David Cameron cites unease at how judges are creating a privacy law by the back door
By Jonathan Isaby
Yesterday's Times (£) carried a powerful report on page three of the paper about a Premier League footballer's affair with a former Big Brother contestant in which the identity and a variety of details about the story had been redacted in line with injunctions granted by the courts.
Judges are basically having to weigh up competing articles of the Human Rights Act on the right to a private life and the right to freedom of expression in issuing their decisions on such matters and whilst on the local election campaign trail in Bedfordshire yesterday, David Cameron expressed his concerns about it:
“I think there is a question here about privacy and the way our system works. Judges are using the European Convention on Human Rights to deliver a sort of privacy law without Parliament saying so. I think that we do need to have a proper sit back and think: is this right, is this the right thing to happen?
“What ought to happen in a parliamentary democracy is that Parliament, which you elect and put there, should decide how much protection we want for individuals and how much freedom of the press and the rest of it. So I am a little uneasy about what is happening.”
"It might be odd to hear it, but I don't really have the answer to this one, I need to do some more thinking about it. It is an odd situation if the judges are making the law rather than parliament."
Any answer would surely involve a radical overhaul of the Human Rights Act - which I fear is deemed to be sacrosanct to the Lib Dem element of the Coalition...
The report below from last night's BBC 10 O'Clock News includes some of the background to the issue and a clip of David Cameron's remarks.
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