A prominent businessman saw his attempt to gag the UK Parliament rejected by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in a ruling on Tuesday, April 8th. Sir Philip Green—widely known as the former Top Shop owner—argued that the ECHR should overturn the right of Parliament to name him as the culprit in five sets of ‘Me Too’-style harassment allegations.
‘Parliamentary privilege’ allows, within limits, elected members of the House of Commons (MPs) and unelected peers in the House of Lords second chamber to speak without fear of being sued for defamation, or prosecuted for contempt of court. Green’s legal team claimed that this allows Parliament to circumvent injunctions, potentially in defiance of the ECHR. (The motive for this action is that in 2018 Lord Hain cited Green’s alleged predatory behaviour, despite an earlier court ruling forbidding the naming of the accused which applied to UK press and broadcasters.)
Eight Strasbourg judges found unanimously that Green’s right to privacy (under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights) had not been violated. Perhaps surprisingly, the ruling also stated that:
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.
Now that the (unelected) ECHR has come down on the side of an (unelected) lord, by arguing that the human rights of a retail tycoon were not breached and that, for now at least, parliaments are autonomous, one out of three cheers for freedom of speech is in order.
