Oral question asked in the House of Lords, by Lord Davies of Stamford (Labour). It was answered on Thursday, 19 May 2011.

Courts: Super-injunctions

Question: My Lords, is not a right to a private life and respect for privacy an essential, indeed defining, characteristic of a free society? Of course, there must always be an over-ride where there is a connection between private behaviour and the fulfilment of public responsibilities, including voting and speaking in Parliament. In that connection, is it not intolerable that important sections of the media, in pursuit of a commercial agenda in competition for getting more titillating material to increase their sales, think nothing quite regularly of bribing informants, of surreptitious surveillance and photography, of tapping telephones and of using the methods normally associated with the activities of a secret police in a totalitarian society? Is this not a national disgrace and should not Parliament and the Government face up to their responsibilities and legislate on the issue?

Answer: I think I was with the noble Lord right to the last bend, there. Of course, in a free society we have to recognise those rights that he has just recognised, but also in a free society we recognise the need for a robust and free press. The noble Lord laid down a catalogue of sins, which throws a challenge to our press. I know that noble Lords on all sides of the House want to defend a free press, but the press has a duty to put its own house in order to see whether some of the faults that the noble Lord outlined should not be more robustly dealt with by the self-regulation that the press claims to be so proud of.

Secondary information