are taking, that debate will take place.
Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Lab)
The Attorney-General has rightly concentrated on matters of law but does he agree that equally important, arguably, are matters of technology? If it is not technologically possible to enforce a particular law, there is hardly any point in having that law in the first place.
The Attorney-General
I am not sure that I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. Ultimately, the enforceability of any order made by a court depends first on people obeying the law and, secondly, if people do not obey the law, on the capacity to bring them to justice and to make the court’s order felt on them. That is a slightly different issue but, as I acknowledged earlier and as was acknowledged by the Lord Chief Justice when he gave his press statement last Friday, the multiplicity of available communication media certainly do pose a particular challenge for the courts.