The European Court of Human Rights has rejected a claim by businessman Sir Philip Green that naming him in parliament violated his right to privacy.

In 2018 Labour peer Lord Hain relied on parliamentary privilege in the Lords to name the Arcadia boss as the individual whose identity could not be published due to an injunction. The injunction had been made against the Daily Telegraph, which was planning to report details of serious allegations of sexual harassment and bullying made against Green by former employees of Arcadia and Topshop. Green has always denied wrongdoing. 

At the ECtHR, Green challenged the absence of ex ante and ex post controls on the power to use parliamentary privilege to reveal confidential information that was subject to an injunction. He argued that the current law of privilege ‘allowed parliamentarians to undermine a judicial decision’, and said such speech ‘was not the sort of meaningful debate that parliamentary privilege was designed to protect’, the court heard. 

Sir Philip Green

A majority judgment in the ECtHR rejected Sir Philip Green’s appeal

Source: Palace Lee/Shutterstock

‘The need for comity and respect for the rule of law placed an onus on the legislature and its Members to act compatibly with the separation of powers,’ a summary of Green’s argument reads.

A majority judgment in the ECtHR rejected Green’s appeal, ruling that the UK does have some after-the-fact controls, and pointing to a parliamentary watchdog investigation into Hain over his links to a law firm acting for the Telegraph, in which Hain was cleared.

It also pointed out that in most member states, parliamentary privilege affords absolute protection from external legal actions to any statements made by parliamentarians in Parliament.

The court said that if it had oversight of the controls Parliament used to restrict members speaking in parliament, that ‘could amount to indirect control by the Court over the free speech itself, as it would undoubtedly become at least indirectly involved in an evaluation of the statements that had been made in Parliament. 

‘The response to a parliamentarian acting incompatibly with the principle of the separation of powers should not further undermine the very principle it seeks to defend.’

 

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