BBC spy story legal challenge rejected

Government loses court battle to exclude public from hearing into bid to prevent report’s broadcast

A LEGAL battle over a BBC spy story will not be heard in secret after the Government lost a High Court challenge.

Mr Justice Chamberlain rejected an attempt by the Attorney General, Suella Braverman, to exclude the public from a hearing into her efforts to prevent the BBC from broadcasting the story.

Defending the right to “open justice,” the judge said he was “not convinced” there were “sufficiently compelling” reasons to hold the case in private.

The verdict represents an important boost for “open justice” after Supreme Court judges prompted a free speech row last week when they ruled that alleged criminals under police investigation could not be named to the public.

The case between the BBC and the Attorney General centres on her attempts to get an injunction against the BBC to prevent the broadcaster from publishing a story about a spy, known as X, working overseas.

The BBC insists the news story is “overwhelmingly in the public interest”, in a case that echoes the “Spycatcher” affair during the Thatcher administration.

But the Government says the BBC report, should it be broadcast, presents a “risk to the life, safety and private life of X”, would damage the public interest and national security and involve a breach of confidence.

The Attorney General’s attempt to secure an interim injunction is due to be heard on March 1 and 2, with part of the hearing held in closed, or private, session and from which even the BBC’S lawyers would be excluded because of the sensitive nature of the material.

Ms Braverman had, however, also sought to have the “open” part of the hearing held in private because it involved matters of national security or confidential information. It would have meant the public would have been told nothing about the nature of the proposed broadcast.

In his ruling published yesterday, Mr Justice Chamberlain said: “I have rejected the Attorney’s submission and concluded that the open part of the proceedings should be conducted in public.

“The Attorney General has not convinced me that there is a sufficiently compelling reason for departing from the principle that open proceedings take place in public (the ‘open justice principle’).

“This means that, when the hearing takes place, the public will be informed about many of the important aspects of this case, apart from the identity of X.”

A spokesperson for the Attorney General said: “We respect the court’s judgement.” The BBC declined to comment.

The threat of the injunction comes at a time when relations between the Government and the BBC are severely strained. Nadine Dorries, the Culture Secretary, has frozen the licence fee for the next two years and threatened in a social media post to scrap it altogether.

The legal row revolves around a highly sensitive case, understood to concern British intelligence activities overseas.

The last high-profile attempt by an Attorney General to gag the BBC was in 2007, when Labour’s Lord Goldsmith was granted an injunction over cashfor-honours allegations amid claims that a broadcast of confidential information would have harmed a Met inquiry.

The Government very rarely uses the court system to injunct media organisations on the grounds of national security.