European Court of Human Rights upholds Parliamentary Privilege: Sir Philip Green loses privacy case over being named in House of Lords
09/04/2025
Cast your mind back to the Autumn of 2018, and you will recall that the hot news of the day was that Lord Hain had named Sir Philip Green in the House of Lords as the subject of allegations of sexual harassment and bullying by former employees. He did so even though the Court of Appeal had granted Sir Philip a super-injunction which prevented the Telegraph (and everyone else) from identifying him as the businessman in question.
Lord Hain justified his decision to name Sir Philip under the protection of Parliamentary Privilege because he felt he had a duty to name him (Sir Philip), given that the injunction prevented the media from publishing the story.
Not surprisingly, Sir Philip did not agree. Knowing that he could not sue Lord Hain, he sued the Telegraph, but discontinued the proceedings in January 2019 because, according the European Court of Human Rights judges, “there was insufficient confidentiality left in the case to justify the risk, staff time and disruption involved in continuing with the claim”.
But he did not give up, and took the UK to the ECtHR, on the basis that his privacy has been infringed by misuse of Parliamentary Privilege.
Normally, individuals named in Parliament allege that they have been libelled by the Parliamentarian, so in arguing that his privacy had been infringed, Sir Philip was putting forward quite a novel point.
Fast forward seven years or so (to yesterday), when the ECtHR delivered its judgment and rejected his complaint.
The Judges spent some time analysing the concept of Parliamentary Privilege. They began with Article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1689 (“That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament”), and ended by noting two decisions from the UK’s Supreme Court in 2010 and 2022.
In the latter case, Lord Phillips said:
“The protection of Article 9 is absolute ... Its effect where it applies is to prevent those injured by civil wrongdoing from obtaining redress ...”
This is the basis for the well known concept of Parliamentary Privilege which, as every journalism student knows, prevents those named in Parliament from suing publishers for repeating, fairly and accurately, what has been said about them in the course of Parliamentary proceedings. To this day, Article 9 is relied on by every journalist who reports on the activities of Parliament and its members.
But despite this, Sir Philip Green claimed that Lord Hain (and the subsequent press reports of his statement) had infringed his privacy rights under Article 8 of the European Convention for Human Rights.
At the heart of Sir Philip’s case was his claim that UK law fails to control the use of Parliamentary Privilege to prevent confidential information being revealed, confidential information which in this case was also the subject of an injunction. He argued that the current law of Parliamentary privilege “allowed Parliamentarians to undermine a judicial decision”, and that statements such as Lord Hain’s were “not the sort of meaningful debate that Parliamentary Privilege was designed to protect”.
But these arguments cut no ice with the Court, with a majority of the judges rejecting Sir Philip’s contentions.
Although the majority found that there had been an interference with Sir Philip’s privacy rights, they also decided that the UK does have some controls on the use of Parliamentary Privilege; those controls appear to work; and other member states (of the Convention) do not have more robust controls than the UK.
In recognition that these are matters for individual Parliaments to determine, the Court decided there had been no breach of Sir Philip’s Article 8 rights, and his case would be dismissed.
On a day to day basis, what does this affirmation mean for journalists? Clearly, the next time a Parliamentarian blows the whistle in breach of a Court injunction, there is little doubt that reports of such a statement will not constitute a breach of privacy. And even in the absence of Court Orders, Parliamentary Privilege will override the privacy rights of any individual.
Green v UK was not a libel case, but the reaffirmation of the concept of Parliamentary Privilege must surely give comfort to journalists who report on defamatory statements made against a named individual in one of Parliament’s two Chambers. Because such people know that they have no remedy against the Parliamentarian who made the comments, it’s not unknown for them to complain about the messenger’s coverage instead.
But Parliament remains supreme, and the Bill of Rights, even after 430 years, is still at the heart of freedom of expression and editorial independence.
Long may that continue, for another 430 years - and beyond!