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Mosley loses bid to have privacy case heard by Europe's top human rights court


A privacy campaigner hopes the Government will close a "clear gap" in UK privacy laws after failing in his bid to have his case to overhaul media behaviour heard by Europe's top human rights court.

In May Max Mosley lost a case at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in which he had argued that journalists should be forced to tell the subjects of stories that they are planning to write about their private lives before publication of stories.

Mosley had argued that current UK laws violated the European Convention on Human Rights which guarantee a person's right to a private life. The Convention also guarantees the right to freedom of expression. The Court said in its ruling that forcing editors to tell subjects about stories before publishing them would have a "chilling effect" on journalism.

Mosley asked the Grand Chamber at the ECHR to re-hear the case, claiming that there was a "clear gap in UK law" that the Court needed to close, but that request has been rejected. Mosley said he is "hopeful" that the Government will be able to "find a regime" that will protect individuals' privacy.

"The decision of [the ECHR] in May of this year, which is now final, was made at a time when every British paper was attacking privacy law," Mosley said in a statement.

"Only now are we beginning to understand the extent to which personal privacy was routinely invaded by the News of the World and the consequences of such behaviour. My view remains that the requirement for prior notification is unanswerable," said Mosley. "I am hopeful that the UK Government by way of the various committees and inquiries can find a regime for effective safeguards for personal privacy. This is certainly not the end of the road."

In July Prime Minister David Cameron announced that an independent inquiry would be set up to examine the culture, practices and ethics of the press. The inquiry, led by Lord Justice Leveson, was established following allegations of phone hacking at the now-defunct News of the World (NotW) newspaper.

Cameron said press watchdog the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) had "failed" to regulate the press properly and called for a new system of regulation that should "strike the balance" between privacy rights and what newspapers can publish in the public interest.

The UK press is currently self-regulated by industry representatives under rules set out in the Editors' Code of Practice (Code). The Code is a set of standards journalists should observe when reporting and includes rules on accuracy, intrusion into grief and privacy and secret recordings.

The PCC can 'name and shame' publications that break the Code and ask them to publish apologies, but it has no legal powers to enforce punishments such as fines for violations of the Code.

In 2008 the UK High Court ordered the NotW to pay £60,000 in damages to Mosley after it published a newspaper article and an online video which the court said violated Mosley's right to privacy.

Mosley had paid women to spank him in what the NotW claimed was a Nazi-themed orgy. Mosely is the son of Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British fascists in the 1930s and 1940s.

Mosley disputed the Nazi claims and argued that the 'party' was private. The Court found that the NotW had not proved the Nazi link, and therefore there was no public interest in the publication of what he said were details of a private matter.

Mosley has since argued that there are insufficient safeguards in place to prevent newspapers publishing details about individuals' private lives "without notice and in the knowledge that it is wholly unlawful". He has said that newspapers "conceal" their "intention to publish" in order to prevent individuals obtaining court injunctions that would place restrictions on what information they can print.

"The newspaper knows that, once the information is published, very few victims will sue for damages, because that will guarantee further adverse publicity and very considerable expense, even if the proceedings should succeed," Mosley said in June.

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