Parliamentary Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions reports no need for legislation

set up in the wake of the spate of highly publicised privacy injunctions last year, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions has published its final report.  significantly, the report rejects criticisms that privacy law has beenjudge made, stating that it has evolved from the Human Rights Act 1998.  The report concludes that a statute defining the right to privacy is unnecessary.  Furthermore, it finds that a statutory definition of "public interest" is not required as this should be based on an exercise of judgement on a case by case basis.  The Committee is of the view that the courts are carrying out this task well.   The report also recommends, inter alia, that the Attorney-General be more proactive in bringing contempt proceedings when injunctions are breached, that courts direct that injunctions be served on social networking websites such as Twitter, that a new code of conduct for journalists should require subjects to be notified of stories where privacy is in issue and that a failure to notify should aggravate damages.

The full report is available at the below link:-

http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/joint-select/privacy-and-superinjunctions/