MANCHESTER UNITED footballer Ryan Giggs was named yesterday as the celebrity identified on Twitter who brought a super-injunction to prevent publication of allegations that he had had an affair with a former Big Brothercontestant.
The footballer was named by Liberal Democrat MP John Hemmings in the House of Commons just minutes after the London high court refused to lift the injunction that had blocked his identification. And as the media used the protection of parliamentary privilege to ciruculate Giggs's name, the court refused another appeal by the Sunnewspaper, insisting it obey the injunction.
The controversy now poses a headache for Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson, with Giggs expected to be included in his line-up for Saturday’s Champions League final against Barcelona in London. On Sunday, during the team’s Premier League match against Blackpool, fans chanted the name of Giggs’s alleged former lover Imogen Thomas.
Yesterday British prime minister David Cameron announced a joint parliamentary committee to examine the issues of privacy. He said: “It’s not fair on the newspapers if all the social media can report this and the newspapers can’t, so the law and the practice has got to catch up with how people consume media today.”
Pressure is likely to increase for the identification of a number of other celebrities covered by injunctions even though judges are continuing to insist they be adhered to.
Mr Justice Eady, ruling in the Giggs case, rejected News International’s arguments that it was not futile to continue with the injunction because of the hundreds of thousands of references on Twitter.
“The court’s duty remains to try and protect the claimant, and particularly his family, from intrusion and harassment so long as it can,” said the judge, who has taken the strongest attitude to protecting privacy rights.
Giggs was named by the Sunday Heraldnewspaper in Glasgow, which argued that an English court ruling had no force in Scotland, though the newspaper took care not to publish the story on its website.
Scottish first minister Alex Salmond urged the attorney general not to take action against the Sunday Herald, saying it would be foolish to do so over an area of law that had become untenable because of technological change.
Newspapers were accused of putting forward weak public interest arguments when they challenged an injunction taken out by former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Fred Goodwin. Last week the High Court partially lifted the injunction against publication of his name in relation to an alleged extra-marital affair with a senior female RBS executive at the time the bank was heading for collapse.
Yesterday, as Associated Newspapers sought to have the remainder of the injunction lifted, on the basis that publication of the affair was justified on the grounds that corporate governance rules were broken, Mr Justice Tugendhat said there was no evidence of such breaches of governance rules. “The court cannot act on speculation,” he said.
The decision of Mr Hemmings to identify Giggs using the parliamentary privilege of the House of Commons yesterday provoked the anger of Commons’ speaker John Bercow, who said privilege did not exist to be abused.
Attorney general Dominic Grieve was equally unhappy with Mr Hemmings’ actions, which garnered him considerable publicity.
“It is our duty as parliamentarians to uphold the rule of law. What is absolutely clear is that breaches of court orders should not take place.”
