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Unbelievable
By Steven | May 21, 2011
Some readers have wondered whether I’m exaggerating when I accuse the British press of being incapable of reporting fairly about so-called super-injunctions. Here I offer Exhibit A: today’s Guardian story about a long-awaited and fascinating report by a committee headed by the Master of the Rolls on the issue of injunctions, super-injunctions and anonymity orders. The headline?
Super-injunctions granted far too readily, say judges
This is, in fact, precisely not what the report says. It says it has been able to find evidence of only two super-injunctions since 2010, one of which was reversed on appeal. The committee (not just made up of judges) says super-injunctions have to be very carefully controlled, granted on strict terms, and granted rarely. And it says that’s just what’s happening. Still, the committee wasn’t certain it had picked up on all the super-injunctions around, including some that may have been granted before 2010.
This is simply nowhere near as big an issue as the media are suggesting.
UPDATE: I was mystified by the way the Guardian quoted the committee as saying that there was “justifiable concern” super-injunctions had been granted “far too readily”. That statement doesn’t appear in the report at all.
But a summary of the report, with accompanying statements by Lord Judge and Lord Neuberger, does say it:
There was justifiable concern, when the Committee was formed, that super-injunctions were being applied for and granted far too readily. This concern has now been addressed. Since January 2010, so far as the Committee is aware, two super-injunctions have been granted, one which was set aside on appeal and the second which was in force for seven days. Super-injunctions are now only being granted, for very short periods, and only where this level of secrecy is necessary to ensure that the whole point of the order is not destroyed.
The Guardian’s headline seems much more justifiable in that light, though it implies that the practice continues when the report says it doesn’t. Still, the story sets out the report’s findings. Oddly, the report itself really doesn’t supply any evidence to substantiate the concern that super-injunctions were granted far too readily before 2010. It does talk (para 2.35) of “justifiable concerns that a form of permanent secret justice was beginning to develop”, and says (para 2.36) that some old super-injunctions may still be in existence. But it provides no statistics or even examples, adn merely reports (para 4.4) that the claims are “impossible to verify”. The report suggests that the higher estimates (up to 300) may based on double-counting, counting anonymity orders, or just exaggerated. The committee sensibly recommends that better statistics be kept.
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