What Use Is The Bill Of Rights In Brown’s Britain?
Note to no-cause-too-slimy litigators Peter Carter-Ruck & Partners – the Bill of Rights may date from 1688 (which of course to McDoom’s henchmen makes it too old to be relevant and probably the fault of Lady Thatcher or something) but it hasn’t been abolished yet.
The Guardian has been hit with an astonishing injunction banning it from reporting Parliament. The story is here and as Iain Dale notes, if newspapers are prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings, you wonder where we’re heading.
The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.
Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.
The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.
The Parliamentary question that the Grauniad isn’t allowed to report is:
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.
The rumpus is apparently all to do with this story about a UK oil company and its activities in the Ivory Coast. Doubtless the truth will out and this injunction against the Guardian will be overturned as soon as they challenge it in court, but in the meantime it’s a dangerous state of affairs and one which cannot be tolerated in a free and open society. The workings of our Parliament are and must remain open and available to everyone. No exceptions. We don’t live in a dictatorship yet.
The Guardian should have shown some balls, published and be damned, everybody else has. Stupid Govt. has ensured massive publicity for an issue that otherwise floated away, twats.
They were probably afraid of losing all that Labour advertising for useless non-jobs! Besides, Michael Shite is so far up Labour’s arse that he wouldn’t want to publish anything detrimental!
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Yes, Carter-Fuck obviously don’t understand teh interweb. Pull a stupid stunt like this and and both you and your client end up looking like muppets. Don’t do anything and everyone will assume that there is nothing interesting to see – and would skim straight past a story which was only ever going to be page 8 below-the-fold at the best of times.
If the Tories are to be believed then the Grauniad only have those adverts for the next year or so, so they need to milk our cash before then.
Afterwards everything will be advertised online…with a huge IT project….using a large database….designed by Government experts…. and consultants…. which will….oh bugger, that idea’s completely doomed then.
Yep, QED, mate!