Lord Hain and Privilege: When power, wealth and abuse combine to subvert the rule of law – Paul Wragg

27 10 2018

Judges have their role to play, and Parliamentarians theirs, and “it is for the public to judge whether what I have done is right or wrong”, says Lord Peter Hain.  Yet since Lord Hain chose to breach the court injunction issued by the Court of Appeal in ABC v Telegraph Group plc by hiding behind Parliamentary privilege, this is exactly what the public does not get to do.  Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Injunction, Legal, Privacy

Why Sir Cliff Richard’s case was rightly decided: Part 2: The public interest balance – Thomas Bennett

2 08 2018

This critique follows on from my previous post, in which I responded to Paul Wragg’s criticism of the manner in which the judge in Richard v BBC dealt with the first stage of the claim – whether Richard had a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in respect of the information broadcast about him. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Broadcasting, Freedom of expression, Media, Privacy

Why Sir Cliff Richard’s case was rightly decided: Part 1: Reasonable expectation of privacy – Thomas Bennett

31 07 2018

In a recent post on Inforrm, my good friend Dr Paul Wragg sets out a detailed argument critiquing the High Court’s recent decision in Cliff Richard’s successful privacy claim against the BBC (Richard v BBC). Wragg takes the view that the reasoning of Mann J in the case is deficient in a number of respects, and that his disposal of the case is unsatisfactory. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Broadcasting, Freedom of expression, Privacy

Why Sir Cliff Richard’s case was wrongly decided – Paul Wragg

22 07 2018

There are three reasons why I think the case of Sir Cliff Richard v BBC is wrongly decided.  Firstly, it seems to me that whilst a wrong has been done to Sir Cliff, this was committed by the police when it, or someone within it, disclosed information to the BBC that Sir Cliff was being investigated as part of Operation Yewtree (it must be stressed that the CPS announced on 16 June 2016 that no charges would be made against Sir Cliff and that, as was said in court, ‘he is an innocent man in the eyes of the law’). Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Broadcasting, Freedom of expression

The Duty to Hack, Steal and Betray Confidences? Press Freedom and the ‘Paradise Papers’ affair – Paul Wragg

27 03 2018

The BBC and the Guardian are being sued for breach of confidence for their part in the ‘Paradise Papers’ affair in which some 6.8 million documents were stolen (but not by the defendants) from Appleby Global Group LLC, a law firm operating outside the UK.  Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Journalism, Media, Privacy

Silencing the President: the Free Speech implications of censoring hateful political speech online – Paul Wragg

17 03 2018

Something incredible is happening in modern politics.  The shackles of propriety, diplomacy, and discretion have been released.  Politicians are speaking their minds.  This has not resulted, as so many commentators tell us it has, in statesmen ‘telling it like it is’.  Instead, political debate is awash with vacuous, bewildering, abrasive guff. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Freedom of expression, Social Media

Privacy and the end of innocence: An alternative perspective on Khuja (formerly PNM) v Times Newspapers – Robert Craig

27 07 2017

This post follows Paul Wragg’s piece on this blog discussing the recent Supreme Court decision determining that the applicant had no right to anonymity after being named in open court by a witness in a high profile criminal case in Oxford. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Injunction, Open Justice, Privacy

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