I can’t help but smell a rat over the current media furore over superinjunctions.
It started out perfectly honourably, with a genuine freedom of speech issue surrounding Trafigura. Clearly a company which had been caught dumping toxic waste should not be able to hide behind a legal nicety reserved solely for the wealthy. But what was clearly a debate about the right to report issues which are clearly in the public interest has descended into a terribly English furore about where footballers stick their winkies.
Is an important principle of law really being defended right now, or is this little more than a distraction. After all, it can’t be a coincidence that this story has arisen as the scandal surrounding the News of the World phone-hacking scandal appears to get worse and worse. We are being invited to consider the death of privacy – and that such an occurrence is no bad thing – precisely at a time when one of the world’s top media corporations is under pressure for steamrollering over people’s personal rights.
Of course new technology presents us with new challenges in defending privacy, and of course we need to defend freedom of speech. Refusing to have a privacy law helps us to achieve neither. It isn’t that I think Judges are fools or terrible people; I just think the basic principles should be established in as democratic a manner as possible. It is surely pure laziness to claim that any attempt to legislate will inexorably lead to a French system in which sex pests are free to aspire to the highest positions of power, knowing that they can avoid even the slightest whiff of scandal (so long as they stay within France’s borders – should have thought of that Dominique).
However imperfect our Parliament is, I would still trust it above and beyond the lone instincts of Justice Eady. Let’s by all means tear up superinjunctions, but in the process let’s not create such a free-for-all that everyone is left at the mercy of the Daily Mail.