10 April 2025

Article 8 and Parliamentary Privilege

In Green v United Kingdom (Application 22077/19) the European Court of Human Rights (4th section)

Held that there was no violation of the right to respect for private life.

The case concerned the question of whether States have a duty to take measures to prevent parliamentary privilege being used to circumvent a court injunction. In 2018 the applicant, a well-known businessman, was granted an interim injunction against the Telegraph group to prevent it from identifying him as the subject of allegations of sexual harassment and bullying made by former employees. Invoking parliamentary privilege, a member of the House of Lords took the floor of the House after a debate and identified the applicant as the subject of the allegations, despite the interim injunction.

The Court found that it should be left to the respondent State, and Parliament in particular, to decide on the controls required to prevent parliamentary members from revealing information subject to privacy injunctions. To find otherwise would run contrary to the principle of the autonomy of Parliament, which had already considered and rejected the need for further controls.

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