Privacy law clarified

The BBC’S decision to drop its appeal against the High Court’s ruling in the Sir Cliff Richard privacy case makes sense financially. The corporation has already spent a sizeable chunk of its licence fee income on legal fees to defend the case and on paying compensation to the singer.

But the point of the proposed appeal was not to cause Sir Cliff further anguish after a police raid on his home was broadcast for hours on end while he was overseas. Rather it was to clarify the law around privacy following Mr Justice Mann’s ruling in the case.

We said at the time that this was a bad judgment, since it appeared to establish a new restriction on the rights of the media to name people identified as suspects by the police. However, the judge has subsequently maintained that this was not the consequence of his ruling. Confusion arose partly because he described Sir Cliff as a suspect, which he never was. Rather he was what is known as a “person of interest” to the police. Mr Justice Mann says it is not the case that the courts have imposed a blanket restriction on reporting police investigations.

This is welcome and it is to be hoped that when newspapers take him at his word, his fellow judges will agree if a privacy action is brought before them. The BBC says the law should now be clarified by Parliament; but we question that approach since recent post-leveson attempts to restrict the press afford us little confidence in the commitment of our MPS to protect free speech. What is important is that the courts, in balancing the countervailing human rights under Articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention, give as much emphasis to free speech as they do to privacy.