MPs reject new privacy laws but insist on pre-notification for privacy-invading stories

Journalists should be told to inform the subjects of storiesthat their private lives are about to be exposed before the storiesare published, a Parliamentary Committee has said. It has stoppedshort of recommending new privacy laws.

The House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee haspublished a report on press standards, privacy and libel and hassaid that there is not yet a need for new, specific privacy laws inthe UK.

The Human Rights Act's protection of a person's right to aprivate and family life has led courts to rule that famous peoplehave a right to privacy in a number of cases in the last 10 years.The Committee said that the courts should continue to judge theextent of that protection, not Parliament.

"The Human Rights Act has only been in force for nine years andinevitably the number of judgments involving freedom of expressionand privacy is limited," said its report. "[The] law relating toprivacy will become clearer as more cases are decided by thecourts."

"For now matters relating to privacy should continue to bedetermined according to common law, and the flexibility thatpermits, rather than set down in statute," it said.

The same Committee had recommended in 2003 that the Governmentpass privacy laws so that people would know exactly what protectionthey could expect. The Government rejected that plan.

"The weighing of competing rights in individual cases is thequintessential task of the courts, not of Government, orParliament. Parliament should only intervene if there are signsthat the courts are systematically striking the wrong balance; webelieve there are no such signs," the Government said at thetime.

Car racing administrator Max Mosley gave evidence to theCommittee about his experience of having his sexual activitiesreported on by the News of the World. The paper published a storyand video material about an allegedly Nazi-themed orgy heparticipated in. Mosley is the son of Oswald Mosley, the leader ofthe British Fascists in the 1930s and 1940s.

Mosley won £60,000 in damages over the story. The High Courtsaid that the News of the World had failed to prove the Nazi link,meaning that there was no public interest in the story, whichtherefore breached Mosley's privacy.

Mosley told the Committee that Parliament should create a lawthat forces journalists to contact people who will feature in theirstories before publication to allow them to take out injunctions totry to stop publication before it happens rather than seek damagesafterwards.

"[The newspapers] should be obliged, in cases where they knowthat the person is going to object to that publication and there isa substantial chance that he will go to court and could get aninjunction, that they should notify him," he told theCommittee.

He said that while this would stop some privacy-invading,prurient journalism it would not restrict genuine investigationsthat were in the public interest.

"It is, I would suggest, inconceivable that a judge, where thereis serious investigative journalism - unless there are otherfactors which one cannot speculate on - would give an injunctionbecause that is exactly the basis of a free press, that you canhave investigative journalism and it is in the public interest," hesaid.

The Committee heard, though, from a lawyer for human rightsgroups and from newspapers and journalists interested ininvestigative reporting who claimed that a pre-notificationrequirement would make it too easy for subjects of legitimate butdamaging stories to thwart investigations by immediately issuinginjunctions which, they said, could tie the story up in the courtsfor months.

The Committee concluded that pre-notification should berecommended, but through the Press Complaints Commission's guidancerather than through legislation.

"We recommend that the PCC should amend the Code to include arequirement that journalists should normally notify the subject oftheir articles prior to publication, subject to a 'public interest'test, and should provide guidance for journalists and editors onpre-notifying in the Editors' Codebook," it said.

"We have concluded that a legal or unconditional requirement topre-notify would be ineffective, due to what we accept is the needfor a 'public interest' exception," the Committee said. "Instead webelieve that it would be appropriate to encourage editors andjournalists to notify in advance the subject of a critical story orreport by permitting courts to take account of any failure tonotify when assessing damages in any subsequent proceedings forbreach of [the Human Rights Act's privacy clause]."

The Committee said that the Ministry of Justice should amendcourt rules to make failure to pre-notify an 'aggravating factor'judges should consider when assessing damages.