Now the Speaker is an ass!
Bercow bids to ban MPs from naming celebrity love cheat in Commons
COMMONS Speaker John Bercow caused outrage yesterday after he warned MPs against naming the cheating celebrity whose identity is being hidden from the public. A backbench MP was yesterday poised to use the legal protection afforded by Parliamentary privilege to name both the celebrity and his partner – in defiance of a privacy injunction imposed by the courts.
But a spokesman for the Speaker told MPs not to break the injunction by using the ancient legal protection given to speeches in the House of Commons.
His officials were considering yesterday how the ruling could be enforced.
Last night, former Lib Dem MP John Hemming accused the Speaker of ‘going beyond his powers’.
In 2011, Mr Hemming stood up in the House of Commons and named Ryan Giggs as the top-flight footballer who was using an injunction to stop details of his private life being made public.
Yesterday, he accused Mr Bercow of being a ‘ jumped-up Speaker’ who was ‘overreaching’.
Mr Hemming added: ‘It’s fairly well farcical that you can read this on the internet or in Scotland or in the USA, but an MP isn’t allowed to say it for some reason because of a jumped-up speaker who is going beyond his powers.’
He added: ‘ Bercow is not allowed to randomly decide that you’re not allowed to say certain things. He has to follow the rules of the House.
‘ If he’s saying he’s banning MPs from saying things that break court injunctions, he doesn’t have that power.’
‘Freedom of speech in Parliament is limited by what Parliament decides – not what the Speaker decides. ‘I think he’s overreaching.’ The injunction, which prevents the identities of the celebrity couple being published in England and Wales, has been severely undermined after details of the case were published on Twitter, in newspapers in Scotland and by a magazine in the United States.
A spokesman for the Speaker refused to say whether the MP who intended to breach the injunction had been put under pressure not to. She also denied that the Speaker had ‘ banned’ MPs from mentioning the injunction.
But she said it was ‘an established convention’ that Members of Parliament should not breach the terms of any injunction.
She claimed there was a ‘ longstanding practice that Parliament does not undermine the courts in the exercise of their powers, in the same way that the courts seek to avoid getting involved in Parliament’s business’.
She pointed to the constitutional book Erskine May – the authority on Parliamentary rules – which says the House ‘abstains’ from discussing cases which are active in the criminal or civil courts.
Another document, ‘ The Rules and Courtesies of the House’, states that the freedom of speech given to MPs ‘is a freedom which should be exercised responsibly, in the public interest, and take into account the interests of others outside this House’.
MPs are advised: ‘You should research carefully and take advice before exercising this freedom in sensitive or individual cases.’ Mr Hemming named Giggs in the Commons in May 2011 after the Manchester United player’s lawyers began to pursue Twitter users who had been discussing his relationship with reality TV star Imogen Thomas.
At the time, Mr Hemming said: ‘With about 75,000 people having named Ryan Giggs on Twitter, it’s obviously impractical to imprison them all.’ However, his comments led to a reprimand from Mr Bercow in the Commons.
The current controversy centres on a Court of Appeal decision to grant blanket anonymity to the famous couple.
The man, who has young children with his spouse, had a threesome with another couple, who approached a newspaper this year offering to tell their story.
The High Court initially refused to grant a privacy injunction, but that decision was overruled by the Court of Appeal.
Lord Justice Rupert Jackson said the story would be ‘devastating for the claimant’ and the need for privacy was stronger than the right to publish.
But a publication in the US printed the story last Wednesday, and yesterday a Scottish newspaper followed suit. The identities of the famous couple were published in the print edition of the Scottish title, but not online.
‘He doesn’t have that power’
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