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


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

The House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee has published a report on press standards, privacy and libel and has said that there is not yet a need for new, specific privacy laws in the UK.

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

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

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

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

"The weighing of competing rights in individual cases is the quintessential task of the courts, not of Government, or Parliament. Parliament should only intervene if there are signs that the courts are systematically striking the wrong balance; we believe there are no such signs," the Government said at the time.

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

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

Mosley told the Committee that Parliament should create a law that forces journalists to contact people who will feature in their stories before publication to allow them to take out injunctions to try to stop publication before it happens rather than seek damages afterwards.

"[The newspapers] should be obliged, in cases where they know that the person is going to object to that publication and there is a substantial chance that he will go to court and could get an injunction, that they should notify him," he told the Committee.

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

"It is, I would suggest, inconceivable that a judge, where there is serious investigative journalism - unless there are other factors which one cannot speculate on - would give an injunction because that is exactly the basis of a free press, that you can have investigative journalism and it is in the public interest," he said.

The Committee heard, though, from a lawyer for human rights groups and from newspapers and journalists interested in investigative reporting who claimed that a pre-notification requirement would make it too easy for subjects of legitimate but damaging stories to thwart investigations by immediately issuing injunctions which, they said, could tie the story up in the courts for months.

The Committee concluded that pre-notification should be recommended, but through the Press Complaints Commission's guidance rather than through legislation.

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

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

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

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