Sir Fred Goodwin gagging order partially lifted by high court

Move comes after peer uses parliamentary privilege to discuss former RBS chief’s injunction in Lords The high court has partially lifted a gagging order brought by Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, just hours after details of his alleged extra-marital affair were made public in the House of Lords. Mr Justice Tugendhat varied the injunction to allow publication of Goodwin’s name, but not details of the alleged relationship and the name of the woman said to be involved. Goodwin obtained the wide-ranging injunction against the Sun newspaper in March. News Group Newspapers, the News International subsidiary that publishes the Sun, went to the high court on Thursday afternoon seeking to get the injunction lifted. However, by that point Goodwin had already informed the high court “that he did not wish to persuade the court to continue the anonymity,” according to his lawyer, Hugh Tomlinson QC. Tugendhat then amended the wide-ranging injunction to allow Goodwin to be named, but to prevent reporting of the detail of his alleged “sexual relationship” with a colleague. Tugendhat said: “The main point is that this is an injunction relating to a sexual relationship. The existing order of Mrs Justice Sharp prohibits the naming of the other person to the relationship and prohibits the publication of any details. That remains in force.” The injunction – which even prevented Goodwin from being identified as a banker – was raised by Lord Stoneham, a Liberal Democrat peer, earlier on Thursday during a debate in the upper house. Stoneham’s comments are protected by parliamentary privilege. Stoneham, speaking on behalf of fellow Liberal Democrat peer Lord Oakeshott, said during the debate: “Would [the speaker] accept that every taxpayer has a direct public interest in the events leading up to the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland? “So how can it be right for a injunction to hide the alleged relationship between Sir Fred Goodwin and a senior colleague? If true it would be a serious breach of corporate governance and not even the Financial Services Authority would know about it.” Following the Lords claims on Thursday morning, Lord McNally, the minister of state for justice and deputy leader of the Lords, revealed that the Ministry of Justice does not know how many superinjunctions presently exist. The ability of MPs and peers to bypass gagging orders issued against the media is likely to feature in a report on superinjunctions by the master of the rolls, Lord Neuberger, on Friday. However, the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, on Thursday ruled out new legislation to deal specifically with the issue of balancing privacy and freedom of speech, saying that a privacy law was “not the way forward”. He added: “We’re not minded to have a new privacy law but we’re not ruling out the need for legislative changes.” •

Posted by on May 19, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.