Privacy and Injunctions - Evidence - Parliament

Rt Hon Dominic Grieve QC MP, Attorney General—Oral evidence (QQ 1070–1102)
promoted anarchy behind parliamentary privilege it would be quite a funny thing for
Parliament to do because at some point it would come back and hit us.
Q1098 George Eustice: I want to develop the specific point about the idea of a
conspiracy effectively circumventing a super-injunction. If, for instance, a newspaper
deliberately gave details of a super-injunction to a Member of Parliament with a view to that
MP planting a question or making a speech in Parliament so it could then report the
proceedings, in that situation would you regard that newspaper as having acted with malice?
Mr Grieve: It is the old danger of the hypothetical question, but it seems to me at
least to set the preconditions in which malice would be occurring, for obvious reasons. It
would be done with the deliberate intention of circumventing a court order, but each case
would have to be looked at on its own facts.
Q1099 George Eustice: Some of the evidence we received from bloggers, for
example, described a process in which if certain journalists on newspapers did not feel they
could get a story past their own editors and solicitors they said, “Let’s get it out in the
blogosphere; give it to bloggers so they can print it and then we can report it after the
event.” In that situation, whom would you regard as being liable for that conspiracy? Is it
the blogger who has knowingly produced it or the newspaper that has knowingly put it out?
Mr Grieve: Potentially, if both acted with knowledge, both of them would be, but
clearly the person who started the process in breach of a court order which he knows
applies to his organisation is taking a very serious step. He is the one who has actually let
the cat out of the bag, but each case must turn on its own facts. These cases have to be
proved, and that is often a different matter from what may or may not have happened.
Q1100 Lord Black of Brentwood: Bearing in mind the point you have quite
rightly made that you may not always be the right one to enforce privacy injunctions, are
there any particular reforms of the contempt of court laws or practice, including possible
punishments, that you think might assist in ensuring enforcement in this area? One example
might be whether there is need for greater clarity on the ability to bring proceedings where
there has been a form of jigsaw identification.
Mr Grieve: The penalties for contempt are pretty extensive; indeed, in some
circumstances they can be draconian. The Law Commission is shortly to look at the way in
which contempt of court works more generally. I am rather content to leave it to the Law
Commission to do a detailed examination. Most of my work is in the field of contempt
concerning criminal cases. Do I feel that I have the tools to do the job? For the most part,
yes, in terms of the ability to bring cases to court. It is a slightly unusual jurisdiction, and
there may be some issues the Law Commission should look at in terms of process. The
penalties are not for me anyway; they are for the judiciary, but it strikes me on any
examination that there is a wide range of penalties which can be very serious.
Q1101 The Lord Bishop of Chester: In your lecture in December, which we
enjoyed reading, you gave a series of cases where things had gone seriously wrong in many
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