Human Rights Act was meant to protect press freedom, says Marcus Partington

by Marcus Partington, Mirror's Head of Legal, Daily Mirror

IT is very interesting to see that the Prime Minister has now expressed the view that it is for Parliament “to decide how much protection we want for individuals and how much freedom of the press”.

As the Coalition government is not keen on unnecessary legislation I can happily tell him Parliament did this when passing the Human Rights Act in 1998. All Parliament and the courts have to do is look at Section 12 of that Act and the House of Commons debate on July 2, 1998.

So what did Parliament do and say? In Section 12 of the Act it specifically directed that the courts “must” have “particular regard to the Convention right to freedom of expression”.

Then Home ­Secretary Jack Straw said the Government had “decided to ­introduce a new clause that was specifically designed to safeguard press freedom”.

Indeed he said they had “taken the opportunity to enhance press freedom in a wider way than would arise simply from the incorporation of the Convention into our domestic law”.

Unfortunately, the courts have side-stepped this, instead balancing Article 8 (“the right to respect for private and family life”) with Article 10 (“the right of everyone to freedom of expression”). And in doing that it is hard to avoid the impression that because of their views in favour of privacy and against sexual disclosures in the press, they have more often than not favoured Article 8 when granting injunctions.

This happened even though Mr Straw told Parliament Section 12 was to ensure that ex-parte injunctions were granted “only in exceptional circumstances”. The reality has turned out to be very different.

Tuesday’s decision in the Court of Appeal involved the court giving “particular weight to the Article 8 rights of any children likely to be affected by the ­publication”.

This shows just how far the courts have strayed from what Parliament intended in passing the act.


(2011-4-22/mirror)